Peggy Fussell
Extract of a Letter, 1845
This installation originated from a series of workshops entitled Crafting Magic, initially designed and led by Neil Mulholland and Neven Lochhead. Each subsequent workshop in the series was then modified and led by participants Maria Simmons, Jung-Ah Kim and me.
The work created in and inspired by these workshops was included in an exhibition, Crafting Magic, curated by Neven Lochhead. The exhibition took place in September, 2025 at The Station @ Tamworth Central and featured work by artists Alexis Boyle (Ottawa), Liam Cole (Kingston), Gavin Day (Kingston), Jung-Ah Kim (Kingston), Maria Simmons (Montréal), Chantal LeBlanc (Roblin Lake), Linda Howes (Tamworth), Andrea Malus (Kingston), Neil Mulholland (Edinburgh) and Gonçalo Sena (Lisbon)
Crafting Magic was commissioned by Carolyn Butts with generous support from Tamworth Central and Virginianne.
More information about the Crafting Magic workshop system can be found here.
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Still from animation
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Videos coming soon!
In the first workshop, Thickening, Neil Mulholland introduced participants to the themes of magic and the town of Tamworth, Ontario. Maria Simmons's use of local flora in version two of the workshop, Fermenting, inspired me to make anthotype prints using plants picked from nearby roadsides and fields. In the third iteration of the series, Animating, Jung-Ah Kim and I engaged participants with the magic of stop motion animation. Together we created a short animated film, Love Weaver (2025), that documents a collaborative weaving embedded with plants and charms found in Tamworth.
Extract of a Letter, 1845 expands upon my research into the work of Mary Somerville and her use of plant-based photographic emulsions to make anthotype prints. Anthotypes are a precursor to the familiar cyanotype, or sun-print. The anthotypes I made during the course of the residency were a vibrant green when they first came out of the fixative bath, but quickly faded. To preserve them I photographed them. For the exhibition, I hung the antotypes in the gallery space, expecting they would disappear (a magic trick!) within a couple of weeks. Some vanished completely, others retained ghostly traces of the original images. For me, the fugitive nature of the prints added another layer of metaphor to our theme of crafting magic that speaks to unseen actions or diverted attention, as well as issues of stability in both human memory and material archives. By making anthotype prints I also acknowledge the work of Mary Somerville and point to the often uncredited technical and scientific contributions of women.
My installation evokes the scene of a table in a lab of a curious researcher, spread with plants, notes, grid paper, bottles of emulsion, and pellets made from the plant solids left behind after filtering the emulsion. Game pieces, pins, and other magical charms are embedded in these pellets, hinting at the magic in scientific discovery. A copy of the article “VIII. On the Action of the Rays of the Spectrum on Vegetable Juices. Extract of a Letter from Mrs. M. Somerville to Sir J. F. W. Herschel, Bart., Dated Rome, September 20, 1845. Communicated by Sir J. Herschel.” is placed on the table. This article was originally published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. A short, looped animation, Timed Exposure (2025), features the photos I took of the fresh anthotype prints, as well as some of the plants used to make them.