I began looking for local folk art with a fixed mental image of what ‘folk’ looks like: hand-carved and highly coloured wooden items with mystic values, sometimes used as ritual objects. I found it a little more complicated. Folk art crosses over with spiritual art, applied art, heritage craft and, as it often is made by amateurs, outsider art. I spent a great deal of time studying items and wondering if they could be considered ‘folk art’. Do maypoles, stone circles, chalk horses, clogs, Sussex trugs, divining rods, or pub toads qualify? If so, some are pretty tricky items to buy. It was a pleasure to go hunting through books to discover strange Sussex customs that have related objects. The Sussex pig was one of them. It is a ceramic beer mug or jug, which stands as an ornament but has a special use at weddings. They have been made in Rye for 200 years and Rye Pottery continues the tradition.
I hope you enjoy my selection, all available to buy right now.
Jessica Wood
A marvellously magical scene
Chris Booth, The Marvellous Dream, 2024 Ink on paper, 44x64cm. £1,900
Created in response to the artist’s experiences during the legendary Hastings Jack in the Green festivities held over May Day weekend, Booth describes how he felt a ‘power disparity between the gargantuan polar bear and the children dancing for or around him. It’s an aspect of folk festivals with a very deep history but one that feels extremely uneasy to me.’ This piece was selected for The Sussex Contemporary in October. Booth has exhibited with the Rye Society of Artists since 2018, at Royal West of England Academy, and at Hastings Museum & Art Gallery.
An original Sussex pig
Naive Folk Art Sussex Pottery Pig Jug and Cover By the Belle-Vue Pottery, Rye, established by Frederick Mitchell, c1870. £4,000
Sussex tradition dictates that the father of the bride removes the pig’s (detachable) head so that it becomes a cup. He then fills it with ale and invites the wedding guests to drink a ‘hog’s head’ to the health of the bride. This example is marked by its maker with an ‘X’ bearing three letters: RSW (for Rustic Sussex Ware). The pig’s shoulder is also inscribed ’Won’t be druv’ from a local rhyme in Sussex dialect: ‘And you can pook/ And you can shove/ But a Sussex Pig/ He wun’t be druv.’
A mystic celebration of motherhood
Annie Mackin, Bright about us shall ever be, 2022 Oil on canvas, 70x80cm. £850
Mackin celebrates her Celtic ancestry and the goddesses of the seasons with work that is filled with mysticism and femininity. She finds inspiration in the natural world, in medieval history and legends, as well as the pagan festivals celebrated in Hastings, where she lives. Her use of pastel pinks and blues makes her fresh otherworldly style instantly recognisable.
Like a moth girl to a flame
Melodie Stacey, Moth Girl. Gouache and watercolour on card, 15x21cm. £45
Brighton-based Stacey is a mixed media artist and book illustrator whose work is characterised by imaginative storytelling centred around women. She works with embroidery, tapestry, paper clay, doll making and dioramas, influenced by a lifelong love of folk and fairytales. She won the coveted Artists Open Houses cover award in 2018.
Tattooed as folk
Folk art tattoo by Valeria Marinaci
Prices start at £80
Born in Germany to Sicilian parents, Marinaci moved back to Sicily at five years old. In 2011 she arrived in Brighton looking for a tattoo apprenticeship. Her background has given her a passion for folk art from Germany’s Christmas markets and its hand-painted furniture, for Sicily’s ornately-painted carts and the flamboyant architectural style of Sicilian Baroque. Romani art and narrowboat decorations are big influences on her vintage-folk style, too. She is also establishing a reputation for her ceramics: a vase was recently snapped up by doyenne of the paint world Annie Sloan.
A gold-daubed goddess
Philomena Harmsworth, Show & Tell Girl 1, 2021. Ceramic. Not for sale until 2025
This Boudica-like, staff-wielding, lustered and painted lady is not currently for sale, but she will be after she finishes starring in a film made by her creator, a painter, poet, performer, sculptor and installation artist. Harmsworth, a ubiquitous figure on the Sussex art scene, is currently offering for sale two ceramic female figurines, Ara, and Strait for Pearls. The ‘three sisters’, born from the ‘tradition and ritual of the making of domestic wares… represent the generations of characters that make up the personality of an individual’.
An art doll
Sue Hurman, Birdy. Cloth, yarn and paper clay, 40x12x10cm. £800
Originally trained as an archaeologist and archaeological illustrator, working for English Heritage, Museum of London and Institute of Archaeology, Hurman found a new path in 2018 when her ‘art doll’ was selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. A family of hybrid creatures then grew out of materials such as clay, cloth, beads and gold leaf to form a caravan of mythic beings. Her latest family are on show at Gallery 57’s winter exhibition until Dec 22.
A glimpse into AI’s subconscious?
Isobel Smith, Petites Mort (Horse), 2024. Air-dry clay, wood, fabric, glass dome. £195
When Smith asked AI software to draw a pantomime horse skeleton, she says that it ‘hallucinated these weird and wonderful creatures, too.’ She created little sculptures inspired by the AI-generated glitches, intrigued to think of them as glimpses into AI’s subconscious – a visual equivalent of human Freudian slips. (The title references Freud’s notion of la petite mort, a brief dissolution of self, especially during orgasm.) She says that she has captured ‘fleeting releases of unconscious thoughts, merging myth, memory, absurdity, and primal energy.’