Download She sells seashells: a feature article on artist Ingrid Thomas

Artweeks
oxfordtimes.co.uk
Ingrid Thomas in
her studio
Photographs: Jon Lewis
16 Oxfordshire Limited Edition May 2011
oxfordtimes.co.uk
I
ngrid Thomas, who will be
exhibiting her extraordinarily
beautiful shell collages during
Oxfordshire Artweeks, has travelled
the world in search of specimens.
“I had promised myself that once my son
was grown up I would go on a collecting trip,”
she said. “I let my house for a year to cover the
costs and went to Australia, New Zealand and
Fiji, via the United States.
“In New Zealand I hired a car and drove
from the tip of the North Island to the bottom
of the south, sleeping in B&Bs, and on beaches,
and looking wilder and wilder — I looked like
Robinson Crusoe after a while — but I didn’t
care,” Ingrid recalled.
“I sent home an enormous box of shells, all
of which I was permitted to collect under the
local government rules.
“Before I went travelling, I contacted
other shell collectors through the
Internet, and they took me on some
fabulous field trips. I met people
from many different countries,
not just those I was travelling
in, so I agreed to supply
shells from the UK in
exchange for them sending
me theirs,” she added.
“I have a network of
contacts just about
everywhere now that I
can buy from. There’s a
colossal, almost infinite,
choice of colouring,
patterning and textures
— every so often I get sent a
shell that just stops me in
my tracks because it is so
gorgeous.
“In the temperate north the
diet for molluscs is not as rich as it
in warmer tropical waters, where
there are different foods and hence
brighter colours and much greater variety.
There are some very subtle shells available in
our waters, though.
“I have a big collection from Wales, where I
tramped up and down the beach for about
three days. Many of the specimens were very
worn, and all the more beautiful because of it,”
Ingrid said.
If newly-found shells still have traces of their
deceased incumbents and smell bad, she leaves
them out in the garden for a few months.
Ingrid explained that common mussel shells,
Artweeks
‘She sells
sea shells’
Julie Webb meets globe-trotting artist
Ingrid Thomas
which she sometimes gets from restaurants
after the diners have finished with them, need
a lot of cleaning to avoid persistent hints of
wine and garlic hanging about the eventual
work of art!
Her interest in shells goes back a long way.
“I have loved them since I was very tiny,
thanks to my Norwegian mother. We lived in
Devon, on the coast, during the war, and she
used to collect them avidly and put them into
my chubby little hands.
“Then, about 25 years ago, I went on holiday
to the Channel Islands with my own family
and my parents, and my mother and I took a
trip to Herm, where there is a shell beach. I
was instantly and utterly hooked.
“I bought a booklet in the Post Office there
about all the different shells and went back
again and again to identify and collect as
many as I could.”
Ingrid is passionate about the conservation
of molluscs. A proportion of the proceeds
from each of her sales goes to the Marine
Conservation Society.
“There are more than 100,000 species of
sea mollusc,” she said. “They are the second
biggest class in the animal kingdom. With
climate change the oceans are becoming more
acid and there is less calcium carbonate in the
water for them to use to manufacture their
shells. We run the risk of losing a lot of marine
life in time, including all the shells in the
world, unless a way is found to reverse the
process or stabilise the pH of the oceans.”
Ingrid only uses shells washed up on
beaches — whose inhabitants are mostly long
dead — supplemented by a few magnificent
and unusual specimens which she buys (at
great expense) from an internationally
recognised marine laboratory, where they have
been used for scientific research and are no
longer needed.
“They include shells which would normally
never be washed up because they are so fragile
they get crushed in the waves — and deep
water specimens which would just sink to the
bottom of the sea.”
The average life of a sea mollusc,
provided it can secure itself with a
tough enough shell to escape
predation, is between six months
and three years — but there is
another threat to its survival, in the
shape of unscrupulous dealers.
“There is a whole group of them
who will stop at nothing to get hold
of rare species to sell, including live
specimens,” Ingrid said.
As well as buying from abroad she
replenishes her stocks through the
occasional purchase of a collection
whose owner has died, and through
gifts from people who know about
her work.
Ingrid’s studio is a real delight.
Continued on page 19
May 2011 Oxfordshire Limited Edition 17
oxfordtimes.co.uk
Artweeks
From page 17
Shells of every description line the walls,
stored in drawers, trays, old sweet jars, plastic
tubs — big coral coloured land-snail shells from
the Indian Ocean islands; tubular milky green
shells like baby leeks; the yellowish cowries
used for currency in the Pacific; mother-of
pearl; and spiny creatures shaped like starfish.
She uses a silicone glue to secure them to the
picture backing.
“It’s not undermined by moisture and the
shells never come off,” she said.
Three different kinds of tweezers and a
selection of dental probes, for turning delicate
shells over and moving them around, make up
Ingrid’s tool kit.
Some of her frames are contemporary and
specially built for her; others she picks up at
auction houses or in antiques shops. She
usually records the common and scientific
names of the species used, and their
distribution, on the back of each piece.
Her work has developed over the 15 years
she has been engaged in it.
“I have become much more open to creating
different moods and different personalities,”
she said. “Shells lend themselves to different
styles. Some have subtle colours and gentle
shapes and suggest femininity and quiet,
whereas others are so vibrant and have textures
so extraordinary that they suggest something
more dramatic,” Ingrid said.
“Others are so linear, and, for example,
stripy, that they suggest something geometric
and formal. The shells are the art —
I am only the vehicle.”
Ingrid’s pieces sell for
between £100 and £350.
Visitors to
the exhibition will also
have the opportunity
to buy at a discount
her lovely book The
Shell: A World of
Decoration and
Ornament (Thames
and Hudson,
LE
2007).
 Ingrid Thomas will be exhibiting at 11 Bainton Road, Oxford on
Saturday, May 21, noon-6pm; Sunday, May 22, 10am-4pm; Monday, May
23 and Tuesday, May 24, noon-6pm; Thursday, May 26, noon-8pm; Friday,
May 27 and Saturday May 28, noon-6pm; Sunday, May 29, 10am-4pm;
Bank Holiday Monday, May 30, noon-6pm. (Closed Wednesday, May 25).
Call 01865 510650 or email [email protected]. Examples of Ingrid’s work
can be seen online at www.saatchionline.com
 For more information on the Marine Conservation Society visit the website:
www.mcsuk.org
May 2011 Oxfordshire Limited Edition 19