Studio visit: Felicity Bristow

Plot 55b is a handsomely understated artists book made by Felicity Bristow and Susie Wilson after two years working with the site of Craigentinny Telferton allotments in Edinburgh. Its pale brown cover is reminiscent of the little brown paper envelopes that gardeners use to store and share seeds. Inside is brimming with allotment life.

Part of a commission from Art Walk Projects, Plot 55b encapsulates several key threads in Bristow’s approach to art-making. It is conceptually and materially rooted in a sense of place, it connects to communities, involves creative collaboration with other artists, and it has materialised in, among other things, a book.

In initiating a seed library, Plot 55b also draws implicit parallels between seeds and books: both are carriers of information, arguably also of sustenance, which protect their contents, to enable movement and, ultimately, life. “I do think of books as containers,” says Bristow, describing the ways that “books hold narratives”. This idea is deep-rooted in language: ideas are sown; knowledge is disseminated (from semen, the Latin for ‘seed’).

Across multiple projects, Bristow’s approach to books is expansive, and her practice traverses photography, printmaking and installation, as well as book-making.

What brought you to live and work near the Tweed? What holds you here?

I lived in Edinburgh for 18 years, where I studied, and practised as an architect. Towards the end of that time, we were looking for a house project and decided to swap our Edinburgh flat for two little cottages in the Borders. It was actually a direct swap, bar the cost of a sofa! So we lived in a hamlet called Maxton, near St Boswells, for ten years. The shift to a rural area took a while for my work to settle, to find my sense of place. But in time, I feel like the blinkers came off and my vision opened up to the landscape. There’s a beautiful walk at Maxton, down by the River Tweed, with views across fields to the Eildon hills. Over that time and the last few years based in Melrose, I’ve been developing an art practice centred on walking and collecting from along the riverbank.

How has this proximity to the Tweed fed into your work?

In lots of ways! One example would be The Banks of a River, an artist book I made in 2016. I spent that July walking daily by the river, collecting things like berries, seeds and flowers – only those that were in abundance, such as redcurrants or hawthorn berries. I focused on one thing per day, examining each one and making photographs, before steeping in water from the Tweed to develop pale natural dyes. It’s beautiful and surprising to see what colours come out. For example, the dark purple-blue of hyacinth grapes separates through using paper chromatography into yellow, turquoise and all these other tones. The book itself contains a series of photographs of all these collected items in petri dishes.

As well as what I could source along the riverbank, I was also thinking about what the river itself contained. The year before I had made a work involving liquid chromatography for Hidden Door festival in Edinburgh, where I made a large-scale paper installation with ink and water. For this project I used the same technique: collecting samples of water from the Tweed, and separating out the various elements. The book evokes a specific place and time – the walk between the house and the river and the moments of collecting – as well as a sense of gathering and seasonal abundance.

I’m currently working on something relating to river data across a year, looking at cyclical changes relating to agriculture and seasonality. I actually find the Tweed quite foreboding, especially during winter. The river has an incredible force, certainly in the area around where I live – the sheer volume of water and how it moves the landscape is brutal. You can walk along the river one day and it might reveal a section of beach. Then, another day, a bank will have fallen in and the path gets rerouted. The river is forever changing and reshaping the landscape and I’m quite respectful of that.

What is it about working with materials from a place that interests you?

My work has always been place-specific – and I think that’s another legacy of my architectural experience. Working in that way encourages you slow down, really look at where you are and reconnect. It can help with a sense of awareness of what’s happening – if it’s a mast year for oak trees, or learning about mycorrhizal networks. For me, it’s important that the work I make is grounded in place but also connects to other places along the river or other tributaries. I’m interested in areas of crossover and connection, the language of the river; the croys and confluences.

I’m interested in materiality in other ways too. For example, the covers of the eco-sketchbooks I make are rubber flooring tiles – off-cuts from the manufacturing process. I also use a lot of fishing products, like threads and rubber casing from fly-fishing. So I’m quite a regular at the gun and fishing shop, asking all the wrong questions! The shop has been known to keep an end-of-line spool of thread for me as I liked the colour – it’s no use for them but great for me.

