s e e k  i n  h o p e
s o p h i e   k n e e

born 1969, East Malling, England.

I keep trying to make sense of things by making stuff.  I'm an immigrant woman of a certain age, and I've learned that (to some extent, at any rate) I'm kind of invisible.  You might like me to fit more neatly into a different box, but (you know what?) that particular box is not mine, and I'm not getting near it.

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Life as an immigrant can be characterized by presence and absence, by changed contexts, gain and loss.  If you remove a thing (a person) from its original context, is it (are they) still the same?  Will there be a space (or other noticeable anomaly) where it was (they were)?  How long will it last?  If a person is removed from her (his) original context, does she (he) still exist?  The answers to these questions are not necessarily as obvious as they seem.

 

In the post-Covid 21st Century, the World has been shaken up, and maybe not everything has come to rest just yet.  Maybe a lot of people are going through a process of questioning the status quo.  We ask ourselves, what is possible any more, and of the possible things, which ones are actually desirable?

 

I make things because I have to.  I make things because by doing so, I am able to live better.  I don’t mind too much what I make, and it varies, according to what the possibilities are at a given moment.  There are always possibilities.  Lots of different ones.  So I make lots of different stuff.

 

I’m wired to notice the things most people disregard.  The dead and living animals in the landscape.  The things out of place.  The things right at the edges.  I dream vividly and in color whenever I can.  The dreams stay with me, and the things in waking life that I can’t forget.  Working them into drawings (or sculpture, or prints) imposes a kind of order on them.

 

So the things you don’t see, I’m going to try to make them visible.  When I’m making stuff, I’m much less invisible than normal, and it’s easy enough to show people a drawing, or a painting, or a sculpture.  Perhaps, Gentle Viewer, when you encounter my virtual environment here, you might feel inspired to re-examine some of what you think you know, or feel, or think you ought to know or feel.   No pressure or anything.  Only if you want to.