Coast-to-Coast Project August 2021 | the challenge of the journey
If you’d have asked me the day before we left, I’d have said no.
Our camper’s gearbox had definitely broken. And as chief engine fixer, know-er of every inch of our holiday-on-wheels, he was putting off the inevitable. To order almost non-existent compatible parts from far-flung areas of the world. To crawl under the van in all weathers, to get covered in three inches of engine oil to make our family trip happen.
It was like mother nature had pulled out all the stops with her August Moon nights, as we sat huddled around beach fires looking out to sea.
So when we arrived at camp, on a wild and beautiful stretch of the Pembrokeshire coastline in West Wales, it made all the adventure in getting there worth while. From getting up close to a resident cormorant in the same spot each evening, to walking both east and west along the headland and finding ancient Welsh treasures along the way.
This part of the world is a well-trodden and special pathway for us. And I honestly feel that when events come along and challenge a familiar way we do things, just sometimes it makes us open our eyes that little bit wider to the beautiful elements right there, all along.
“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from A Gift from the Sea.
Seasons of Motherhood | August 2021
I remember you owning many bejewelled clip-on earrings as a tiny one.
You collected them each time we visited the charity shops and car boot sales. Flamingos with pink diamonds, lady bugs with red rubies and countless heirlooms once belonging to others, which became your treasures. You loved them, wore them and lost them.
Fast-forward several years and we planned a date to finally get your ears pierced. This was three school summer holidays ago, but it wasn’t until last month that it finally happened, in the coolest tattoo parlour in town.
Not a ceremonial occasion for many, yet it’s these simple yet momentous events in life that I hope you feel and relive when looking at this photograph some decades down the line.
Though I did laugh to myself at your eye-roll as the camera came out.
This is Artifact Motherhood; a collaboration of artists from around the world who have come together to share our stories of the joys and struggles of our journey. Through our writings and visual records, we want to create memories that are more than photographs with dates written on the back. These are the artefacts we are leaving behind for our children and for generations to come.
This entry is the fourth in a series called “Seasons of Motherhood” and is meant to be one picture and one caption that represents our current journey/season of motherhood.
Please visit the next artist in our blog circle, the talented Caro Cuinet Wellings and continue through all the artists until you get back to me.
Coast-to-Coast Project July 2021 | a theatrical shoreline
A stretch of coast so close to home
I’ve lost count how many times we’ve walked this stretch of the Welsh Jurassic coastline and each time brings its own adventure. I’d mentally gone through the list of jobs and deadlines I’d been ignoring the past few weeks. So when we woke that Sunday morning, I lay in bed planning which ones to strike off first.
Then he said “let’s go to St Donats, it’s been ages.” So I trashed the To-Do list and we left the house for the day.
The great thing about this magnificent part of the world is that we get to call it home. It doesn’t matter how many times this well-trodden path has been trodden, we always find a new route, a new piece of the story to add to a 300-million-year-old one.
We walked through the forest to get down to the beach, seeing an overgrown path below the usual one, we decided to take this instead. Until it came to an abrupt end where the cliff had eroded and the path gave way to a vertical landslide of scree.
Eventually finding our way back up and then down to St Donat’s beach. Unprepared, with only a bottle of water between us, as we were only going to be out of the house for the morning. We ended up walking east along the rocky shoreline to Tresilian Bay.
Being seduced by the sound of the sea coming out of the cliffs and the feeling of being at a natural open-air theatre, with the very best acoustics playing out as we walked.
Continually mesmerised by the rock formations that forever keep on changing and adding new chapters to this 300 million-year-old story each time we visit.
40 minutes from home, I’m reminded that the greatest wonders in life can often be on my own doorstep.
“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from A Gift from the Sea.
Artifact Motherhood | A first school day three-years later
Well that was a funny old time wasn’t it?
You broke up from school for the Christmas break and didn’t go back for four months.
The third lock-down and the toughest to date. Not to dwell on the negatives, this fine post-Easter holiday morning, you put on your uniform once again. A little older, wiser and with a bit more sass than before. Edging towards mid-teens but aware in the angst to know enough of what’s going on.
The first time we did this was your first day of secondary school back in 2018. After you gave me the OK to photograph this school morning three years on, little did you know that I quietly sat in your bedroom this time around, while you were downstairs. Getting the moment right and putting the camera on remote so that I could appear in at least one of the photos with you. I’m more aware than ever that I don’t feature enough in the family album. Just the one photo, bed-head hair and cup of tea in hand. Taking in the process of what it takes for a 14-year-old to get ready for school.
I’m reluctant to see that we’ve now fast-forwarded from April to July and you’ve one full week left until breaking for summer. But I’m not reluctant to be looking ahead to spending these lazy camper-van exploring days with you both.
