FERN FABLES BY HELEN

Somewhere in the East Sussex countryside of South East England, there is a fern unrolling a young frond. This magical leaf made of smaller leaflets will multiply and create its own green territory. It may be of less beauty to the by passers, an outgrowth in somebody’s garden and of fewer use to many but …‘her’. Delicately cutting, trimming and apportioning an assortment of brackens on her table, Helen makes art from these plants.

Helen Ahpornsiri, this month’s curated artist, is a graduate from Falmouth University with Honour’s degree in illustration. Having worked with many distinguished names in the industry, she has also exhibited her work in a selection of galleries. Her work profile includes projects for Marks & Spencer, Harrods Knightsbridge and Coach. She has been curated by likes of Rye Art Gallery and Alter Ego Gallery in Battle.

Her little art space of solace has lots of dry pressed ferns collected from the countryside. A fern has an affine self-similar symmetry. Helen uses this symmetry to illustrate various bilaterally symmetrical organisms. Her art is for the aesthetically brilliant, visually subtle, comfortably snug and intimate spaces.

Her work preserves the life-form of today for the decades to come. The organic beauty of each illustration resonates through the ochre, vermillion, green and brown leaves. Each artefact is a remembrance of the past, a souvenir of bygone times captured and spread across a piece of paper. It is “A keepsake for a lifetime”.

Once in a while you come across a frame that is assembled from the withered, the dried and the discarded but still can narrate mortality so extraordinarily.