Artist's Corner: Journal Entry 6 by artist Helena Tomlin

This is the sixth blogpost by artist Helena Tomlin. You can read her previous entries here.

In this past few days I have been thinking about the Esther scroll and the images of celebration, sharing, dressing up, enjoying food and merriment that are described in the beautiful illustrations. Also the magical flowers, birds and fishes in the Ketubah I saw. Reflecting on this encounter with the objects I find myself again thinking about the powerful theme of survival. 

Even though the women in some of our family photographs were lost I can reimagine their lives through my own making. With this blog I have attached some of these precious images – the first two are of my Great Aunt Tycia and my Great Grandmother Helena who I am named after. The last one is of my paternal Grandmother Fanny who survived the war because they were already here in the UK. 

Ideas flow as I sort through a selection of beautiful embroidered cloths I have collected made by unknown women (in all probability) who similarly celebrated and dressed their tables and furnishings as the women in our photos. It feels as though maybe using some form of collage (which I have used in many different ways in previous work) would call back to complicated feelings of both attachment and 'being a stranger' to the objects which I felt during the original encounter with the 50 objects. I shall be experimenting with this. 

In the meantime I have gone back to studying the piece about my Great Aunt Ida where I used a photocopy, paint and polyfilla.