29 June - 29 July
Lou Annabell
I will dwell in them
I will dwell in them consists of a collection of vessels which together consider the Jewish concept pertaining to the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet
ב
beith
and belong as part of a larger body of work in response to the life, care, death and grief of Poppa Kenneth Geoffery Seccombe (May 25 1937 - April 15 2023).
Left to right: Horses running, Three moons migrating, Star vase, Rockpool
Horses Running
Star vase
My Grandmother, Stephanie Olech, migrated from a refugee camp in Iran to Aotearoa in 1944. She was one of 733 Polish Orphans sent to live at another refugee camp near Pahiatua, and later offered permanent residence.
My family and I have very few details about Grandma – she never spoke about her experience, and I am unable to be in contact with my Father. We presume she was between 5 and 10 when she arrived. Both her parents (my Great Grandparents) were murdered in the Soviet concentration camps and she was split from her brother. She had her prisoner number tattooed on her wrist. My sister and I contacted the Holocaust archives in Wellington and they confirmed Grandma and her predecessors were Jewish.
This year I have spent a lot of time trying to trace Grandma’s passage. There is so much uncertainty and loss – we will never know where our Great Grandparents' bodies are.
As a means to connect, I began studying the Hebrew alphabet.
During this time, my Mother’s father, my Poppa, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and I moved down from the Coromandel to the Manawatu to live with him and my Nana.
My Poppa asked me if I could make his urn, to which I said yes. It was important to me to make the urn while he was still alive, and to leave it in its green state until he was gone. I should say that Poppa’s urn is not included in this collection of vessels.
Amidst the process of grief and care, the story within the Hebrew letters shed light on the passage I was witnessing. Beith, the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, spoke to me in particular.
“Beith’s literal meaning and form denote a house, and it represents the universal concept of a container or vessel. Thus the created world is meant to house within it the spiritual.”
I coiled the earth to shape where my Poppa would go. It dried on top of my Mama’s blue kiln in her garden studio, and when he died, it was fired.
Vessels have the capacity to hold many things – water, flowers, story, breath, memory, bodies – and they are of earth – this is what horses running, rockpool, starvase, and three migrating moons, are to me.
A poem on the urn/vessel making process:
Your urn will be clay
and blue
big enough to hold you.
With my hands I have
opened up the space
coiled the earth
to shape
where dead and ash
carbon and silk
cosmos and void
your spirit will
go.
Lou Annabell is a Manawatu born artist and poet based in Te-Tara-O-Te-Ika-a-Maui / The Corromandel Penninsula. Her ancestors came to Aotearoa from the Vistula Delta, Poland, the Shetland Isles and Wolf Valley, England. She is currently doing her MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University, Te Whanganui-a Tara, Wellington.
@louisamollyannabell