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Carving out time: Making art work in small moments

| Claire

A diary about a residency with (M)other collective on Hilbre Island
Published in Exchange Magazine, Issue 18, September 2025
The full text is copied below.

Carving out time: Making art work in small moments

Recently, (M)other collective inhabited Hilbre island – a tidal island in Wirral, Merseyside, that is cut off from the mainland at every tide – as part of their research for “(M)other Wild” a series of new works, exhibited outdoors, that explored instinctual knowledge about the balance of natural life cycles that are endangered by modern society. This text is adapted from Instagram posts made by Claire Weetman.

29 April
Last time I was on Hilbre was at the start of my mothering, accompanied by my (now 10-year old) child who I carried across the sands in a sling. Today’s initial visit got me thinking about communication and how the telegraph house on the island is isolated but connected.

9 May
I’m adapting 3 chairs that I will place in the landscape. I’ve worked in my wild flower patch this afternoon to try and capture the feeling of the chair being surrounded by leaves and grasses. The other two chairs will be based on the tree canopy, and the strand line of the beach.

16 May
In between visits to Hilbre, I took myself off to sit among the tree tops in an arts space in St Helens, after crashing my phone to the floor this afternoon. An hour spent working on this ‘chair to sit in a tree’ has relieved the annoyance of my butter fingers and passed some time before I collect the big child from her club.

7 June
The isolation of Hilbre and the lack of power is forcing a different approach. The chair I found here is worn with rot and woodworm and it feels like the layered grooves of sandstone of the island. The battery engraver wasn’t doing what I needed, so I’ve tried making my own tools from the island:
A piece of sandstone that fits the hand and scours the wood
The edge of a mussel shell scrapes away the surface.

13 June
After a three day weekend on Hilbre I found myself mentally and physically exhausted. Six, 2-mile walks across the sands, meeting artists, exploring, helping to haul the trolley from island to mainland and physically changing the form of a chair with hand tools and rocks. I’ve made drawings as I studied the forms, shapes and colours of the weathered sandstone. I don’t feel like I’ve drawn this freely for a while. Being permanently outside I think contributed to a feeling of freedom. Immersing myself in between the rocky cliffs drawing outdoors really helped the carving of the chair.

7 July
Carved out some time to head over to Hilbre today where I spent time carving and shaping the chair. Today I’ve been thinking how being part of (M)other collective is a way that we carve out and create time for our creative practice and how that connects with the eroded sandstone of the island itself.

31 July
How to set up a (M)other collective exhibition on a tidal island:
Hugs, with an early lunch
Kids eat free
Smell the roses with a pre walk wee
Unload the car. Artwork, exhibition signage, food for three for 7 hours
Ice cream at the meeting point
Walk and talk across the sands
Carry an elaborately decorated dining chair across the beach for 2 miles
Sandy barefoot piggy backs to the compost toilets
Measure some walls and improvise a spirit level
Find better display solutions that the ones you’d planned
Follow the trolley tracks back across the sand
Family team photos in the setting sun
Dust off sandy toes
Take in the sunset before the snoozy drive home.
Balancing the needs of a family and the needs for ourselves as artists has been a core exploration of our residency on Hilbre. Sometimes we come with the kids, sometimes we escape from that responsibility, sometimes it’s somewhere in between when we help each other out. The art making doesn’t happen in isolation, it happens alongside ice cream eating, wee stops, long walks with heavy loads, giggles at windswept hair and long shadows at sunset.

6 August
Tools to carve out time
Sandstone pebbles were used to shape the chair ‘Finding Solitude: Island’. Each pebble wore down to a more solid core and Claire kept each one. They are exhibited as relics of the time spent working as an artist – each stone, worn down, marks a visit to Hilbre. Time that has been considered with and around her family, fitted in alongside work commitments and shared with the other artists in residence.

Time, carved out with tools /
Fashioned from the habitats /
We explore together

EPILOGUE: 9 October 

Finding ‘Finding Solitude’*

Headlong into headwind

Extend the school run 

from front door 

to island shore.

Skeins break threads across the sky.

On the last journey of the season,

the final forked swallow’s tail flashes 

south over the cliff.

The meadow. Empty.

Finding Solitude is missing.

Walk the perimeter, unfurl the gate

and feel how I have missed solitude.

Did someone steal my solitude?

Is solitude abandoned under bracken?

Or has a storm swept away solitude

and smashed it into pieces against the cliff?

But wait.

Through the aperture.

Yes! Back there in the dark. 

Right at the back.

Just sticking out from an abandoned cabinet.

The silhouette of solitude.

