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August 3, 2024 In

Life You Like A Prayer 2024

Embroidered shroud – macro photography transfer on reclaimed, pigment-dyed fabric, branches, leaves, butterflies, bird nest, feather-made bird, clay frog, soil
Installation size variable

Building on the idea of conversations between the known and unknown, possibility and stagnation and ultimately life and so-called death, this installation features a shroud as its focus.

The 226 x 112 cm l 89 x 44 in fabric piece is made from well-worn, reclaimed bedsheets hand-dyed with graphite and pigment, photo transfers of macro-photographed decaying plant-life hand-stitched with silk backing. It is suspended away from the wall and draped in front of a collection of tree branches, dried leaves, butterflies, stones, a bird nest with sleeping bird and a single clay frog who also appears to be sleeping.

Close to four hundred dots were embroidered with turquoise wool, spelling in braille the following lines from a poem by 13th-century mystic poet Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi.
‘I have come to drag you out of yourself and take you in my heart. I have come to bring out the beauty you never knew you had and lift you like a prayer to the sky.’

For me, these words encapsulate what it means to really see beneath and beyond the surface of our lives; to hold space for grief, loss and vulnerability; to embrace with all our senses the living and that which has passed on from the material world yet is held precious in our living memory.

 

 

Photography by Toni Hafkenscheid & the artist

August 3, 2024 In

One Hibiscus, Two Seasons 2023

Collected & dried hibiscus petals
Seven discs ranging in size from 7.4 to 53.3 cm l 3 to 21 in

 

For two consecutive summers I collected every flower with its richly pigmented petals from one single hibiscus plant situated within view from my studio. I carefully pressed and wrapped them individually in parchment paper huddled into a paper box. After pinning some of them to a wall in my work space, thinking ahead to the scheduled exhibition, I realized they would not survive too many trials of this process so I had the idea to sew each petal to cut out circular shapes from discarded screen door material.

After many attempts and iterations, this seems to have worked to highlight both the lush colour and delicate texture of the petals held together vulnerably but effectively.

 

 

 

Photography credit Toni Hafkenscheid

 

 

August 3, 2024 In

The Long Story 2023

Thousands of collected, sorted pine needles, found rope, embroidery thread, drift wood
304.8 x 58.4 x 58.4 cm l 120 x 23 x 23 in

 

From the Judith & Norman Art Gallery commissioned essay by Rosa Quintana Lillo:

“To build the sculpture The Long Story (2024), Humston wrapped thousands of collected and categorized pine needles with embroidery thread around an eight-foot length of flotsam rope hung from her studio ceiling. She began by sitting on the floor, then moved up the vertically situated rope, balancing on a ladder for the upper section. This piece marries vulnerability and boldness, perhaps presenting a perfect metaphor to describe our natural world. It speaks to Humston’s desire to work with existing organic materials that could be returned to the garden/forest/beach to be composted and not be made into more “stuff,” with manufactured products that end up in a landfill site. This work and others equally speak to Humston’s family history and stories told and passed down through generations. Her mother was a “war baby,” having been raised during and after the Second World War in England. She grew up with rations and learned early in life to preserve, reuse and repurpose everything. Transferring from mother to child, the ideas of sewing and mending, creating something beautiful from “waste” have also influenced and inspired Humston’s work.”

 

December 6, 2019 In

Grass Globes 2018-2019

Grass Globes | September 2018 – March 2019
Marlborough College Artist in Residence garden

Seed idea, September, Lockridge Common

 

One afternoon in September, when the grass was freshly cut, and after I had played with the grass at Lockridge Common, I made thirty-three globe shapes, placing each one on a patio stone. I documented them over a six month period, watching them breakdown, becoming muddy and sloppy. In the spring I gathered what was left to gleefully discover that they had made a permanent ‘clean’ mark on the stones.

