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Handiwork

Sara Baume

4.35 · Rating details · 203 ratings · 36 reviews

In this contemplative short narrative, artist and acclaimed writer Sara Baume charts the daily process of making and writing, exploring what it is to create and to live as an artist.

A short, elegant piece that encompasses images and is itself a significant artifact, handiwork will offer more of the beautiful prose and extraordinary versatility you’ve come to expect from Sa ...more

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Paperback, 232 pages

Published March 25th 2020 by Tramp Press

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May 19, 2020 Hugh rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, read-2020, little-known-gems

A beautiful miniature, this is a poignant personal reflection on the creative process, losing a parent, birds and the relative values of art and craft. Baume's first non-fiction book is just as impressive as A Line Made by Walking.

The book is a lot shorter than its page count would suggest, as there is a lot of white space. The chapters are divided by pictures of model birds that Baume created using painted plaster and wooden dowel rods. They explore her life and working environment as an artist ...more

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Apr 18, 2020 Pete rated it it was amazing

Quiet and lovely, a book I thoroughly admire. A life-affirming narrative about art, the creative process, loss, and daily practices. A reminder to notice; to observe your daily birds. Sara Baume is always worth reading and listening to. As always, her perception and interpretation of the world is exquisite. Thanks to Sara Baume and Tramp Press for yet another beautiful read.

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Jun 06, 2020 Neil rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 5-stars, 2020

Almost three years ago, I was fortunate enough to be able to resign from my job in the HR department of a large IT company and instead focus (pun intended) on my real passion, photography. I know I am in an enviable position: I get to spend every day doing what I love whilst not needing that activity to make money.

What I most enjoy about this new way of life is the chance to be creative. Indeed, in the three years in which I have concentrated on my photography, I can easily look back and see how Almost three years ago, I was fortunate enough to be able to resign from my job in the HR department of a large IT company and instead focus (pun intended) on my real passion, photography. I know I am in an enviable position: I get to spend every day doing what I love whilst not needing that activity to make money.

What I most enjoy about this new way of life is the chance to be creative. Indeed, in the three years in which I have concentrated on my photography, I can easily look back and see how my image making has changed (I like to think of it as “progressed”, others may have a different word for it). And I often do take time to stop and look back over the images I have created because the process which leads from a basic image to something I can call my own work fascinates me. My image making concentrates on two areas: creative landscapes and British wildlife, most especially birds.

All this is a long-winded way of saying that handiwork is the perfect book for me. It is Sara Baume’s first non-fiction work and it is, in essence, a meditation on the creative process. In the wake of her father’s death, Baume set out on a project (I’m not sure the author would approve of that word, though) to create a collection of birds made out of carved and painted plaster. This book runs in parallel with that and documents the growth of a work of art. Along the way, it captures small details of domestic life, deals with grief over the death of a loved one and reflects on the lives of birds which, it turns out, give us a lot of poetic insight into the creative process.

I loved some of the descriptions of domestic life. I have been married (to the same woman) for almost 37 years, and I could completely relate to this:

At intervals, as we drift between stations, we pause to speak to one another, not really saying anything of consequence but making simple flight calls - like geese gently honking to the fellow members of their group as they flap - reassuring the others that they are still nearby and still, to some extent, on course.

Maybe it’s the fact that we are both keen bird watchers that makes this image so appropriate.

When it comes to the making of a piece of art, I then completely relate to this:

I have always felt caught between two languages, although I can only speak in one.

The one I can speak goes down on paper and into my laptop, in the hours before noon. The one I cannot speak goes down in small painted objects, in the hours after.

The more I need to explain, the longer the documents becomes, the larger the assemblages.

My favourite quote about photography is “Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like.” (David Alan Harvey) and this is what has driven the development of my photographic technique over the last few years. How can I use the “language of image making” to say what it feels like when I look at what I am photographing.

And I’ve already said that I am a keen birdwatcher, so the fact that Baume uses birds (there are pictures of 14 of her small sculptures dotted through the book) to draw out poetic parallels is the icing on the cake for this reader. There is a lovely moment when she comes across a wheatear and they have what can only be referred to as a staring contest. Not long later a friend reminds her that she may well have been the first human being that bird had seen and she is surprised at the thought of their mutual curiosity about one another.

