Open Frequency
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Open Frequency is a programme area of Axis, the Scottish Arts Council funded online resource for the contemporary art community. Further details about Axis are available on their website.
Open Frequency is a curated online programme presenting new developments in contemporary art which have been supported by the Scottish Arts Council. Recently profiled artists include Katy Dove, Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan, Camilla Low, Toby Paterson, Rob Kennedy and Hayley Tompkins. |
Deborah Beeson is a visual artist who is featured in the Open frequency programme. In her own words she descibes her work:
My experience of life has always emanated from the home. From childhood to maturity home is the essential contributor to how I think and feel. It is a character cultivator and is a powerful force driving society and the economy.
First and foremost I am a mother and wife. These are roles I have put upon myself by design, as is the role of artist. It seemed a natural progression then to marry the three concepts and take the concerns of my 'wifeliness' through the artistic process.
House wife as facilitator has always had close links with the seasonal changes of the year, grabbing key periods to bring a family and community together.
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Abject commercialisation of these periods and a disturbing need for the instant launched a search for perhaps a slower pace of life – an appreciation of the good that comes from waiting - an admiration of the mature in a youth possessed culture – mixed up with a good look at what is taken at face value or considered traditional, certainly drives my practice. |
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Transformation by process is how my work is developing these days. Using homely techniques of cooking or growing or brewing or sewing, everyday ubiquitous items become art objects or art experiences: a celebration of the art of our mothers whilst at the same time critiquing the personal, social and economical implications of such 'transformations'.
Deborah Beeson 2008
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Deborah Beeson is kind of a self-confessed house wife in a traditional sense. A bit like the sort of types of our mothers' generation that one would have thought almost have died out. She loves making things with love.
She embroiders, makes jam, waiters, cocoons around her family and her rural community. Attracted by WRI rituals she involves herself in cabbage growing competitions, hat displays and rose petal collections.
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But what distinguishes her from the craftiness of our mothers is that she borrows these house-wife-ish techniques to make her art and then vice versa, she takes her artistic techniques to involve them in her home-making.
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She uses the remnant needles of the Christmas tree and rewrites with them into the carpet using her son's greedy Santa letter (the tree itself was decorated with iced brussels sprouts).
As 'Artist for All Seasons' in the rural town of Huntly in Aberdeenshire she embarked on a whole series of such interventions; like decorating the gents' loo with roses on Valentine's Day and stringing shiny red apples around the Duke's column on Halloween. |
 | This summer she researched the life of our potato over one full season. She collected the potatoes from a local farmer, planted them lovingly in 220 pretty pots, nurtured and raised them like her own family. Then she displayed them in various forms around the town garden as the summer months evolved. The final form took a Chartre like labyrinth, that was meant to be walked as a pilgrimage for repentance before reaching the goal.
At the centre is a mysterious shed, where all the thoughts, spirits and sorrows brew in delicately engraved demijohns. Lévis Strauss' the raw/cooked axis comes to mind, where cooking, or in Deborah's case the making, symbolises the transformation from nature to culture, from kinship to family, from potato plant to tea party.
Claudia Zeiske 2007
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potARTo
To draw an analogy between the potato and the artist is too crude and no artist will thank me for considering it here. Nevertheless, in so doing, and please forgive me, we arrive at an important strand in Beeson's artwork, safe in the knowledge that her allusion is more subtle than mine. |
To see the artist or the artwork not as a delicacy but as a staple, is to shift emphasis away from art as a special thing given by a special individual to a special few on special occasions. The artist will continue to be special in a way but, within the logic of Deveron Arts, they would be more numerous, and much more akin to a catalyst than a giver of discrete self-generated things.
Extract from Dr Ken Neil, 'potARTo', Mrs Beeson's Import(ance) of Trad(e)itions, 2008
Biography
Deborah Beeson, born in 1964, travelled around the world and finally settled with her family in Aberdeenshire in 1980. She married in 1989 and her children were born in 1992 and 1993. The children, her husband and the house have been her primary employment whilst supplementing her income through various part time jobs. In 2001 she studied BA Fine Art at Moray College in Elgin followed by a BA (Hons) Sculpture at Grays' School of Art in Aberdeen in 2005, having won the inaugural BP fine art award and a purchase prize from Robert Gordons University.
Beeson went on to work with Deveron Arts in Huntly on a two year residency funded by the Scottish Arts Council Partners scheme working closely with the local high school and community groups and developing her own practice.
At present her focus is on being co-founder of the A96 Artist Collective based in Elgin, Morayshire, offering support, networking and exhibition opportunities and studio critiques. | |