October 10, 2019 In

Gathering the Gap 2018


Gathering the Gap drawings
Graphite, graphite paint on paper
42 x 59 cm
32 drawings

For this series of over thirty drawings, I used pressed botanical pieces salvaged from experiments with boiled prints to draw from, arranging them from top to end, creating an enclosed space. These contemplative drawings reminded me of staring into space at night when you see a layer of stars, then another and another. The endless perceivable space contained by the objects within our periphery is the gap of unknown, the divine matrix or the dream state where the musical overlaps with the tangible and in some small way, these pieces represent those possibilities.

 

October 5, 2019 In

Braving the Anthropocene 2019

Braving the Anthropocene: Air, Fire, Earth, Ether & Water
Reclaimed sports helmets with found natural elements such as pheasant feathers, branches, dragonfly, beech seed pods, burnt wood & ashes, flies, paperclay branches, discarded bird nest section, shuttle cock feathers
Sizes variable

Thinking of the climate crisis, and of our disappearing environment, presenting questions about tenacity, fragility, resilience and beauty. Thinking of the human attempt to act as guardians.
Thinking of respect and honouring the land.
Thinking of both hope and fear for the future; thinking of the confluence of man-made with nature.
Thinking of how these helmets, each representing an element: Air, Fire, Earth, Ether and Water, represent the intertwining with natural worlds around us, the battle for ourselves and for our survival.

 

 

June 26, 2015 In

The Stories I Tell 2015

The Stories I Tell | A fantastical look at a daily drawing project
Graphite on paper 160 x 518 cm  |  63″ x 204″

Initially this drawing was tied to my ideas around the Day-to-Day Aesthetics methodology, meaning the daily, mindful practice of art through action, observation and recording. However after working this way for six months I moved flats and was no longer able to work on it for a minimum of ten minutes a day. The project changed course and rather than a finished piece predominantly about process, it became an embodiment of the original impetus for starting the work: my sense of displacement and struggle with a lack of available space to work. The hallway in my former flat was an expanse of uninterrupted space whose purpose was not, of course, for drawing. There was only about one metre to stand back and assess the piece as it progressed but rather than being frustrated by this, I became excited about how it would look and how it would be read when shown in a spatially unrestrained area. The lack of space to assess such a large drawing became key to the composition and even what areas received more attention.

With no specific starting plan, the piece evolved in specific areas rather than holistically, the left side receiving far more attention than the right, which was closer to the glass entrance door and far less warm. This evolution followed my natural inclination to read from left to right, and so when it came to the last few months of drawing, I worked almost exclusively on the right hand side. In order to continue working on the piece after moving from the flat where it was conceived, it was rolled up, wrapped in plastic and on seven weekends I spent two or three days drawing in a large seminar room on campus. There I was able to step back from it for the first time. The forced close perspective of the hall gave way to the large expanse and with no set horizon, the composition became distorted, like looking through a wide angle lens that produced a mild visual vertigo. At this stage, I realized that I had created an imaginary geographical place, albeit one that made little or no sense. In this place there is a single boat and shrouded in darker graphite strokes, three buildings that are not immediately noticeable. There also appears to be a shoreline, rounded stones, plant life, some winged creatures (or perhaps they are leaves), a suggestion of daylight and of night time, but all this is geographic anachronism with no singular reference point.

On one of the weekends when I was working in the Library Seminar Room, I had the benefit of some feedback from my MFA supervisor, Dr. Daro Montag. I answered some basic questions about intent, the evolving of context of certain elements and what, if any, was the single boat meant to represent. When required to think about a work that is in progress and that has grown organically out of what felt like necessity, new ideas and thoughts spring forward in unexpected ways. I relayed to him that one of my first ideas was to populate the drawing with many boats but that after drawing the outline of the first one, I knew there need only be one. The drawing, after all, was intended as a sort of nest building within a feeling of displacement and while all the organic and natural aspects of the drawing surely were the metaphorical home, the boat had become the self. It was then suggested that for months I had been working on a self portrait -a sprawling, nonsensical, visual endogeny.

Now, in its finished state, it is no longer a mystery unfolding but a rather surprising outcome born from dislocation and frustration. The question I asked at the beginning of this undertaking Can a daily drawing practice provide catharsis or comfort to the displaced artist? has been answered with a resounding Yes.