Inheritance and Heritage
Anna Middleton | Sculpture | Genomic Expressions
Cut letter sandstone, Liz Middleton, 2017
Anna Middleton | Head of Society & Ethics Research
Genomics means ‘family’ to me. It’s the silver thread that links me to my relatives; it’s about what is shared within my family and our communal heritage. My sister, mother and maternal grandfather are all artists and sculptors. My sister created a stone carving, using my grandfather’s sculpting tools, based on the title of a book written by my grandmother about my grandfather’s life as a sculptor. The title of both the sculpture and the book is ‘Inheritance and Heritage’ and symbolises a shared family history of art, creativity and storytelling and much like our genes, links us to each other.
In 1938 my grandfather Max B. Lewis studied drawing, modelling and carving at the City & Guilds of London Art School, the same school I recently graduated from. It was there he met my grandmother Marjorie. And it was there, 80 years on that I undertook the same training within the same studio spaces. The common threads of our endeavour and expectancy wove and pulled together for a moment in time.
Max was awarded a travelling scholarship to Rome for his emerging talents, but then World War II broke out and everything changed. He laid down his chisels and work coat and reluctantly picked up the tools of destruction needed to make munitions.
Threads is an exploration into the joyous courage and pursuit of skill, and the fragility of ambition. It is a piece about making, about the layering footsteps of distant journeys and ancestral destiny. It is an unconscious and fleeting act held, suspended in stone, left unfinished.
Inheritance and Heritage is the title of a book my grandmother wrote about my grandfather’s legacy and her concern for the loss of carving skill, tradition and training to care for London’s architectural heritage. My lettering is a gesture of assurance that craftsmanship and patronage of artistry continue to be gifted forward.
– Liz Middleton