Sarah Cleary

 Chalk

“Now let us shift…”, MA Exhibition, City and Guilds of London Art School, London, 2023

“Small emergencies”, MA Interim Exhibition, City and Guilds of London Art School, London, 2023

Chalk has become an important material for me for personal reasons. We first moved to Surrey because of Covid. The hills were beautiful. I’ve not lived anywhere like here before. The hills surround us. The woods are ancient, and beautiful too. Walking in the woods in the winter, with snow and ice on the ground, you can see the white stone around the ice. It took me a while to realise the hills were made of chalk.

Some plants prefer the chalk soil, where the woods grow and the rhododendrons thrive is land not used for agriculture. A long time ago the chalk ridge was used as a pathway to Canterbury and the coast. Now the M25 runs alongside.

I used to be a printmaker, but Covid stopped my access to a press, I used to go to classes to draw people, but I had to stay at home. I drew people online, I drew the landscape, I drew from memory.

In spring we were walking in the fields to a churchyard with a famous tree, on the way, chalk was peeping through the grass. I took some 2 pieces home. I carved them with Lino cutting tools into two little people.

 Chalk is ancient, created in deep time in vast undisturbed oceans of tiny creatures. in Neolithic times, people dug in the chalk to mine flints. The flint rests in the chalks, like the dotted lines on graph paper. People carved the chalk then too. It’s a soft stone, easy to grind away, even with your fingernail.

 Using the material that makes my local landscape has become important to me. To use what is in the ground around me, and easily available feels like it links me to the Neolithic carvers, and the people who build their churches from this material. It feels like the restrictions placed on us in lockdowns have forced me to look at what I can use nearby and be more connected to my landscape. It also feels like an act of care and protection to the planet and producers. There are no shady dealings and human rights abuses in the production and distribution of this material. Although the woods I collect it from belong to the Titsey estate, and I haven't researched the history of who owns the large tracts of land in which I walk.

I want to continue to explore the possibilities of chalk. To understand its uses in historical and contemporary contexts. To understand the potentials of this ancient, plentiful and largely valueless material.

I want to understand how living in a place shapes the humans, and how the humans shape that landscape. I want to express my frustrations of the political landscape which also discards/undervalues large numbers of people who are not “useful”

Those who need caring are not valued

Those who “care” are not valued.

I want to understand the plants that thrive in difficult circumstances of the chalk.