our story so far
Seatree is an on-going experiment into living creatively. We make things from clay; pots, pictures, sculptures. Most of our work uses original poetry. As well as collaborating on many of our pieces, we have developed our individual practice too, and as such seatree includes Michaela’s white stoneware pieces and Chris’s rough clay, often fired in a raku kiln.
Seatree began in 2016 when we decided to pursue a different kind of life; simpler, more sustainable and more creative. We had both worked in stressful jobs (Chris as social worker/manager of mental health services, Michaela as a community worker) and had the usual financial pressures, but a window of opportunity opened and it felt like ‘now or never’.
‘for a while, the room will become the universe and it will be possible to believe in starlight.’
Why?
Life can be hard sometimes, but with the gift of space and time, many of us look for meaning. It is this pursuit that we seek to explore through our work, which seeks to make the process of meaning making – sometimes called poesis – at the centre of our being. What we make is an ordinary response to this process.
As might be implied in the sentence above, for us, art and spirituality are interwoven concepts. The process of creation is one in which we seek to share in the great unfolding we are part of, so as to seek connection with the great ‘am-ness’ at the heart of everything.
who we are
what we’ve done
why seatree?
By the way, the name seatree comes from a poem that Chris wrote a few years ago.
High on the shore line
Above the storm berm
The winter sea gave out a pilgrim trunk
It was thrown up the beach
Like you or I might flick a pebble
The corpse of the old tree
Has been gnarled and shaped
By encounters with deep reefs
Where it rolled and shoaled with the fish
And bore the barnacles and wracks
Of the deep blue sea
Now it lies here
Like bone of leviathan
It has taken on the colours of the deep-
Sea green
Shadow black
Red like the eye of a shark
Grey like the dripping tail of a whale
All faded a little by the blown sand
But jewelled instead by salt crystals
Drawn out in the low sun
Who knows where its roots are
Or what of its seed
Still remains
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