I recently had a deadline to complete some pieces- without any time for anything to go wrong. And I did it! I love a deadline. It made me work in a more free, experimental way. I was still careful. Neatness is very important to me in my making. Not least because what sticks all these intricate paper together is glue, a substance I am allergic to! Clean hands are needed at all times! (If you’re a germophobe, rest safe in the knowledge my hands are washed approximately 72000 times in the making of each sculpture.) I’m also always searching for ways to improve my work. But I needed to be efficient and make bold choices, and not let any niggling doubt in- there was no time for such frivolity!

Aside from brand new bird designs, I was building platforms for them to stand on-specifically tree stumps. I have used actual pieces of wood before for a handful of small garden birds, around a decade ago. A visitor to my open studio shop at the time mentioned an artist I had never heard of- Suzanne Breakwell- and I discovered she made birds on wooden blocks too- so I promptly halted all production! I’ve never spent any time looking for other paper artists, to avoid comparison, and there we were, making similar things, having never heard of each other. Her work is very different to mine, and it is absolutely fabulous- she’s incredible! But it made me hesitant to make platforms for my birdies, even when galleries asked me for them.

This time though, The Hub had allotted me actual shelf space, rather than wall space. Many of my sculptures can stand alone, and I have sold them that way. They are certainly robust enough if they get knocked off a shelf. The problem, though, is they are lightweight. A platform was necessary. I didn’t want to use wood again, to avoid comparison with the aforementioned fabulous Suzanne Breakwell. I wanted them to be entirely paper, just like my birds. However, they needed to be heavier. They needed a frame. The humble terracotta pot was perfect- I procured a few and set about decorating.

The fun part about making tree stumps is how much recycling I can get done in their production. Brown paper from a recent package was painted to look like bark. Empty paper tape tubes were used to give shape and structure on top of my flower pot. Me and my sister always joke about that certain smugness that comes from making a fancy rainbow meal- one festooned with technicolour vegetables- that looks beautiful and is so nutritious. I felt that smugness making these tree stumps- not least of which because I had saved all of my tiny green offcuts from cutting out leaves and glued it down the sides of the bark as moss. It was a very satisfying process.

One of my favourite illustrators, Holly Surplice, often talks about the joy of experimentation; that it will lead you places and how important it is to be playful with your ideas and materials. I could take this further. I wanted a tree stump with a hollow cut out. I imagined a baby owl hiding in the owl, with her mama stood above her. I honed my Blue Peter designing skills and grabbed a recent empty peanut butter tub (Whole Earth, because it’s important to me that squirrels have somewhere to run where the nuts are harvested). Once thoroughly cleaned, I cut out a hole and began covering with paper. The PB tub is fully ensconced inside the structure of the stump, then varnished. I do plan to declare its PB origins in my website shop, just in case of allergy sufferers. As someone who gets an allergic reaction to the hypoallergenic micropore tape doctors use for people who are allergic to plasters, I understand the ridiculous nature of allergies! If I sell this stand with peanut butter origins, it will be clearly labelled as such.

This structure needed more weight in the base. The plastic PB tub would not stand the weight of a full sized barn owl stood jauntily on the edge of the stump. The solution, ironically, was a piece of wood. My smaller tree stumps have a cork base. This was mostly to reassure customers that the sculpture would not mark any surface they would wish to place it on. A wooden coaster could do the same job, but had a little more heft. It’s currently on my desk awaiting some owl pals and leafy details. For my exhibition at the hub, I added flowers to the tree stump, which might not be completely natural, but I thought they looked rather cute, growing out of the bark. I’m undecided whether to add mushrooms or some other fungus to this one.