Pockets of Love GalleryIn April 2023 I was awarded an Open Fund for Individuals grant from Creative Scotland to research the Witches Stitches: Pockets of Love project.
I spent over a year researching the Scottish Witch hunts. It was an intense and rewarding journey. I listened to many audio books and podcasts, I spent time in the landscape collecting and drawing wild flowers, and I went deeply into my own spiritual exploration of what it meant to be a woman at the time of the Witch hunts, and what it means to be a woman today. Here you can find some images from my research... |
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Pockets of Love Sketchbooks
WildflowersAt the very beginning of my research into the Scottish Witch Hunts, I was struck by the way labels affect the way we treat something. Sitting in my wild garden surrounded by beautiful wild plants, it occured to me that labelling a plant a weed means that generations of folk feel that it is okay - desirable even - to eradicate these wild plants. Likewise, when women were labelled as Witches during the Witch hunts it allowed them to be removed from society and killed.
This resonance led me to decide that each Pocket of Love would be decorated with embroidered wild flowers, symbolising the beauty and uniqueness of each woman who was accused and tried for Witchcraft. |
PocketsI was lucky enough to study two original 17th Century pockets held in the Glagow Museums collection. I have based the Pockets of Love pattern on one of these pockets.
I have chosen to make a Pocket of Love for Jonette Boyd, a woman who was accused of Witchcraft close to where I live. Her trial date was 6th April 1658. In April 2023, at the very beginning of my research project, I walked along the coastal path where she had lived at Portencross, the Celandines were flowering and the Ivy was bearing berries. Ravens were cawing overhead. It struck me that these would have been the last flowers she would have seen, the last birds she would have heard as she was taken away to her trial. I have chosen Celandines to represent Jonette on her Pocket of Love. |
RavensAs I was approaching the end of my research for the Pockets of Love project, I realised that I hadn't addressed the darkness at the heart of the Witch hunts story. It's really important to me that each woman is commemorated for the unique person that she was and the full and rich life that she lived, and not simply reduced to the status of victim. However, it is also important to me that the way these women were persecuted not be overlooked.
Raven called to me and told me that they would carry the darkness of the women's stories, and so I came to make 2 life size Ravens in textile sculpture. These Ravens carry the projections of "Witch" onto the women. "Deliver Us From Evil" carries the projections of their persecutors, and "#Witchy" carries the projection of our own stories and what we need and take from the accused women. |
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