DO NOT ENTER.

I’d recognise the turn of that leg anywhere

DANGEROUS BUILDING

like the cheek of a child whose tears I’ve wiped away.

STAY OUT

The delicate limb pokes out, the hours of attention in creation are familiarity.

No one else would have found my solitude.

I had to return and retrieve it for myself.

By myself.

And so, as the tide crashes in to surround me 

I can wait.

With my solitude.

Ready for the next season 

of observation and creation.

See you when the swallows return.

*My pyrography engraved chair, titled Finding Solitude had not been seen in its exhibition location in the meadow on Hilbre for over a month. This epilogue records my final visit to track it down as Drawing out Hilbre comes to an end.

We Reside* Here

| Claire

As the lead artist for Artists Together – the artist development strand of work for St Helens Libraries and Arts NPO – I’ve been working on a programme of work during 2023 called Reside*

During 2023 St Helens has been the Liverpool City Region Borough of Culture, so for this creative year the programme was built around this thought:

“What if every artist who is RESIDEnt in St Helens was recognised as an artist-in-RESIDEnce for the year?”

We started the year with a pop up exhibition at The World of Glass that mapped the locations of artists around the borough and shared what they were planning on working on during the year. Following opportunities for artists to get help with funding, planning and commissions, opportunities to make work together, 1-2-1 feedback from curators and producers and chances to share ideas with each other, we have arrived at the end of the year and the production of We Reside* Here.

We Reside* Here is both a publication and exhibition that maps and showcases the work of over 60 artists in St Helens. The document features a map, illustrated by Cady Davies and with graphic design by Karen Hitchcock, that places each artist in the area of St Helens that they are based, showing our audience that artists aren’t rare beings, only to be found in the big cities of Liverpool and Manchester. These artists are our neighbours, the people you meet on the school run, the folks standing at the bus stop, and they are only a small proportion of the people who bring light, colour, stories and the joy of creativity into St Helens.

As well as mapping some of the artistic population, the We Reside* Here document provides guidance to artists. There are examples of how a number of artists are making their work, designed to provide inspiration and support to other artists seeking to develop. A list of organisations who support people’s creativity features, along with a breakdown of what the process of Reside* was during 2023, so that other artists can pick this up and make new work in the future.

The exhibition that accompanies We Reside* Here is installed at St Mary’s Market in the large event space from 25th November – 20th December. This features an installation of the map, with its cardboard-cut-out style illustrations and showcases the work of many of the 60+ artists, whilst signposting audiences to other works that exist in locations around the town.

Reside_onscreeninfopackDownload
ResideMap-onlyDownload

Artists Together and We Reside* Here is supported by

Chester Contemporary Schools Programme

The base of a glass cabinet has small books made from paper that are printed with colourful architectural shapes and feature words including "quote, stage, performance, feel good"
| Claire

Chester Contemporary is a new visual arts event curated by artist Ryan Gander. For the Contemporary, international and Chester-based artists, emerging talent, and the city’s people have been invited to make and show work for Chester’s unique places and spaces, inspired by the theme ‘Centred on the Periphery’.

The base of a glass cabinet has small books made from paper that are printed with colourful architectural shapes and feature words including "quote, stage, performance, feel good"

I’ve been working on the schools programme as part of this new festival with Mickle Trafford Village Primary School creating ‘The City Unfolds’

Chester’s city centre is characterised by its secret passageways, hidden staircases, buildings on multiple levels and interesting places to be discovered. Year 5 pupils from Mickle Trafford Village School have shared some of their favourite places and studied the architecture of the city with artist Claire Weetman to create artist-book sculptures combining paper folding techniques, printing and poetry.

A black wood framed glass cabinet is painted deep purple inside. Suspended inside are snaking shapes made from coloured paper.
Two sculptures made from coloured paper - one is arch shaped, the other like a wheel laying flat on a shelf. Reflections of the city can be seen in the glass of the cabinet that they are in.

Inspired by both Claire’s artist-book practice and Unfurled, a University of Chester exhibition at the Grosvenor Museum (which ran until 2 July), the class have explored how to use the text, images and storytelling that can be found in books. They’ve combined these book-making elements to create their own sculptural artwork that reminds us of places in the city, including Chester Cathedral, the Rows, the Walls, dance and musical performances, the sound of food being served at the new market, and their top tips for the best pancakes in Chester! Their work can be seen in the display case outside Waterstones on Eastgate Row.

Thanks to the staff and pupils of Mickle Trafford Village School, Mickle Trafford, Cheshire.

