'I can't contain myself' developed after a series of personal and global events since 2018, some linked to the COVID19 epidemic.

This collection of non-functional vessels is made using basket making materials and techniques, with blocked or inaccessible entrances and open spaces.

The scale of pieces varies from small hand held items to large, architectural structures for interior or exterior installations.

The Norris Museum, St Ives, Cambridgeshire, invited installation of this work in the gallery as part of their exhibition in autumn 2020 in response to COVID19

July 2021 for Cambridge Open Studios people will be invited to explore and walk through vessels installed in an outdoor space.

Woodfen Green Labyrinth, Littleport, was made in 2020, in response to Lockdown restrictions caused by the COVID19 pandemic. It has continued to be used regularly by local residents and is maintained with support from East Cambridgeshire District Council and is now registered on the map of 'Labyrinths and Mazes of Britain' online.

Extract from 'Labyrinth' by Emily Heysom

In March 2020, artist Jane Frost took her mower and set out on a personal journey across the green near her home, in Littleport, Cambridgeshire. It was an underused, over-mown piece of ground, around which the occasional dog walker and dog walked. It is 2020, the world is facing an unprecedented pandemic with the Covid-19 virus, and the UK had just gone into lockdown. It was a journey with intention and design, creating a labyrinth in the grass left by the silent council mowers. It is part of a body of work called ‘I can’t contain myself ’. 

There are battles underway in the UK over the length of grasses. With climate change and the threat of mass species extinctions, we urgently need to find space for nature, yet the cultural need for control persists. We seek tidiness. We have become disconnected from our ‘lost fields and meadows’ and lack the literacy to understand nature. Frost’s work balances the tension so well that the soft meadow grass and rugged ’weeds’ are not perceived as messy, instead it seems to attract passers-by and repeat visitors.

The presence of the labyrinth near the local school has provided an immersive, playful landscape for children on their journey home with parents and carers stopping to picnic or chat at a distance. Through the months that formal playgrounds were closed through government order, here was a space where children could run and explore, where adults could pause, think, recuperate from the stresses around them. Allowable pursuits as restrictions persisted.

The labyrinth changes the space. It began as an act of mark-making and became a humble architecture. Whilst it posits a quest for freedom, it’s presence also offers destination, enclosure and progression. The scale of tall grasses beside a small child, detracts from the view beyond and draws us to the immediate, the existing moment.

Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa talks of architecture as a ‘communication from the body of the architect directly to the body of the person who encounters the work...’

‘Understanding architectural scale implies the unconscious measuring of the object or the building with one’s body, and of projecting one’s body scheme into the space in question. We feel pleasure and protection when the body discovers its resonance in space.’ 

In landscape the shaping of space is achieved through the frugality and efficiency of natural elements and the gift of time. In a place where there were few desire lines, a local green that people had forgotten how to inhabit, Frost has performed a personal intervention through minimal means, temporal and easily erased. Nonetheless it creates an immersive communal and individual ‘event’, a reinvention of space, experienced in many unique ways. 

Emily Haysom is a landscape architect based in Ely, Cambridgeshire emilyhaysom.co.uk

Jane Frost gained a place to collaborate with researcher Ana Lopez Ramirez in Cambridge.

Together they were awarded second prize by the Society of Spanish Researchers in UK, SRUK, to present the work in London and Madrid. One of the aims of SRUK/CERU is to increase the awareness of the importance of science in a knowledge-based society by organising different outreach activities. With 'Art and Science' the aim was to create a space where scientists and artists work together, communicate and learn from each other. 

The exhibition and presentation was curated by Dr Marina Velez, Anglia Ruskin University Fellow, Faculty of Arts and Science, Cambridge School of Art

Ana's research into Alzheimers at Cambridge in the department of neuroscience, involves working with DNA of Zebra fish, where cells are observed to regenerate and restore a healthy system and where accumulation of abnormal or mutation creates degradation.
 

Jane transforms recycled and adapted materials to create 2D and 3D artworks, elements used in this collaboration are on their second or third use. 

