In this post, Cat­herine Quirk (@quirk_catherine) in­ter­views Melin­da Joy Chantl­er and Clare Lupino of Ar­canum in Hebd­en Brid­ge about their col­laborative Treated Books pro­ject. In their most re­cent work, they in­terpret Char­les Di­ckens’s The Old Curios­ity Shop (1840-1) by col­laborative­ly draw­ing into the pages. As they work, they not only turn the phys­ical book it­self into a work of art, but also re­ve­al con­nec­tions bet­ween Di­ckens’s novel and modern society.

Thanks for ag­ree­ing to be in­ter­viewed for the Di­ckens Society Blog! To begin with, tell us a bit about your­selves, and about how you be­came col­laborators.

Melin­da Joy Chantl­er and Clare Lupino met 14 years ago when each of their childr­en were in the womb.

Clare: “As we are both art­ists with similar be­liefs, we hit it off im­mediate­ly. We met up re­gular­ly as our bab­ies grew to talk about Art, our work, and our dreams. It was al­ways sup­por­tive and life-affirming”.

Melin­da: “When the op­por­tun­ity came up last year for us to join our creative for­ces togeth­er in a retail-gallery situa­tion we didn’t hesitate. We es­tablis­hed Ar­canum in Hebd­en Brid­ge (a town al­ready known for its en­terpris­ing creative spirit and in­depen­dent re­tail­ers) with much sup­port from our local com­mun­ity”.

Clare: “At Ar­canum we show­case our in­dividu­al work, shar­ing the op­en­ing hours and fin­an­ci­al com­mit­ments. We have found a way to make it work. Like the women art­ists of the Re­nais­sance, we are multi-disciplinary art­ists who re­fuse to allow our talents to be fin­ite. Our ebb and flow pro­cess has led us to this most re­cent col­labora­tion as well as con­tinu­ing with our re­spec­tive es­tablis­hed creative prac­tices”.

Melin­da has prac­tised as an ex­hibit­ing paint­er for sever­al de­cades, hav­ing at­tended Leeds Col­lege of Art and Tod­mord­en Art School where she studied Paint­ing and Life Draw­ing and es­tablis­hed her own uni­que style. Clare has a First Class (hons) in Con­tem­pora­ry Art and was an Art His­to­ry lec­tur­er for sever­al years.

In­depen­dent­ly, Melin­da paints pro­lifical­ly from her local studio, creat­ing minia­tures and large-scale state­ment pieces on can­vas using tradition­al tech­niques em­ployed by paint­ers throug­hout Art His­to­ry. She has a Nation­al and In­ter­nation­al client base. Melin­da also creates Gil­ded Ram Skulls, found on the wild Yorkshire moors, as well as a range of Ceramics.

Trained as a Con­cep­tu­al Art­ist, Clare also paints and draws and these skills are trans­posed into her be­spoke Tat­too­ing ser­vice. With clients com­ing from far and wide, Clare is known for her freehand tat­too­ing skills, work­ing with the con­tours of the body to trans­late her clients’ treasured ideas into uni­que tat­toos. Clare doesn’t use trans­f­ers so each piece is a uni­que crea­tion.

The at­ten­tion to de­tail she gives to every client means she is often cal­led upon to create hair-by-hair per­manent tat­tooed eyeb­rows as part of her Li­v­ing Portraits Ser­vice – second to none, she has wor­ked on clients with Al­opecia as well as those whose brows have thin­ned due to chemot­herapy or gener­al age­ing.

Clare also show­cases her jewel­le­ry at Ar­canum, specialis­ing in Vin­tage Trans­for­ma­tions: she works with Art Deco and other vin­tage origin­als to create one-off brid­al tiaras, ex­quisite neckpieces, wrist-cuffs and earr­ings. Many years ago, Clare trained at Royal Wor­cest­er to make petal-by-petal roses which she in­cor­porates into her jewel­le­ry com­miss­ions al­ongside semi-precious stones and pre­ci­ous met­als. Sever­al celeb­rit­ies own Clare Lupino jewel­le­ry, in­clud­ing Kate Moss and Honor Blackman.

Re­lated to 1940’s film actress – and one of Hol­lywood’s first female di­rec­tors – Ida Lupino, Clare likes to chan­nel the glamour and in­trigue of bygone eras. Each piece has its own hand-written story of its uni­que crea­tion.

