Artist in Residence
“Revealing Morrab Library: Poetry & Porcelain”
Lucy Sparrow & Rebecca Harvey
November 2023 to December 2024
Above: A Living Library on the Rees Room window. Above right: Lucy Sparrow with the Porcelain Sound Box. Right: Rebecca Harvey’s bowl, gathering thoughts about why The Morrab Library is special.
Rebecca Harvey and Lucy Sparrow are Artists in Residence at The Morrab Library from November 2023 and through to the end of 2024.
Rebecca Harvey is an artist working in porcelain and Lucy Sparrow is a poet. Their joint residency is titled “Revealing Morrab Library: Poetry & Porcelain” and draws from their respective disciplines. They are both members of the Library and spending time amidst the bookshelves inspired them to work together. Their creative affinity has manifested in, as Lucy describes, “a collaboration of porcelain and poetry”.
Rebecca Harvey
Rebecca is an alumni of the Royal College of Art working primarily in porcelain and represented by the Belgrave Gallery. A grant from the Arts Council to develop her creative practice first drew her to the Elizabeth Treffry Room, to browse this special collection of books by and about women in Cornwall, donated to The Morrab Library by The Hypatia Trust. The room contains lots of books about Virginia Woolf, as well as beautiful editions of her work, and spending time in this space inspired Rebecca to think about a residency in the library.
Rebecca first visited The Morrab as a child, as part of a regular Sunday walk with her grandfather, through Penlee Park, to Morrab Gardens and on to St Mary’s Church. She has early memories of being tiny in the library; gazing up at the floor to ceiling bookcases in awe. She has always had a multigenerational experience of the library and has passed down the connection to her daughter, regularly popping in to borrow books and attend classes and workshops.
Lucy Sparrow
Penzance is Lucy’s home town and she also remembers visiting The Morrab Library as a child. She re-discovered The Morrab Library when attending writing workshops and lectures as part of Penzance Literary Festival. She says, “The first time I walked in I recognised a librarian from school! The library exudes a sense of timelessness and relaxed ambiance. It appeals to all readers of all ages offering quiet places to sit and read or think whilst also encouraging new writers, artists and historians to attend talks or share and explore its environs.”
Lucy studied English and History at University and in her professional role as a nurse has maintained an interest in these subjects.
Lucy says: “Morrab Library and Gardens is such a special place. The gardens are achingly beautiful in Spring and Summer and people picnic or read or just lie on the grass cloud watching. Inside the library rooms steeped in history buzz with members, volunteers and visitors attending workshops, lectures, residencies and exhibitions. Books are browsed, borrowed and bought. Laughter, chatter and silent corners co-exist, there is a warm, quiet energy. The Morrab Library is a living library where the past can be preserved, examined and re-evaluated to inform and illuminate the present. This is made achievable by the commitment of the library staff who work tirelessly to keep this wonderful institution accessible and relevant.”
The artwork and poetry
Throughout the year, members and visitors alike will have spotted installations taking shape and evolving in various unexpected places throughout the building.
In the Reading Room
The first pieces were sited in the Reading Room.
‘Her Installation’ was a poem by Lucy Sparrow about a mother’s experience of war, loss and survival. Lucy wrote it after attending writing workshops in the Reading Room, coupled with the experience of seeing Rebecca’s porcelain sculptures in her studio.
Rebecca’s first piece was inspired by Lucy’s poem and draws from the collection of books held within the Reading Room, without being directly representational. It was titled “Yet the Gorse Flowers”, and is site specific, made from gorse collected over the year, porcelain, local wild clay and horse hair. Suspended in one of the windows of the Reading Room, on the threshold between inside and outside, porcelain petals, skin or bone-like structures catch in the sunlight. The work explores the materiality of porcelain, from raw to fired, translucent to dense.
The installation was intentionally a work in progress and evolved in response to its location for the duration of the time it was displayed in the Reading Room.
On the stairs and in the Rees Room
Lucy then exhibited the poem ‘a living library’ which slinks along the stringer up to the top of the stairs. At each tread, a new line is added to the poem which grows as you climb, repeating itself in a calming refrain up to the landing where you can see the room in Lucy first drafted the piece.
