#1 An Ancient and Endangered Forest

‘An Ancient and Endangered Forest’ is the title of my body of work as an illustrator and visual artist. It is about the threads and fabrics that we make with, that we wear, of the places we inhabit, and the passing of time. And increasingly it feels about the ethical considerations around how they are used in a responsible way for the future of place and culture on a local and global scale.

Professor of feminist studies and environmental sciences, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, writes eloquently and impactfully about why matters of care should no longer be framed solely around anthropocentric ethics and considerations when ‘the fates of so many kinds on this planet are unavoidably entangled’. As someone who has worked in and with the third sector throughout my career I am endlessly interested in matters of care and the societal harms caused when individual wealth is valued above our collective welfare, and when difference is used to fuel division amidst the complex and beautiful entanglement of life.

One of the most impactful ways this is expressed by the creative hive is in the rise of Craftivism- groups of makers with a manifesto. In many ways picking up the baton from the Community Arts Movements of decades past, the language of community-driven protest having been replaced by an orderly scrap over laborious grant-driven reward. Acts of Craftivism make my heart swell. It has the power to embody peaceful yet fiercely impactful acts of collective love and social justice.

And there is strength in the process of cooperative making as well as the messaging- nurturing shared growth, exploration and storytelling through the joy and legacy of craft. At some defining point in the heavily edited juggernaut called ‘the history of art’ the concept of craft was shunned, boxed up in the dusty attic of the gallery and dismissed as lacking the intellectual refinement of fine art. Yet in Scotland there is an abundantly rich cultural legacy in craft and making. Particularly in the hands and voices of female artists and makers using these techniques, materials and cooperative practices to share learning, language and stories. In strong matriarchal and socialist societies where misogyny dared to write female creatives out of formal art spaces they found other important spaces to fill and bear influence. Contemporary art and culture within Scotland’s towns and cities (often personified in the feminine) still value our legacy of community cooperation, mutuality in the face of social and economic divide, and an instinct to find a home for our art in and amongst the shunned, neglected and disused.

The writer and activist Rebecca Solnit’s essay on Insurrectionary Aunthood in the soothingly titled ‘No Straight Road Takes You There’ celebrates aunthood as a form of mutual aid and resistance to patriarchy and capitalism. The kind of mutual aid that can be found in sewing circles, in women gathered around a fire telling stories, in crafters making masks for health workers in global pandemics. This particular essay explores these cultures of interconnection that resonate with my own values as an artist, a writer, and as the child within me that still wants to make marks on a forest floor with leaves and sticks. In these systems of anthropocentric cooperation and thriving nature-cultures that grow and communicate across our forest floors- us artists, makers, aunts and Craftivists are an ancient but never endangered species.

Reading and References:

Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, ‘Matters of Care: speculative ethics in more than human worlds’, University of Minnesota Press, 2017

Rebecca Solnit, ‘No Straight Road Takes You There: essays for uneven terrain’, Granta Books, 2025