Maker in Focus - Eleanor Glover

Eleanor Glover’s passion is to create new ways of expressing personal narrative; casting her own stories through mixed media sculpture, shadow theatre, and book arts, and working therapeutically with adults and children to help them communicate and acknowledge theirs.

We are thrilled to welcome Eleanor to The Gloucestershire Guild and asked her more about her practice.

How do you choose / decide which materials to use in your mixed media works?

I choose materials intuitively, symbolically and metaphorically for ideas I am trying to communicate. The steady core is always wood which is where I began as a maker - to me always carrying a memory of growing and changing.

How do your calligraphy, shadow and sculptural work come together?

They are independent of each other, springing from different parts of thinking and feeding each other. I would not want to devote myself to one exclusively.

How did you get into calligraphy?

I began to be fascinated by letterforms at college when studying typography - where we still learnt to set metal type with tweezers - so the physicality was still there. As a young book designer I hand rendered typefaces for layouts to be sent to the printers and their shape and detail became a part of me. I always loved the work of Ben Shahn who thought of lettering as drawing - expressive in its own right, carrying meaning without imagery and though free, rooted in discipline.

Over the years I have mainly concentrated on brush calligraphy – latterly I have been interested in the life in the letters and words beyond communicating technique, using tools which I cannot control, however hard I try.

How do you choose what you will write?

I write what moves and matters to me. Most recently I have made lists of endangered birds and clouds of moths.

What inspires your work?

Personal experience, literature and poetry, film, theatre and dance. I carry a ragbag of themes with me and never tire of them. We all keep changing so these develop with me.

What does being part of The Guild mean to you?

I was very glad to be accepted and I am especially pleased to be part of a group with such a long and dignified history here in the South West. Working as a maker can be very solitary, and I have always sought to interact and work with others as I have done over many years in teaching and as a member of Centrespace Cooperative in Bristol.

What is on your wish list from The Guild shop?

Willow baskets by Susan Early