Viva Brighton Issue #62 April 2018

Photos by Lucy Limage, @lucylimage
MY SPACE
...........................................
Jo Sweeting
Sculptor and letter carver
“There’s a lovely word, ‘smeuse’,” answers
sculptor Jo Sweeting, when I ask her what
her favourite old English word is. “It means
an exit made by animals through hedges and
brambles. And the thing is, once you know
a word for something, you start to see it
everywhere. Ever since I learnt that word, I
keep noticing those smeuses.”
Jo’s interest in words is the source of inspiration
for much of her work. “It often starts with
poetry or from reading,” she says. “There’s a
poem called In Memoriam (Easter 1915) by
Edward Thomas, which has inspired a few
of my sculptures. There’s a line that says ‘the
flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood’, and
it’s about the fact that the men didn’t return
and the women therefore didn’t pick the spring
flowers.” One sculpture shows Thomas’ face,
on one side surrounded by the open flowers in
the morning, on the other side looking back as
the flowers have shut at dusk. “It’s about that
brief moment,” she explains.
Many of Jo’s pieces seek to celebrate language
which is in danger of being lost. “One of my big
influences is a man called Robert Macfarlane,
who wrote The Old Ways and a number of
other books. His belief is that in order for
us to take care of the environment that we
....83....