Jo Davies, Sponge, ink, snow, and hand, 2022, Photographic giclee print, 210 × 280mm.

Creative arts therapist statement

This image is created outside in my garden showing the entanglement of paper, some water-based coloured inks, snow, a sea sponge, and my handprint. While this work might generally be described as ephemeral due to its transitory nature, it offered an opportunity to value the practice of art as a modality of reflecting on such temporality by thinking, feeling and being with the intra-actions there (Konturri, 2018).

Early in the making process, the inks freeze into the sponge; when I apply the pressure of my hand onto the sponge to create a handprint, the movement of the ink is forced through to the snow and the paper, making a satisfying crunching sound. As the weather shifts and changes, the coloured snow and ice gently melt into the paper and surrounding grass, so that by the end of the week there is only a round and surprisingly pink stain from the ink remaining on the slightly tattered paper. The sponge has blown across the garden, no longer held in place by the snow and ice, and all other traces of the work have apparently dissolved. However, the pigments of the inks have not disappeared, they have just moved elsewhere, entering the pores of my skin each time I use my hand to crush the sponge, and through the porous surface of the earth as the snow melts. I make a point of noticing how the art works (Hickey-Moody et al., 2016), and how it unfurls as the materials, and I move together into the world (Konturri, 2018).

References:

Hickey-Moody, A., Palmer, H., & Sayers, E. (2016). Diffractive pedagogies: Dancing across new materialist imaginaries. Gender and Education, 28(2), 213–229. https://doi:10.1080/09540253.2016.1140723.2016

Kontturi, K.K. (2018). Ways of following: Art, materiality, collaboration (p.271). Open Humanities Press.