Published here is my 2003 dissertation on Marginal Medieval Art, written for my final BA Book Arts & Crafts degree at the London College of Printing. The original file was lost, and so I have scanned it page by page and saved it here for folks to read and enjoy.
Rima Staines is an artist using paint, wood, word, music, animation, clock-making, puppetry & story to attempt to build a gate through the hedge that grows along the boundary between this world & that. Her gate-building has been a lifelong pursuit, & she hopes to have perhaps propped aside even one spiked loop of bramble (leaving a chink just big enough for a mud-kneeling, trusting eye to glimpse the beauty there beyond), before she goes through herself.
Always stubborn about living the things that make her heart sing, Rima has lived on wheels a few times in her life. She's currently rooted in mossy South Devon, halfway between moor and sea.
Rima’s inspirations include the world & language of folktale; faces of people who pass her on the street; folk music & art of Old Europe & beyond; peasant & nomadic living; magics of every feather; wilderness & plant-lore; the margins of thought, experience, community & spirituality; & the beauty in otherness.
Crumbs fall from Rima’s threadbare coat pockets as she travels, & can be found collected here, where you may join the caravan.