Letting go of old hoarding habits has allowed me to relax and reflect which has made room for positive thoughts to grow and bloom. I don’t feel overwhelmed by the day before it begins, I am less distracted and more focused giving me confidence to achieve and make real my ideas and dreams. I find my imagination is more open to creativity.

I even wrote a poem ……

The stars have eyes
hidden distant and wise
witness for eternity
looking after secrets
written deep in time
forever weaving strings
and spinning cosmic rhyme

I am always trying to find balance in my life and pace myself so I can achieve more, enabling me to manage my disability independently. I started thinking about the importance of how my surroundings affect my mood, looking at what makes me feel relaxed like living in a clutter free functional home. I also looked at what is over stimulating me and making me ill, like a supermarket atmosphere with unnatural bright lights and colours that hurt my eyes, with chemical aromas invading my nose and making me feel sick as well as sounds that numb my mind not giving me space to think, which is all persuading me to make spontaneous decisions about what I want to buy and often bringing in to my life more than I can cope with. Recently I stopped going to supermarkets and started getting my shopping from local outlets to support smaller business rather than give money to big corporate companies that don’t care about the environment and how much plastic they produce. Plastic is the hardest thing fror me to let go of because I know that when it leaves my hands it won’t just disappear. All this adds stress to my day which has a long term negative affect on my wellbeing.

I find it interesting how the big businesses are using environments to induce us into making choices by using colour, light, sound and aroma in giant overpowering spaces that can turn your mind off before you even enter. I have noticed that colour, light and sound is a very important influence on how I am healing, because I have a lot of pain in my body I often need to be in a quiet place that will help me transport my mind and lift my mood because when I am happy I feel less pain. Looking at how my health is affected by surroundings has inspired me to design a large scale installation using light, colour and sound - the same way a supermarket does - to manipulate people’s feelings to get people to part with their money. Instead I would like to design a space that would lift and restore peoples energies and create a feeling of sanctuary. I plan to make the installation as a temporary interactive environment that can be displayed at festivals and community events for people to enjoy in their own time.

Before I became ill my main income was from making giant structures for celebratory events, this was something I enjoyed doing immensely but unfortunately at the time I became too ill to cope with the demanding nature of community arts to carry on working and had to take a break for a while. I have missed making with willow as part of my creative practice because it is a fun material to play with and always involves working with lots of people to achieve successful results. Having less clutter in my life has allowed me space in my imagination to visualise giant structures again which will now hopefully lead me to making my next willow artwork.

Images: Lights (top), Angel Lantern (above left) and Untitled (above right), Jane Hawley