No Mine is an Island

The artist's statement for No Mine is an Island

"Look across the surface and down a mine that bleeds toxic tailings into the sea. Look within, beyond the obvious, behind the scenes. There is a complicated story underlying every thing we buy and all that we reject. The consequences of our consumption extend far, and sustain long, beyond our individual use.



We cannot fence off ourselves from each other, or from the air, the earth, the waters of our world. Whether careless or deliberate in our choices, whether in denial or awareness, we do not stand alone.


Let there be no mistaking: each imperfect stitch of cotton thread was made by hand, every layer slowly needle-felted from recycled blankets and un-spun wool. My materials are plants and animals but my finger tips became calloused from hundreds of hours pushing needles of steel, tempered from iron, mined from an earth left as scarred as my skin. "




No Mine is an Island includes a pallisade of 36 embroidery needles that I've bent or broken in the past 18 months of blanket stitching blanket sculptures. The needles are almost invisible unless you peer really closely at the rim of the mine at the centre of the island. My callouses are invisible too, but much treasured. Stitching is so much easier and less painful now that I have hard leathery fingertips.