Melanie Honebone - Love Tokens and Bad Pennies

Bad Penny by Melanie Honebone

Does love endure forever? Does a bad penny always turn up? During this Valentine month the artists and writers from CollectConnect explore this flip-sided theme with an exhibition of 32 miniature sculptures. These objects are placed in public places (#unsettledgallery), helping us to remember those who we hold dear - or cast off those who we would rather forget. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these tokens/pennies on this website. A writer will also use the art as inspiration to create something new and fresh.

Artist - Melanie Honebone / Words -  Dean Reddick

Hyper-rational love 

'Love isn't a coin that can be saved or spent.'
Her words come back to me now, as they often do in such moments when I pause for breath or courage.
She was always so sure.
She never bartered her love, or her hate for that matter, not like me.

My thumb inevitably caresses the token in the pocket of my travel-dusted jeans.
'Ugly little man,' that's my name for it; the curves and hollows of its face familiar, like the feel of my teeth inside my mouth.

I step back onto the path, not nearly finished this journey, and already despondent and soul weary.
She'd always wanted to travel.

I wish she were with me now.

Melanie's Bad Penny on a way marker at

 the #unsettledgallery in Epping Forest

Epping Forest is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, bordering London and Essex and is an Ancient Woodland, one of the few left in London. The sculptor Jacob Epstein lived on the edge of the Forest. Nowadays the Forest is used by dog walkers, mountain bikers, horse and pony riders and picnicking friends and families as well as footballers, bird watchers and runners. I like to imagine all the lovers who might have left their own love tokens in the forest over the centuries. The Forest has also had its share of Bad Pennies reaching up to the present day.
Take a walk through the Forest and see if you can find a Love Token or a Bad Penny.

Melanie Honebone has been known to us as Melanie Ezra up until last year when she got married. Congratulations to Melanie and her husband! We look forward to continuing our long creative relationship.

Melanie is a Wales-based fine artist who works using her own original photographs to create beautiful and intricate collages. She often works in series, providing visual responses to external stimuli such as literature, science, and music. She considers herself a specialist in the deconstruction of time and the extension of the moment. Recently Melanie has been creating videos with Stone Letter Media. Honebone openly describes herself as a ‘renegade arts experimentalist’ and is happy dabbling in anything that pushes her work to the limit and broadens her own potential.
https://melaniehonebone.wordpress.com/

Dean Reddick is an artist, an art therapist, occasional lecturer and editor on the Art Therapy Journal ATOL. He has a small studio space at his home in Walthamstow where he works on sculptures and drawings often based on his fascination with birds and trees. 

Don't forget to submit to our next exhibition. The Art of Caring is accepting submission until the 7th April 2019. More HERE.