In this creative response, Writer-in-Residence Simone Penkethman unfolds the envelope for us.
Simone writes:
I used to love writing and receiving letters. SnailBox took me back to my childhood and early adulthood before email and then social media made letters redundant.
Each SnailBox artist was assigned an artist to correspond with and we also sent postcards to some of our personal contacts.
When I received my first postcard from Melinda Smith, she had enclosed dried herbs from her garden. I loved this so much that I pressed flowers from my garden and enclosed them with all my post cards.
When putting together my response to this project, I looked through the photos that all the artists contributed as their documentation for the project. There was something so intimate about the handwriting. It added another layer of meaning to the words.
I created a collage from the writing of each pair of SnailBox artists. In the final collage, I included snippets from one of the artist’s correspondence with her personal contacts that she was kind enough to share.
The artists are, in order of appearance:
Sophie Edwards Musician and songwriter
Andrew Galan Writer
Melinda Smith Poet and editor
(me) Simone Penkethman Writer and musician
Emma Laverty dancer
Frank McKone reviewer