Paying attention to the quieter moments in the every day of our family life.
Artifact Motherhood is a collaboration of artists/mothers from around the world. Sharing stories of the joys and struggles of our journey. Our hopes and dreams for our children. With little nuggets of wisdom here and there. These are more than photographs with dates written on the back. These are the artifacts we are leaving behind for our children and the generations to come.
Please visit the next artist in our blog circle, the talented Ann Owen and continue through all the artists until you get back to me.
Discarded With Honour | A Photographic Project
Discarded With Honour
A photographic project about letting go
I’ve been thinking a lot lately, of what last year and the first half of this one has meant to people as well as myself. I do know that there is a strong element of ‘good riddance to 2020’ by needing to leave behind the fear and jail-like existence we’ve felt for many months throughout. Though I cannot help wondering how to let go of this time with some honour? As there have certainly been some reflective and creative moments in my world over the past 18 months. What with new virtual friendships and supporting communities being made along the way. So I don’t feel that it should be just this pandemic that gives 2020 its bookmark to go down in history.
Discarded With Honour is a social documentary photographic project with a growing collection of images and stories. Where I want to give the people I meet, the chance to offer gratitude and a visual legacy to the possessions that no longer serve them and that could now be bringing them a sadness or frustration rather than joy.
This is a ceremonial goodbye for some objects as they leave home. Or the honour of a story around a possession they know they cannot part with, but need to purge.
Most of us surround ourselves with artefacts for a reason, a connection and story. In many cases there comes a time for them to be let go. Whether it’s because we don’t want them anymore or that we cannot keep them. It is these possessions that have been of part of our lives and they each hold many layers of memories for us.
It’s fair to say that I’ve spent more time than usual in my home over the past year. As well as the need to let go of clutter, I’m also painfully aware that some of these familiar piles of objects are now taking space without the joy or purpose they once gave to me. In fact,
I’m starting to feel the pangs of sadness when I look at them or clean around them, or know they’re laying in a black bag ready to go off to a charity. Almost like I don’t care but I do care, maybe too much.
I’ve been noticing these little pockets of sunlight, falling around our house at different times of the day. Peeping through the blinds as stripes and landing on certain stairs at certain times. It’s my daily observations that make me want to take these discarded objects and bask them in their own moment of glory for one last time.
Like the family bath toys we still keep around the tub. No longer played with, yet I’m not ready to part with them as I can hear her infectious young child’s laughter while she flooded the bathroom with these toys in her games. I was taking a shower the other day and I looked down to see this single beam of stage light bursting through the curtain. It was then I realised I needed to give these toys a centre stage, their final curtain call.
My friend Jemma lives down the street from me. She’s a got a garage full of treasures she cannot part with. There’s a case of full of baby clothes once worn by her 14-year-old daughter. “My parents kept everything of mine” said Jemma. “I moved away after getting married, so it’s lovely to go through my childhood remembering the stories of wearing or playing with them, whenever we go and visit” she adds, “I want this for her, but we’ve just not got the space.”
I photographed my daughter’s bedroom a few years ago. We were swapping her little child’s bedroom over to her teenager’s knock-before-entering kingdom. I remember photographing each treasure as it lay, thrift-shop jewellery pieces, collected stones, faded animal posters and her artwork. In a moment of needing to explore the familiar, soon to be unfamiliar and immortalising this time of our family life.
Then the time I helped to pack up my late grandmother’s house. I’d chosen the ornament I wanted to keep and wrapped it in one of her laundered hand towels to protect it on the journey home.
I could still smell her house and the perfume she wore. I tried to preserve it by wrapping this towel in a sealed plastic bag and placing it a box, just to inhale when I needed reminding of her scent. I went back to this towel a year later and the scent had gone. I was heart-broken, but yet I still cannot part with this towel.
By photographing and engaging others to think about how they hold on to possessions, I’m hoping it will be a cathartic process, as well as helping to heal some difficult memories for people with their stories.
I want to bring audio into the project as well, by recording the stories of others and why they connect to these various objects. It gives another layer to this project and hopefully gives each person a deeper acknowledgement of gratitude in saying goodbye. With it a sense of freedom and affirmation that honouring and releasing this possession with a memory can bring.
As featured in Juno Magazine Spring 2021
If you are interested in finding out more about Discarded With Honour and perhaps taking part, please email me at jo@johaycockphotography.co.uk
Coast-to-Coast Project June 2021 | an ode to Barry
Barry Island Pleasure Beach
Home to the closest seafront fairground to us, cheesy ‘Cwl Cymru’ and coastal playground of my youth.