The artwork expresses the adaptable behaviour of cells and sustainable use of materials. The forms are displayed in fish tanks and elements revealed through use of Ultra Violet light that is also used in the lab to reveal changing state of cells as they develop.

OuseLife Drawing Group, a group of 20 artists who work together regularly, created the exhibition 'The Secret Life of Ely Cathedral'.

I worked on a series of pieces to highlight hidden and un-noticed elements of  life in Ely Cathedral.

Vessels that could carry no physical burden, expressing the potential to contain prayers, thoughts and hopes of people who visit, work and worship in the cathedral.

Because most people never notice her, I made a mermaid from white willow. There is a very small one carved in the 15th century stone work of the highly decorative Bishop Alcock's chapel.

I hung a mobile made from stripped willow trees, 6 and 7 metres long. The mobile hung in the famous octagon of Ely Cathedral and showed the movement of air, the invisible made visible in the building.

In addition I set up the Fenland and Ouse Washes Story Quilt project, running workshops and story telling sessions with Marion Leeper

Slow Making developed as a work practice in 2006, I reflected on places and people making materials that artists use all the time, and the effect this has on the environment and communities involved.

Through collaborative working and in conversations with artists and practitioners in coffee shops, train journeys, in galleries, libraries, at presentations, workshops and on walks. In Liverpool, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk in UK and Croatia, Hungary and Russia. I began to develop an approach to work that has a light touch on the environment.

This includes making choices about modes of transport and use of materials, in an effort to keep the negative effect of contemporary living on the natural world to a minimum.

The Slow Making approach has continued through all the processes of my work and in every choice made of materials. I encourage and discuss with collaborators and workshop participants the process of growing, producing and preparing materials we make use of in our own work.

Publication - 2007

Slow Making 2007 Article published in Landscape and Arts Network Journal.

Weaving A Walk expresses the experience of walking or travelling slowly through an area, whether rural or urban.

This project often takes place in collaboration with communities, enabling conversations about different life experiences of the place.

I was invited to work as artist in residence with Galerija Balen - April 2006

I walked by the river Sava in flood, with peoples’ rubbish and natural materials being swept down the river. The sides of the river were washed clean by the fast flowing water, only small amounts of debris left behind. I collected material from the riverside to make work in the gallery

Slavonski Brod is a community that is conscious of it’s position at the country border between Croatia and Bosnia, a sense of living at the edge is very raw and somewhat fragile. War is in recent memories and experience. The season early spring, with very little growth showing felt at a point of change and potential in keeping with the people and place.

Participants in the walk were students, retired people, local residents. They shared conversation about their different life experiences while collecting and observing the river. They brought debris and treasures back to the gallery to make a piece of work.

In weaving the elements together participants become aware of the fragility of the warp. Each touch affects the existing woven structure. It becomes a metaphor of the effect humans have on other life forms and the planet we share.

Exhibition curators - Reuben and Maja Fowkes of Translocal

Story Quilts are collaborative projects, made for and by groups of people, children and adults of all abilities. The host or main user of the quilt chooses the design and subject title for each quilt, with guidance and workshop sessions from Jane Frost, originator of the project in 2000. Quilts are designed as a resource for sharing  stories and learning about other people, their lives, communities, countries and beliefs.

Sharing skills and stories is a way of understanding and expressing another persons’ experience as well as the non-human residents, environments, or situations in the world. Story Quilts are a non-threatening way to help with imagining or envisioning a different point of view and can be a valuable part of an intercession process, either in the making or when completed.

Story Quilts are owned and used by libraries, schools, community centres, churches, clinics and youth organisations. They have potential to be used as a resource for intimate performance spaces, therapy sessions or prayer times. Completion of a Story Quilt is always an opportunity for a celebration event with the whole community, it provides time to demonstrate story telling techniques and exhibit artworks made at the start of the project.

Story Quilts are made from recycled wool blankets; in the UK these were very traditional household items, now often replaced by duvets or quilts in most homes. 12 Story Quilts have been completed.