It’s a beautiful moment in a book filled with beautiful moments and fascinating insights. ...more

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May 14, 2020 Emily O’Dowd rated it it was amazing

A quiet, beautiful work of non-fiction, I will return to passages of this book over and over again. So many beautiful images and thoughts, all of which are very relevant in this time of quiet, of noticing the "daily birds" and of grief. This is the first of Sara Baume's books i've read, but I'm looking forward to reading her fiction now. The photos within the book of her artwork are beautiful as well, and fit in perfectly. She referred to it at the Cuirt festival this year as "barely a book" but ...more

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Nov 15, 2020 Claire rated it it was amazing

Shelves: irish-literature, memoir, nonfiction, creative-nonfiction

My first read of Sara Baume, having decided to read this work of creative nonfiction before trying her fiction. I stumbled across this after reading the excellent A Ghost In The Throat published by the same Tramp Press, so I bought it hoping for a similar experience.

Handiwork is a pure joy to read, it's a small book, with often only a paragraph on a page, it had a beautifully thought out structure, referencing a number of different texts that the author, who is an artist, a craftswoman clearly h My first read of Sara Baume, having decided to read this work of creative nonfiction before trying her fiction. I stumbled across this after reading the excellent A Ghost In The Throat published by the same Tramp Press, so I bought it hoping for a similar experience.

Handiwork is a pure joy to read, it's a small book, with often only a paragraph on a page, it had a beautifully thought out structure, referencing a number of different texts that the author, who is an artist, a craftswoman clearly holds dear. Overall, it is an exploration of her process and influences, charting a daily practice, working with hands, expressing her creativity.

In the Craftsman, Sennett is a little grumpy about the prospect of confronting the question 'What is art?' Instead, he sets out his inquiry as: 'We are trying to figure out what autonomy means - autonomy as a drive from within that impels us to work in an expressive way, by ourselves.'

After travelling Europe, she returns to her parents home and is greeted in her old room by a cacophony of objects she had assembled from other things, re-conceptualised out of available fragments from her material environment.

a practice that Charles Jencks in the early 1970's designated 'adhocism' - a method of creation relying particularly on resources which are already at hand.

Now she lives in a house with Mark and structures her day, between the mundane repetitive actions of living, mornings of writing and afternoons of making.

She considers herself a disciple of William Morris, artist, designer, writer, activist, socialist, who:

agreed that hands know what they must do without instruction, that the objects shaped by their ancestor's phalanxes and phalanges and metacarpals for thousands of years remain in the memory compartment of their tiny brains, in the same way as birds know which way to fly without being guided or following a plotted course, without a book that provides detailed drawings and plans with parts and kits to accompany it.

This text is a place of reflection, aided by quotes from the various authors she refers to, which then form part of her own experience or insight and by the memory of her father and grandfather, one who worked with wood and the other with metal.

From my Dad I inherited a propensity for handiwork, but also the terrible responsibility, the killing insistence.

Her medium for the duration of the book is plaster, she is making, carving, painting and mounting birds. And reading about bird migration. And trying to entice the songbirds she sculpts to a feeder in the garden.

It is like a songbird itself, a small book that sings its tribute to those who craft and create and follow that intuitive inclination to fashion one thing out of another.

We must begin, William Morris said in his lecture 'Useful Work v. Useful Toil' to the Hampstead Liberal Club in 1884, ' to build up the ornamental part of life'

...more

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Jun 20, 2020 Paul Fulcher rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2020

Now longlisted for the Rathbone Folio Prize

I have always be felt caught between two languages, though I can only speak in one.

The one I can speak goes down on paper and into my laptop, in the hours before noon. The one I cannot speak goes down in small painted objects, in the hours after.

After the success of her wonderful novel A Line Made by Walking, Sara Baume (as she told the Irish Timess) no longer felt compelled either to write or to continue to pursue the conventional career path of a wri Now longlisted for the Rathbone Folio Prize

I have always be felt caught between two languages, though I can only speak in one.

The one I can speak goes down on paper and into my laptop, in the hours before noon. The one I cannot speak goes down in small painted objects, in the hours after.

After the success of her wonderful novel A Line Made by Walking, Sara Baume (as she told the Irish Timess) no longer felt compelled either to write or to continue to pursue the conventional career path of a writer. Things had been going well since I won a short story prize in 2014; I had been sustaining a certain momentum. By 2017, I was so tired of the dust-warped glow of my laptop screen, its crumb-jammed keys, the squeaky wheel of my office chair. Instead, I felt compelled to work with my hands – to cast off the desk and resurrect my tool box.

To work with my hands had been my first choice. I studied sculpture in college, but in the years since, outside the support of an institution, it had proved a prohibitively costly and cumbersome practice, and so I had turned to writing. In comparison to making sculpture, the practice of writing is magnificently compact and easily dispersed. It allowed me to say precisely what I meant in a form understood by everybody. And yet, by the end of book two, I was so tired of my own voice and the things I had said and meant with it. I longed to silently make small objects that were concerned with form, feel and colour; that I could touch, hold and smell; that nobody else saw or cared about

Her latest book, Handiwork, published as her previous works by the wonderful Tramp Press, is in a way a translation between her two languages of the opening quote, a love-child of my art and writing practices, or a by-product of novels past and coming. In beautifully compact prose Baume attempts to explain to myself the insistence I have always felt to work with my hands, to determine its origins (leading to a tribute to her father and grandfather) as well as discussing the theory surrounding craftsmanship and amateurism, the value of labour and ritual.

