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Thoughts about vessels lead to a conclusion - Teapots, Rodin and Alice in Wonderland.

  • Writer: Sarah Chalkie Cloonan
    Sarah Chalkie Cloonan
  • May 23, 2021
  • 2 min read

Updated: Aug 15, 2021


Some time in January, 13th if my ipad is to be believed, I was thinking about ‘man as vessel, floating in the sky’.


Vessels, floating and everything in the sky, seem to be some reoccurring thoughts and regularly appear in my work.

‘moon jar remade 2020’


The night sky, when the invisible becomes visible and there is a reveal, is especially magical, but also scientific to me, and I hear Sir Patrick Moore’s voice talks about planets and galaxies far far away.


’Man on Path, enveloped in the darkness, winter 2021‘


Trees with vessels, clay vessels, hangling on their branches, have invaded my dreams.

I spoke about them in my Thursday tutorial with Anna.


Wednesday I had seen Rodins ‘vessels’ and figure drawings which have triggered something.



The tea pot is still there and has been reinforced by my visit to the V & A Alice exhibition.


Games have resurfaced. Looking into one of the V & A cabinets on my second visit to Alice early on Saturday I saw a lot of games.

Games in the Authors day were teaching tools. On closer inspection I realise this was a synergistic form of learning. A set of rules and a game. The rules played the part of the teacher, parent, or instructor, you learnt and the more you learnt the better you become at what ever the game was teaching you. Thinking about this, Dodgson was a Mathematician and a very victorian man striving to perfect all his victorian virtues, he was also polymath. Now I understand. Writing this has revealed something. I am drawn to polymaths, they see the word and all it complexities from more than one view point, they see the connections and search for the true meaning behind what they see. Louise Bourgeois, Leonardo Di Vinci, just to name two.


Tea pots are a very persistent vessel of meaning for me and and there was a final surprise for me in this exhibition, a large teapot, with lots of explanations about tea parties and the reason for Dodgson inclusions of them in his stories, stories he had never intended to publish until he was persuaded of their worth by Mrs Liddell, Alices mother.

Finally I found the Tea party beautifully presented, technologically enhanced by projections, films layer upon layer. It was very successful. I feel confidant I do as suggested need to look at this sort of medium to be able to produce the magical but domestic and everyday.















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