Archive

August 7, 2024 In

Becoming a Garden 2023

Raw pigment, egg tempera, graphite on reclaimed wood
Sizes variable, between 20 – 78 cm l 8 – 30 inches

Sacred geometry coupled with graphite drawings of organic imaginings. Cutout circles of wood reclaimed from a family member’s dining room wainscotting. Sanded, filled, sanded, filled, sanded. Gessoed, and sanded again. Mapped out with compass and circular templates. Undercoats of colour, overcoats of graphite drawing. More layers. Sealed with matt and gloss medium

 

 

 

 

Becoming a Garden series in the studio

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 1, 2019 In

The Voyagers 2019

 

Taxidermy pigeon, 280+ hand-built paper clay branches, discarded fishing net
260 x 108 x 58 cm

Creating hundreds of paper clay, oxide stained branches to waive into the discarded fishing net extends the visual story of the pigeon from being simply in flight to one of rescue or relief. To what end have these branches been collected? While they are symbolic of nature as a whole, they also represent the cycle of gathering materials with which to create a home.
There is a tension between the branches that are suspended being carried away on a mission, and those left trailing in a precarious position on the gallery floor close to the footsteps and actions of the gallery audience. I am interested in this interactive narrative which mirrors life, the audience holding the potential for contrasting roles as the observer, caretaker and destroyer.
While the word could signify the animal kingdom, the hand-built branches, ranging in colour from a dark charcoal grey to almost white, represent the struggles of the natural environment on both land and sea (forest fires and coral bleaching). Emotions stemming from this piece range from hope to vulnerability, affording the viewer an intimate reflective moment in the current climate crisis.