It's A Girl *

Shortly after having our daughter, giving birth to her, releasing her into the big broad world, the artist set about working on a piece, a large work of art. This she sold in the end. She sold it through her art dealer at the time to a collector across the ocean. The piece was manifold. It contained about as many as twenty-seven or twenty-eight individually framed and small re-rendered items. These were each taken from in and around our daughter's early life, or first few months, and reproduced like loaded joy. I sometimes wonder where on earth this piece now is exactly: on which wall, in which house, by which people. (The artist's gallerist at the time discovered the artist by sneaking into her studio when she was out and offering her a show when she was in. Now he is a selfconscious supporter of esoterica.) Anyway, right now slides of the piece lie on the table in front of me. They feel loaded and are vividly coloured, though minimalised. If I hold them to the light, these perfectly executed objects from our daughter's early consciousness stare back at you like cerebral trophies on some memory shelf. From the top left, as if reading them like a book, I see the following. A perfect pair of grandmother-knitted small red and white and blue socks. The inside figure from a Russian doll already featured in one of the entries in this blog as having been also a page in a literary journal. A saggy toy lamb. A Champagne cork from the bottle opened at the hospital on the day our daughter was born. A sepia-tinted drawing of a photographic portrait of my mother as a baby sitting on an old carved chair. A nipple with a bead of milk, the artist's nipple, also featured in the aforementioned journal. A tall giraffe-like toy which used to play a tune I hear now looking at it. An unidentified greetings card with a Madonna and child. A baby fist, also featured in the journal. A kind of ball of socks. A bare, unwalked foot. An ear. A sleep-suit. A toy duck. A grandmother-knitted white cardigan. A squeaky elongated toy from a couple met on the continental mainland. Another sleep- or dream-suit. Two pairs of baby tights. A giant ladybird, which used to droop over our daughter like a bent flower. A nappy, or diaper, with evidence of success. Two mittens. The handwritten ID tag from the maternity ward. A crib. A giant butterfly. A hooded cardigan. A small teddy bear. As ever, the detail is incredible. I don't know what to say about it now, other than wanting to laud it. Maybe I am impressed most by the lack of sentimentality. You would think that with a list like this we would be entering into saccharin mistrust. But this remains and is art. It goes back to this business about the artist being a mother and artist simultaneously. It's not just art; it's life.
* Title of the piece