Practice based readings | Various Sources

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This book teaches you how to make different figures using straw. One of my peers gave me the first book once I had started trying to make the straw figures from memory and without guidance. I found it extremely helpful as it taught me the versatility of the material and how to best use it to create the outcome that what I wanted.

Ruth S. Hibbs

Straw Sculpture: techniques and projects

1974

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This book talks about the history of corn dollies and the different significance they have to different cultures. As I started working with them due to a memory I have of my time in Portugal, it was interesting to learn about the pre-Christian pagan history of their uses for the harvest festival.

M. Lambeth

Discovering Corn Dollies

2008

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These books were informative when making my work as they enabled me to be able to use the materials I had in the most efficient way, trusting that they could and would be manipulated into the forms I wanted as long as I knew how to do so. I also gained a new respect for the artistry and labour of making corn dollies as well as the culture and history that accompanies them. To be able to share this knowledge in the same way that it has survived persecution, through spoken instruction and careful guidance, is incredibly healing and something I work to incorporate into my practice.

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This book discusses how minority groups often forge a collective identity by transforming their media representation. It also looks at how they often form rituals within these communities that help them to survive misrepresentation and the negative fallout from that.

Liebes and Curran

Media, Ritual and Identity

1998

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This book was helpful for my practice as it made me think of the term 'ritual' in a different way. It made me see the mundane as ritual; from making a cup of tea, to the order in which you put on your shoes and socks- every repetitive action undertaken on a regular basis is ritualistic and can be used to transform some aspect of your life, however little. This book focuses on the healing aspects of ritual and it pushed me to think about how healing can look on a collective as well as individual basis.