Lucy says “‘a living library’ was written in the Poetry Room in The Morrab Library late one sunny afternoon in January 2024. In an armchair surrounded by shelves of books and art works, looking out through an enormous window into the surrounding garden, I felt an intense sense of serenity and connectedness.”
Lucy’s poem is depicted in another form by Rebecca Harvey’s work in the Rees Room, just off the landing. Rebecca works in porcelain and for this new piece she has painted with Cornish clay slip onto the glass panes and has written ‘a living library’ through the clay, letting the light stream through the words.
Sitting at the desk in the Rees Room, surrounded by French fiction, Pelican books and texts in a whole host of languages, you can look out of the window through the poem, or watch the afternoon light play through its letters.
“At the top of the stairs I gravitate towards the intimate Rees room as it holds assorted memories of being the first that I spent time in with my young daughter after the first lockdown. The window invites a gaze towards the living life of Penzance, palm trees, close knit houses, sky and drifting interior thoughts.
The pane of glass echoes the page.
The materiality of locally dug kaolin references its granite source and traditional use in paper making.
Textures of brushstrokes soaked in clay, are drawn across the transparent glass and slightly conceal the exterior.
Energy held in the edges of the brushmarks are left, partly inspired by the slightly torn and ruffled edges of a WH Davies book. This book is so beautifully illustrated and belonged to a member of the The Penwith Local History Group who are researching a creative Hilda Quick collection held in the archives.
A sequential gesture of the handwritten words holds the fluid rhythm and pattern which are revealed through the transparency of glass.
Like the poem this understated composition has taken on many permeations before arriving with a somewhat simple interpretation of ‘A Living Library’.”
Porcelain Sound Box
In the Art Room, until mid-November you will find a new and rather unique sculpture ‘Porcelain Sound Box’. For this piece, the pair were joined by Lucy’s son and composer Fintan O’Hare.
The ‘Porcelain Sound-Box’ is constructed from discarded ceramic fragments chosen from Rebecca’s studio by Rebecca and Fintan, with the aim of finding objects with particular sound qualities and resonance. These are struck by electric motors with the order of the sounds loosely based on conversational interaction; each motor gradually increasing or decreasing in speed, and continuing, interrupting or imitating the previous sound. The work requires the listener to press the START button to initiate a sequence of sounds. Each sound sequence lasts a few seconds and is different each time it is played.
Lucy has accompanied this piece with a haiku. She says:
“Cornwall has had a long association with the China Clay industry and The Morrab Library has a large collection of primary and secondary sources relating to this subject. In addition, the use of porcelain in musical instruments dates from around the 8th century. Being Cornish, and with a keen interest in music and local history, I relished the opportunity to spend time in The Morrab Library exploring these subjects and to create a poem that focussed on the resonance of sounds within porcelain and linking it to the environment from which it was originally sourced.
The accompanying poem is written in the form of a haiku, and the few carefully chosen words aim to compliment the complex dynamic art work from which it took inspiration. As the poet I saw this fragile interactive sculpture tapping into the hidden voice of granite. I am very grateful to the support of the librarians at Morrab library and their curation of a wide range of texts relating to the subject of Cornish China-clay in my research for this piece of work and to my co-collaborators Rebecca and Fintan.”
There is a notebook beside the installation to write your thoughts, feedback and comments about the piece.
A special place
Upstairs in the Natural Sciences Room, Rebecca Harvey has installed a bowl, made of a piece of bark, mounted on a wooden plinth. She is asking members and visitors alike to write, on the piece of paper provided, why they think The Morrab Library is a special place and leave it in the bowl.
She writes:
“The Morrab Library is often described as a ‘special place’. Do you have a favourite room? Or thoughts about what makes The Morrab Library special to you? Please contribute to artist in residence Rebecca Harvey’s research into the popular phenomena by writing your thoughts on the pieces of paper provided and popping them into the bark bowl below”.
Rebecca will then make these pieces into a Morrab ‘thought book’ which will be on display towards the end of their Residency in December.