Today Gwen and I photographed some of the hand casts, including hers. Her hand-cast is an impression of some 'Welsh' knitting - a way of knitting she says is different to how people knit up here (I can't knit but I love the idea that knitting is like a dialect!)
The casting is an interesting process to try with the residents as it is multi-sensory. The alginate smells minty, so as long as you haven't had too much time in the dentist (it's the stuff they use to cast your teeth) it smells quite pleasant, but not everyone understandably is keen to stick their hands into a bucket of pink slime! When words and conversation no longer carry a lot of meaning for a person, their senses become heightened as well as their way of connecting and it is only really curiosity that lets us know that a person wants to have a go. Derek is blind so obviously his sense of touch is important to him. He was very interested in the hand cast we brought him in to hold - the weight of it and the feel of the plaster and the shape of the fingers. We held hands to dip into the slime.
Talking about the casts in a poetic, open way, when everything that is said in the space of the conversation is written down and valued creates text that isn't a logical or linear narrative but resounds with indirect, slant references and thoughts. I had a discussion with Hazel about Robert's hands and wrote down what she said:
"The only thing that rings a bell for me with this is are these two fingers because they are together.
1, 2, 3, 4 fingers and that would be the thumb - the one that leads you in.
One of my fingers you see doesn't work. I keep the ring on it just to feel the finger is still there.
I'm not good at knowing what it's made of - my Dad would be able to tell you straight but I had no brothers - there were five of us girls. If I was doing it in cookery though, it'd be like when you make a flat cake with a decoration on the top!
Dad didn't appreciate anything I made, so I never shown him anything but I won an award for making an ordinary plain statue, only half way down I'd bent the leg and it wouldn't go back so I just left it… I never tell anybody because I'm a little bit embarrassed.
Actually it's like your hand that."