Over the decades, through travel and adventures far and wide, it’s a place I come back to time and time again. A place I rediscover new corners and delight in the timeless Welsh seaside charm I thought I knew all sides to, but still keep finding new treasures. A place I now pass the baton on to my daughter, who’s idea of heaven is a crisp ten pound note in her back pocket. To ride the fairground rides and while away the leftover pennies in the amusement arcades.
And don’t get me started on people watching, or even seagull watching as they edge closer to fallen chips and ice cream melts.
In recent years, it’s become the hometown of Stacey, before she met her Gavin, and you don’t need me to talk about what’s occurrin’ with Nessa and Smithy …for my overseas friends who may have escaped this comedic phenomena, just google Gavin & Stacey.
It is a place that has uniquely, quirkily and authentically kept its local charm, while keeping modest in its international fame. It is a place that brings simple and quintessential delight to all that amble there. All moods, all cultures and all generations. 40 minutes from home.
“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from A Gift from the Sea.
Coast-to-Coast Project May 2021 | from the west to the east
Hastings Pier has always been my grounding point.
Over the 20 years we’ve been visiting our family in the east, the Pier is a place I’ve gravitated to. And this trip to Hastings to visit family, who we hadn’t since since last summer, saw me back there once more. Quietly observing what has changed and what has stood still during this time away.
It is the halfway point of everywhere I’ve come to know in this old faded and majestic seaside town. It’s my finish line for a morning’s run, the place we’ll meet friends and it’s where Jeanie and I will ‘roll the boards’ on skates, me taking tumbles and attempting tricks my 14-year-self shakes her head at in embarrassment. This activity has sadly been since banned there.
I’m thankful for the walks, for the delight of seeing the beach huts packed with curios and candyfloss, and to walk right to the end to gaze far, far out to sea.
Though on this day, I was thankful just to be able to people- watch and the gift of that 360 view of the beach, promenade and ocean.
For the chance to watch the lovers watching lovers, the banter of my fellow humans coming back to life after lock down, and for the familiar shrill, shriek and cry of the gulls. A place I’ve missed and a place I am happy to call my other home.
“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from A Gift from the Sea.
Artifact Motherhood | a story of a pointe shoe fitting
As she sat waiting to try on her first ballet pointe shoes I remembered this…
“To Jeanie’s mum, please don’t forget Frankie (the toy elephant) for next week’s class, with love from Miss Angela.”
the note passed to me by my red-eyed, tear-stained three-year-old daughter, written by her ballet teacher after a rather fraught ballet lesson. You see, we had arrived in such a rush to realise we’d forgotten him. She walked into class Frankie-less, her weekly mascot that was allowed to sit with the other toys brought, quietly in the corner to watch the children practice their ballet.
The years have past and Frankie no longer gets to watch, but the no-nonsense love and commitment given by Miss Angela, to her dancing family, remains as strong as ever.
The saying ‘the show must go on’ has never been more true, as we went from a dazzling dance show last March 2020 into a global pandemic.
Now we can’t quite remember a time when there wasn’t a weekly zoom-ballet lesson in our living room, but she’s back into the dance studio once more. And less than a week later we find ourselves in the magical kingdom of a dance shop, being fitted for her first ballet pointe shoes.
The resilience of these kids continues to shine brightly, even through their protests of embracing a new-normal life. One which has gone from a virtual to a physical reality in a heartbeat.
So this day, this pointe shoe fitting, was much more than a mother’s honour to be part of such a key experience in her young dancer’s world. This was another huge step with her daughter, into unravelling from a locked-down world and proving that the show really must go on.
Artifact Motherhood is a collaboration of artists/mothers from around the world. Sharing stories of the joys and struggles of our journey. Our hopes and dreams for our children. With little nuggets of wisdom here and there. These are more than photographs with dates written on the back. These are the artifacts we are leaving behind for our children and the generations to come.
Please visit the next artist in our blog circle, the talented Jessie Nelson and continue through all the artists until you get back to me.
Coast-to-Coast Project April 2021 | back where we belong
A gathering to the sea…
The weather report said temperatures were dropping but the Welsh Government said we could go.
It was my sister’s birthday and we had not seen each other or each of our families for too long. West Wales was where we last met to camp in the late summer of 2020. This same campsite and the same coastal loop which filled me with every part of the same joy that it did back then.
Ladened with hot water bottles and the stainless steel inner drums of disused washing machines (for our campfires) we warmed by night and tramped around by day.
A circular coastal walk from camp, filling each of our souls and causing us pausing at different times along the path, to gaze over the edge and down into little inlets of sand accessible only by boat or wings.
This past year has certainly taught me to slowdown and lean more into my curiosity.
I felt this strongly at the point I pushed my camera into micro cave burrowed by birds, which entered via a grassy cliff top edge and exited through rockface and scree to the ocean below. Not knowing the view until I pulled it back out again.