The particular pieces of handiwork that she makes and then writes about were a series of painted plaster models of birds, and the text also includes a discussion of the marvels of migration, with Baume commenting more than once that she sometimes expands or speculates on what she knows scientifically, only to find that nature has even more surprises than she imagined.

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A beautifully written work of art. ...more

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Apr 09, 2020 Ronan Hession rated it it was amazing

Handiwork by Sara Baume is a beautiful piece of writing about the habit of art, of noticing. Perfectly-weighted sentences, flawlessly punctuated. She just knows what's interesting. This a book I'll read a hundred times in the years ahead. A collection of short reflections - if that's the right word for writing so alive and spontaneous - about the domesticity of art; its making; its setting; its independence. ...more

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Apr 18, 2020 Clare rated it really liked it

Shelves: irish

‘Handiwork’ is Sara Baume’s first non-fiction work. In this book, she reflects on her daily work as an artist, on time and on nature and on her home. She contemplates habit, and the daily flow of life, of both the author herself and other people close to her. The style of ‘Handiwork’ reminded me of her novel ‘A line made by walking’ which felt reflective of life and habit in the same manner. I loved how this book invites the reader to reflect on the text in the way it is presented on the pages, ...more

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Apr 30, 2020 Steve Ellerhoff rated it it was amazing

She's done it again! This book is an exquisite addition to Sara Baume's already impressive written accomplishments, a nonfiction gift to all of us out here who make things and wonder about our drive to do so. Her first book-length work of nonfiction, it applies to the artistic process her knack for acute observations that open with expansive implications. Such a present this book is for her fellow artists. I imagine it's the sort of read that would prove beneficial for those who don't create, as ...more

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Jan 05, 2021 Caoimhe White rated it really liked it

And with that, I have completed my 2021 reading challenge.

This was exactly what I hoped it would be: a lovely meditation on the creative process, encompassing its rituals, its preparations, its dissolution of time, its setbacks, its flow. But it was also more than that, touching on how Sara's loss and grief, and fascination with migratory birds, intertwined with the art project she was writing about.

It's definitely not for everyone - some may even find it boring - but I have come to realise tha ...more

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Dec 28, 2020 Barbara rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2020-read, memoirs, irish-books, book-club, essays, art

This is a book about making. Making in the sense of creating, and in the sense of the Arts and Crafts Movement of the 19th century. Baume's father and grandfather were makers. Her father worked in a quarry and built machinery to do his job. Her grandfather built elaborate railroad displays.

Baume is fascinated by birds, and their migrations. This is also a topic that I am intrigued by. The tiny arctic tern migrates the distance of half the globe twice a year. She creates small wooden sculptures ...more

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Jul 26, 2020 Alva rated it really liked it · review of another edition

In between psychological thrillers and sagas, historical fiction and romance, a book like Sara Baume's 'handiwork' is a balm to the soul. A gentle flowing short narrative mix about life and art, creation and creating. Down to the brass tacks of it, making things from scratch, the idea, the vision, the project, and then living amidst it all, every day, finding beauty in each fabric, raw material; finding meaning in each tiny finished piece. I loved this book, its meanderings, its freedom, its nat ...more

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May 22, 2020 Anna rated it it was amazing

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Oct 08, 2020 John Braine rated it really liked it

A wee book that's a kind of love song for those who have an urge to create so strong that it's as natural as the migratory instinct of birds. I'm totally jealous of her life. All I want to do with my time is to consume and produce art. I would love to be able to make a living from that. ...more

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Dec 06, 2020 Eddie rated it liked it

Interesting little read, it paints an insight in to how the writer goes about her craft and how simple affairs of family and daily life can influence her thought process. I look forward to her next novel as she continues to mature in text and thought.

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Sep 25, 2020 Shailee Basu added it

Can't say I loved it in its entirety, but I did love some parts! ...more

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Apr 06, 2020 Roxani rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-in-2020

Part reflections on making and creating, part grief, part songbirds—all subtle and tender and poignantly beautiful. Sara Baume is one of my favorite writers working today.