Find out more about Chester Contemporary here

Artist Books in the Autumn. Stuttgart/Yokohama/Manchester

| Claire

This autumn the three editions of Aridane’s thread will be joining a host other artist-book makers from around the world in three exhibitions.

Seiten | Räume
an artist-book project

// opening 12.9.2018 // Württembergische Kunstverein, Stuttgart

Linienscharen is a platform for contemporary drawing, which was founded in Stuttgart. Linienscharen have invited artists to submit a book project in the spirit of an artist’s book, which is to be exhibited at various locations that are not typical visual arts venues. A piece of furniture will be built that will present the submitted books in unison, allowing the audience the freedom to explore and leaf through the varied books. There will be an event for the opening at each location that focuses on inherent or additional aspects of the topic. After a week or two, the furniture will move on to another location, including the Graphothek at Stuttgart Bibliothek and the Stuttgarter Schriftstellerhaus (writer’s house)

Promoted by the city of Stuttgart

Reading Between The Lines:
Tokyo/Yokohama and St. Helens Artists’ Books and Zine

21 September – 1 October 2018.
Launchpad Gallery, Yokohama

Turning the Page: Manchester – Yokohama

29 September – 3 November 2018
Private View: Thursday 27 September 2018, 6-9pm
Paper Gallery, Manchester

Established in 2012 in the Tokyo/Yokohama area, Art Byte Critique responds to a desire for a community of artists interested in sharing ideas and feedback about their studio process.

Since 2014, Art Byte Critique artists have been exploring various modes of expression through artists’ books and zines. At the same time, Art Byte Critique established a connection with artists in St. Helens, England through artist Joan Birkett with the intent to develop relationships and collaborations.

This connection has happily borne fruit in 2018. Art Byte Critique artists and St. Helens artists organized a collaborative exhibition of artists’ books and zines at the Eccleston Community Library in St. Helens and the World of Glass in St. Helens this past spring. These works will tour to Paper Gallery in Manchester under the title “Turning the Page” from September 29 – November 3, 2018.

“Reading Between the Lines” at Launch Pad Gallery in Yokohama is the first collaborative artists’ books and zines exhibition for Art Byte Critique and the St. Helens artists in Japan. This exhibition will feature recent works and new works created by a number of artists for this exhibition. In the spirit of bookmaking and collaboration, “Reading Between the Lines” will be hosting a series of workshops and events by the artists. We want to give visitors a chance to learn more about bookmaking and try their hand at bookmaking.
Participating Artists:

Jane Barwood, Joan Birkett, Paul Cousins Deanna Gabiga Arthur Huang Patty Hudak Mariko Jesse Yuko Kamei A.J. Malone Jeni McConnell Carol Miller Julia Nascimento Lyle Nisenholz Mia O Lori Ono Jacqui Priestley Louise Rouse Yvonne Tinsley Claire Weetman Nick West

Christmas print sale, 9th December

| Claire

This year I’ve been making a lot (for me) of print work, exploring monoprinting and adding in a little bit of screenprint for variety. I’ve participated in the Hot Bed Press 20:20 print exchange, which saw a flurry of print activity and furrowed brows at Platform studios in St Helens as 9 other artists joined together to create a series of 25 prints at 20cm square.

To celebrate this joint enterprise, we’re having a festive celebration at Platform studios on Saturday 9th December from 1-4pm. You’ll be able to view the works produced for the exchange, see the works we’ve received from other printmakers across the UK, eat cake that has been baked to fit the 20x20cm guidelines and enjoy a warming hot chocolate.

I’ll have a selection of prints for sale, some are especially festive and others are things I’ve worked on during this year. There will be prices from £2 to £10, and all of the proceeds from these sales will be ploughed into producing a new programme of work planned for 2018 that works directly with people who have been displaced from their home countries. Available prints and prices are in the gallery below, if you see something you like but can’t make it on the 9th, then get in touch and I can post it out to you for the price of a first class stamp (an extra 75p).

 

Power Up by Chrissie Tiller

| Claire

Power Up, a think piece on the sharing of power and decision-making, has been released this week.  It’s written by Chrissie Tiller for Creative People and Places and includes responses to the questions that that are asked within the piece. Some of their responses were in written form, some the result of interviews, others emerged from practical workshops on the themes. A group of artists who had been involved in the CPP Northern Faculty of Social Art were also asked to make visual responses to the themes of Power, Reciprocity, Cultural Capital, Privilege, Participation, Values, Ethics, Collaboration, and Politics.

My responses were in the form of monoprints, which feature at points among the article. It’s currently available online, with a print copy becoming available soon.  For more information about the article, read Chrissie’s blog post about it here.