What kind of pro­cess do you use for your Treated Books Pro­jects in par­ticular? Does this dif­f­er from other work you’ve done (eith­er separate­ly or col­laborative­ly)?

Melin­da: “Since the op­en­ing of Ar­canum a year ago, we have been work­ing togeth­er on this se­ries of Treated Books. This works not only be­cause we both have similar styles of draw­ing and both have an academic level of skill, but also be­cause as art­ists, we both have a re­ver­ence for spiritu­al approac­hes to Art”.

Clare: “Each piece be­gins with us de­cid­ing which page to select for our ar­tistic treat­ment. We will dis­cuss the con­tent and rea­cquaint our­selves with the themes of each book so that the page we select will re­flect the pass­ion of the story and the con­cepts that the aut­hor was work­ing with. We de­cide which text from the page we will leave ex­posed, li­nk­ing words togeth­er to create our own per­son­al sense. This pro­vides a new per­spec­tive and forms the basis for the visu­al di­alogue which be­gins bet­ween two art­ists. Much like the il­luminated manu­scripts in monas­tic com­munit­ies, we are em­bel­lish­ing sto­ries of great mean­ing for the peo­ple. It’s an honour”.

Melin­da: “There is total trust and re­ver­ence bet­ween us as we work in­depen­dent­ly into the pages and each other’s draw­ing to create what peo­ple see as a seam­less artwork, as though it were created by a single hand. This pro­cess in­trigues visitors to Ar­canum, who like to watch us work. The fact that we don’t feel the need to dis­cuss a plan means that we trust en­tire­ly in the pro­cess whereby our com­munica­tions are all visu­al. There is such a joy­ous feel­ing of sur­pr­ise when we ar­rive at Ar­canum to dis­cov­er what the other has added to the com­posi­tion the day be­fore – and we find that the whole pro­cess con­firms our be­liefs that every­th­ing hap­pens in di­vine order, which is in it­self or­ganic and en­ric­hed by our own per­cep­tion of it. We are ‘morph­ing’ the con­cepts into today’s rea­l­ity and in that sense it’s a metamorphosis of Art in an ever-deepening pro­cess”.

Clare: “The more you align your­self with the flow, the more it feels like you be­come a part of the great un­fold­ing of the uni­ver­se. I think all great art­ists, aut­hors, musicians and danc­ers know this. As art­ists we know that we are chan­nell­ing some­th­ing – we feel it’s a di­vine en­er­gy. We are aware that we are ‘plugg­ing into’ a visu­al database via our im­agina­tions – just as aut­hors like Di­ckens did when they created un­fold­ing im­ages in the minds of their rea­d­ers. We simp­ly allow our minds to con­nect to that and flow with it. We have no need to ‘prove’ our fin­d­ings, like so many scient­ists. It’s an ar­tist’s role to man­ifest the un­se­en and it’s a privilege to share our vis­ions. In that sense we are li­ft­ing the veils of per­cep­tion, re­veal­ing the de­epest lay­ers and show­ing peo­ple new glimpses into al­ready great works”.

His­torical­ly, both art­ists have in­cor­porated text into their work – Melin­da has used a com­bina­tion of photo-montage and text from spiritu­al books in her paint­ings, and Clare com­pleted a Treated Book over 30 years ago when she pain­ted and col­laged into the whole of Lewis Car­rol’s Alice in Won­der­land – a work that took two years to com­plete.

What drew you to The Old Curios­ity Shop? Could you walk us through your work, and how the im­ages, ex­posed text, and other ele­ments re­flect your in­terpreta­tion of the novel?

Melin­da : “Amongst other sig­nificant works, we chose The Old Curios­ity Shop be­cause it sym­bolises Ar­canum for us: it’s full of curiosit­ies and mar­vels that we have created”.

The visu­al jour­ney of this doub­le page from The Old Curios­ity Shop began when Melin­da drew the dragon. Clare then “saw” it as black smoke com­ing from some chim­neys and began to draw the row of Vic­torian ter­races and backdrop of mill stacks, re­ferenc­ing the local architec­ture of Hebd­en Brid­ge. As a Northern mill town, Hebd­en Brid­ge was pro­lific dur­ing the In­dustri­al Re­volu­tion – and it has a rich set of in­dividu­al his­to­ries con­tem­pora­ry with those Di­ckens charac­terised. In­deed, he visited the In­dustri­al North and was ac­tual­ly friends with one of Clare’s re­latives on the Lupino side.