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May 27, 2020 Bart Van Overmeire rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, owned-books, reading-women, read-2020, tramp-press, sara-baume, irish, essays-memoir-non-fiction

I'm in love with Sara Baume's writing. ...more

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Oct 02, 2020 Helen added it

Shelves: read-for-uni, read-in-2020

read for uni

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Nov 10, 2020 Catriona Shine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: writing, non-fiction

What a gem! An invaluable insight into Sara Baume’s creative everyday life: a life intensely lived.

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Aug 30, 2020 Dee Courtney rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

Beautiful and unexpected. I could read it again and again and again. Sara Baume is a stunning writer.

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Oct 03, 2020 Zoé rated it it was amazing

A beautiful meditation on the flow and creation of art within an artists world.

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May 22, 2020 Anne Cunningham rated it really liked it

Sara Baume’s first non-fiction book is a slim little volume about the making of art. It’s also about grief and about the daily minutiae of living and creating, about writing and crafting, about work and responsibility. And it’s about holding ourselves accountable for the time we have been gifted. It’s small and sometimes stark and unfalteringly beautiful.
“I have always felt caught between two languages, though I can only speak in one” she writes. “The one I can speak goes down on paper and into Sara Baume’s first non-fiction book is a slim little volume about the making of art. It’s also about grief and about the daily minutiae of living and creating, about writing and crafting, about work and responsibility. And it’s about holding ourselves accountable for the time we have been gifted. It’s small and sometimes stark and unfalteringly beautiful.
“I have always felt caught between two languages, though I can only speak in one” she writes. “The one I can speak goes down on paper and into my laptop, in the hours before noon. The one I cannot speak does down in small painted objects, in the hours after.
“The more I need to explain, the longer the documents become, the larger the assemblages.”
She writes exquisitely about the everyday routine, from the morning’s unrolling of socks to the nights’s rolling them up again, and of the work which fills the hours in between. “Every day, I complete a single carved plaster object, and every day each completed object comes to precisely the breadth and limits of my patience.” On the following page she writes: “I have felt a terrible responsibility for time.” And there she expresses, in a single line, what so many artists feel about time spent making and remaking in a constant striving for better. Work which fails in some way is ‘contaminated’.
Her father, who died a year or so before she commenced this memoir, is a significant presence and returns throughout like a welcome leitmotif. Her grief is evident but it’s delicately treated, like something fragile, to be handled with care. Her many passages on birds, those she crafts and paints herself and those airborne outside her window, bring to mind Jonathan Franzen’s essays on similar themes, one from which she quotes directly.
This beautiful little book will prompt you to return to it in quiet moments and to reflect with the author on what it means to be alive, to love and lose and to simply go on, “doggedly, diligently, interminably…”
...more

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May 30, 2020 Danny rated it it was amazing

This is a deeply beautiful book. I read both of Baume's novels, and loved them both. I met her once in Galway and found her to be insightful. When I heard she'd written a non-fiction book about art and life I wasn't sure what to expect, other than that the prose would be lyrical and affecting. It certainly is those things and more. The writing is sort of a blend of prose-poem, memoir, philosophy, and nature writing. I'm a naturist myself, with birds as the aspect of nature with which I'm most en ...more

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Jan 01, 2021 Tanya Farrelly rated it really liked it

A meditation on the art of creating and a reflection on the importance of objects, places, people, and the compulsion to produce, Handiwork is a joy to read. I loved Baume's minute observations and the concise language she uses to draw us into her workspace. The analogies with birds, with nesting and flight are thought-provoking and well-placed in terms of considering the artist's journey, not only during the making of this particular exhibition, but in a much broader sense. ...more

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May 28, 2020 Taylor Allgeier-Follett rated it it was amazing

Very lyrical and reflective prose, with a clear and engaging style. I really enjoyed reading this book, although it was difficult to find time to read it because the subject matter and prose seem to almost demand a certain peaceful environment and clear mind to fully concentrate and read it as it deserves to be read.

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Apr 30, 2020 Frances Wilde rated it really liked it

A beautiful revery on crafting and being. I do love a William Morris quote.

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Aug 02, 2020 Colleen rated it it was amazing

Absolutely enthralling. Warning to all of those who have lost a parent too soon: you will weep.

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Aug 02, 2020 Rob Brennan rated it it was amazing

This book will be a benchmark going forward in how I approach my creative process when playing music. Thank you Sara for a fresh perspective.

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Sep 25, 2020 Daisy Dee rated it liked it

satisfying, privileged, organised.

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About Sara Baume

Sara Baume

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Sara Baume is an Irish novelist.
Her father is of English descent while her mother is of Irish descent. As her parents travelled around in a caravan, Sara Baume was born "on the road to Wigan Pier". When she was 4, they moved to County Cork, Ireland. She studied fine art at Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design and creative writing at Trinity College, Dublin from where she was awarded her MPhil. ...more