I watched her with cousins, the youngest there, somewhere between child and adult, forever part of the gang. Yet able to lead in her own pathway.
Time to think, time to be and with those we’ve missed and love, in a place we’ve missed and love.
“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from A Gift from the Sea.
Expressions of Art | communicating in challenging times
As life begins to uncurl itself both seasonally and hopefully post-pandemically
I want to begin with remembering a poignant part of the past year. Not in any restrictive or negative way, but in the most creative and expressive way.
We’ve dipped our big toes for three months into this new year, after being locked down throughout winter, and I can’t help but think about what I’ve brought with me into 2021 so far. I feel that I’ve learnt such a lot from my creative compadres and seen how most people, whenever and wherever they’ve been able to, have embraced their inner artist to help guide them through turbulent emotions and anxieties.
The irony here, is that all the arts communities I know of have been hit hard economically during the past year and it’s these very communities that have given so selflessly to the rest of the world.
Whether it has been through treading the virtual boards with online productions, live grassroots performances or with the independent designers, makers and sole artisan traders transforming their studios to the web and sharing behind the scenes how-to workshops with the masses.
Part of my day job in an unlocked-down world, means I’m one lucky photographer who gets to explore and document the work of some of these talented artists. Observing the magic, the relationships and processes that take place in the lifecycles of the pieces they make. Spending days with them to really understand the layers, connections and thoughts behind how they create. Most importantly, why.
Capturing people engaged in doing what they love is an approach I’ve always wholeheartedly believed in. It feels evermore important this past year, to show the relevance, integrity and connectivity of some of these people.
I want to share three artists who I’ve spent time with. Each one is unique in their practice, though they are joined together in staying true to what inspires them. Whether it be inspiration from a landscape, born through nature or a journal of a physical state and emotion in their life.
Stephanie is a friend and artist I’ve been in awe of for many years. She uses layers of mosaic tiles with discarded objects from the landscape. Such as broken plates, relics and even submarine parts in her work, to visually talk about the often controversial moments and unsung heroes of history.
In recent years she has shown through her art, her challenges around finding her true voice through her undiagnosed dyslexia. This accumulated in an emotionally-powerful body of work she called Case Study, which was exhibited with the blindfolded drawings she made, including flowers incased in resin to symbolise the restricted beauty of words.
She started exploring the concept of re-nesting in familiar spaces of the home during the Covid-19 pandemic. Then after becoming unwell herself with the virus, Stephanie began to draw, write and feel her body’s response during this time. In turn, this has led to her current work, visually exploring her journey into the menopause. These current pieces of work bring nurturing, wildlife, deforestation, bleeding and reef bleaching into one self-reflective ecological visual and help her mourn the children she can no longer conceive.
The first moments of walking into Chris’s workshop felt like that wonderful metaphor, a child in sweet shop, had come to life. Everywhere I looked were hundreds upon hundreds of carefully placed tools, off-cuts of wood and sculptures of dragons, wild animals and goddesses. Hanging from the beams and displayed on topsy-turvy yet steady shelves and tucked in each corner of his vast woodcarving kingdom. Even the floor is a spongy carpet of six-inch-deep shavings, as why would you bother sweeping up?
Chris is perhaps one of the most unassuming talents I’ve met. He simply loves what he does. If you travel around the Welsh countryside you will most likely come across some of his commissions. From the intricate sculpture of the Lave Fisherman of the River Severn, to the Coal Miner in Merthyr Vale, Chris also takes his chainsaw art to festivals across the country and internationally.
He points to a little half-sculpted dragon and then over to another piece, Chief Wolf Robe, placed on an exquisitely carved bench. “I’m now looking forward to finishing some personal work for the home” he tells me. Then the mask and goggles go on and he’s using his chainsaw like a paintbrush, turning on the gas to fire out flames to finish his pieces. I leave more enchanted than when I arrived.
You only need to take a peek inside the old wicker Wunderbox that Beca has collected since childhood, packed full of seed pods, washed up shoreline flora and various other ethereal-looking objects of nature, to see that she draws her inspiration from the earth’s natural forms.
Her eyes shine brightly as she explains each treasure and where she found it. Names which I cannot pronounce, but when you cast your eyes around her studio at the barnacle-inspired ceramic bowls and see the exquisite honeycomb moulded silver jewellery she is wearing, all becomes clear.
We have been working together over the past year, journalling the creation of a silver honeycomb ring. It began with a visit to her beehive, where she gauges their mood from the tone of their buzz and where I learn a few bee-facts along the way. Such as how an impending thunderstorm can make them tetchy – there’s no doubt that Beca is in tune with her bees’ wellbeing! Then ever so gently, she sources the outer edges of leftover comb stuck to the wall of the hive. It’s these fragile fragments that will form the mould of the ring.
As featured in JUNO Magazine