Book-making is an important part of your practice. Can you tell us a little about how you came to work with books and what the form offers you as an artist?

I did a part-time art and design degree, before my masters, at Edinburgh College of Art and it was then that I was drawn into book binding and print making. I found that the size and scale of books and printing suited how I worked. I work at a hand-scale (and human scale for installation) and I think there is something interesting about how your hands move to open a book. I’m interested in what’s hidden and then revealed by the structure of the book. I do think of books as containers, I’m interested in exploring the way books hold narratives, and they have continued to provide an important space for what I do.

People question whether books will survive but I think there’s something important about the touch of a book and the immediacy of writing in it that will always be appreciated. For example, I write daily morning pages as a tool for mental health and wellbeing. It’s really three pages a day of automatic writing – things come up during that process which I find I need to attend to or reflect upon.

Book-making involves a really specific set of skills. And I know this is a part of your practice you’ve been working on.

Yes, I’m always trying to learn more about book making. I want to continue to learn about the technical side so I can break the rules. And there are lots of wonderful techniques to learn: split leather or French link stitching, traditional cords or case bound, Coptic stitch which lays flat and makes a lovely sketch book, Yapp binding to protect the fore-edge…

Three years ago, I was awarded a QEST scholarship, which provided funding to train with Tom McEwan, a master bookbinder based in West Kilbride. There are no formal training institutions like colleges for bookbinding so this kind of self-initiated approach is one of the only ways to learn. The training has covered a lot: from fine binding techniques to thinking about materials and textures and different ways of responding to a book written or compiled by somebody else. Working with Tom has been amazing – he helped me develop how I have set up my own studio and bindery here in Melrose.

How does making an artist book differ from binding somebody else’s book?

Artist books to me are freer in terms of techniques and materials, inks and pigments. I’ve used things like beetroot and turmeric-steeped inks that I might not use in a commission for somebody else, as the natural inks that I make are not light-fast, but the experimentation is so enjoyable. In my own practice, one of the things I’m interested in is the freedom of setting something up and not necessarily having complete control over it.

For example, the project with Hidden Door was exhibited in the arches under Jeffrey Street in Edinburgh before they were converted. The infamous, bone-chilling Edinburgh haar was in for the whole festival and the stone arches were dripping wet and covered with salt crystals. By the end, the book was soaking – the work absorbed the environment, it was quite beautiful to see it transform.

You often work in collaboration with other artists. Can you say a little about how that works for you?

You’re right. I’ve worked on projects with several other artists – such as writer Jules Horne, where I developed a series of print-on-demand book covers for her Imprint Edition, using some of my chromatography designs. I’ve worked with visual artists Liz Douglas and Jenny Pope on the Tools for Survival project, which involved a sculptural book piece responding to flash-flooding in Glasgow, incorporating silt patterns and plastic fishing floats and digitally printed linen sandbags, to shore up the gallery walls.

What are you working on now?

I recently was awarded a Making History Commission from Craft Scotland and Historic Environment Scotland, which involved a residency at Hospitalfield. I was based in the Scriptorium that artist Bobby Niven designed and was built at Arbroath Abbey, a space inspired by the rooms that monks used for copying and repairing manuscripts. The space is now being used for artists and makers to research and make work relating to the abbey or surrounding area. They’re also developing a physic garden within the grounds of Hospitalfield. When I was there it was a richly planted space, humming with bees. As part of my residency, I’ve been working on a project called ‘Roots and Crowns’, working with Home Start, a support group for single parents in the area, making personalised books to record connections and family memories.

Also during the first part of the residency, when based at Scriptorium, I spent my days exploring the Abbey, the Abbey museum and graveyard, doing a wildlife survey, researching medieval bookbinding, and making books using paper vellum rather than animal skin vellum. Vellum binding is incredibly practical – the cover was kept and a new book block could be laced in and out. I was looking into the process of copying – there is one particular book in the museum, a legal record of the abbey, which has two doodles of monks faces within the gutter. It was fun to consider why the monks drew them and what they’re doing there – maybe all that copying became boring? The Scriptorium was a lovely place of contemplation and meditation. There is no predetermined outcome to the residency. I enjoy that open approach to making.


www.felicitybristow.com
@felicitybristow