The selec­ted text re­f­ers to the “un­se­en agen­cies” who gained so sel­fish­ly from the spoils of slave labour as part of the in­frastruc­ture of power on which Vic­torian Britain was es­tablis­hed. A “banana boat” can be seen steam­ing ac­ross the ocean as part of the Slave Tri­angle – a por­tent of th­ings to come. The roof­tops of the cram­med, pave-line ter­raced streets have be­come the ocean, as the mill work­ers drown in a less ob­vi­ous form of en­slave­ment. At a time when the ess­ence of “re­fine­ment” in high society was re­presen­ted by white cubes of sugar taken with tea (both pro­ducts of the dominan­ce of the British Em­pire), we have en­han­ced the word “sugar” with­in a sugar moun­tain.

In terms of today’s Britain, it is in­terest­ing that in 2018, when the major­ity of con­sum­ers have a mild to moderate sugar ad­dic­tion, the govern­ment are pro­pos­ing a Sugar Tax with pre­dic­tions as to the guaran­teed re­venue re­lat­ing to average con­sump­tion.

Di­ckens was writ­ing at a time when Lon­don had the status it did as a re­sult of the Slave Trade and yet the poor as­pired to dream about the choices of the rich (“one lump or two?”). The order pre­vails in real terms be­yond the lega­cy of Di­ckens’ com­men­ta­ries.

There are re­fer­ences also to the em­blems and aggran­dise­ment of the Chris­tian church which had ac­tual­ly de­moted the peace that Jesus came to pre­ach (even nam­ing one of the slave ships “Jesus”). But al­though the arrow pier­ces the dove of Peace, its blood is col­lect­ing in the Holy Grail, a sym­bol of the Sac­red Feminine and a re­fer­ence to the im­por­tance of women in human society. An apple, fall­en from the Tree of Know­ledge, con­nects us to our de­sire for self aware­ness via ex­peri­ence of Na­ture, even in times when our col­lec­tive spirit is being “de-natured” and – as re­feren­ced by the scorp­ion – we will be stung by our own know­ledge.

Clare: “In the text we have selec­ted we refer to De­stiny in that every choice we make can create a new de­stiny”.

Melin­da: “Di­ckens shows us a set of cir­cumstan­ces and his charact­ers re­spond to them in a myriad of ways, which de­ter­mines the shap­ing of their de­stin­ies. Self-mastery is key”.

Do you have a nar­rative or in­terpreta­tion in mind be­fore you begin, or does the nar­rative form as you work? In eith­er case – does it stem primari­ly from the im­ages? From those words and phrases left ex­posed? From the in­terac­tion bet­ween the two?

Clare: “The nar­rative just un­fol­ded day by day. We revel in the syn­chronic­ity that ab­ounds in this miracul­ous world. Such mean­ing! We just allow it to flow through us onto the pages we create and con­nect with the en­er­gy of the aut­hor to that ex­pan­sive database that is the im­agina­tion. There is such poten­cy in Di­ckens’ place­ment of words and we are en­courag­ing rea­d­ers to re­focus in un­ex­pected ways by visual­ly ar­ticulat­ing the layered heights and de­pths”.

Melin­da and Clare are work­ing on sever­al Treated Books – soon to be show­cased via Ar­canum and other ex­hibi­tions – each one de­ep­ly meaning­ful to them both.

You can view a selec­tion of their in­dividu­al paint­ing, jewel­le­ry, and tat­too work, as well as a selec­tion of their Treated Books, on­line and on soci­al media – fol­low on In­stag­ram, on Twitt­er (@lupinotattoos and @lupinojewellery), or on Facebook (and also here).

Prints are avail­able on re­quest at £80 un­framed, or £130 framed.

Clare and Melin­da are look­ing for gal­le­ries and ex­clusive re­tail out­lets who would be in­teres­ted in of­fer­ing them an ex­hibi­tion for their Treated Books or stock­ing their work. They will con­sid­er work­ing into specific books.

Con­tact Melin­da Joy Chantl­er / Clare Lupino

07779749909 / 07757655061