71 - Alison Heart

Sunny faces artwork © Alison Heart 2025.

I wanted to share some more work from Alison, the friend I introduced to you in Post 44

As I mentioned, we have shared holidays together a lot over the years, primarily because we don't live near each other. So we visit one another and take a break at the same time. 

Ali spent a few years exploring Spain, including living in a flat in central Valencia where I visited her during the Las Fallas festival.

Las Fallas is an extraordinary and epic, annual festival in which towering sculptures of light wood, in the form of dashing cartoonish figures, are constructed on street corners, and then burnt to the ground in a carnivalesque, lawful transgression of health and safety norms. 

I don't have any photos of the actual fires, but here, paella is cooked in the street inside improvised clubhouses.

Alison absolutely loved all of it. We went to visit an exhibition of Las Fallas competitors at one of the museums, in which all the paper mache entries were at ground level and you could look right into their kaleidoscope eyes.

Back in England to support family, Alison brought with her, a festive heart. During lockdown, she produced these wonderful paper mache sun faces. They adorned the suburban hedges of a small town in Cheshire.

In Northwich, Alison has been a leading figure in the transformation and continuity of small but key sites, especially the community garden and orchard. With an increased focus on the fight against climate change, Alison has given it her all lately and literally shaped the landscape. She's been a backbone of the community as you can see here where she laid paving slabs along a curving spine of earth. 

Alison, I'm so looking forward to seeing where your creativity takes you next.

x Frankie

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