Notes Towards a Cow’s Parsley
Jessica Potter’s response to “ ” #3: Becky Beasley / Claire Scanlon
‘– Umbels are a family of mass and masses — formed umbels held on stalks reaching up with aromatic lightness to the sky — a gentle trembling of tiny petals formed in relation — shimmering and staring straight upwards — they spread and hold their flowers for bees and insects breathing fresh aromatic scent into the spring atmosphere. Some are delicious and some are deadly — their common names warning of the dangers of touch or consumption — Hemlock — horror.
Cow parsley – GENTLE and common. Gracing hedgerow and curbside — one of the early ones to illuminate the vegetation. Umbels reach out — white, crisp, and fresh. A meter high or so — growing to the height a hand can brush against easily — enabling the eye to look down on the constellation.’
Jessica Potter’s response to Beasley and Scanlon’s conversation comes in the form of a video and photos documenting her practice: an obsession, a ramble, a fixation with the plant family of umbellifers (cow parsley, celery, carrot, chervil, coriander, dill, fennel, parsnip and so on). It’s all there, somewhere, in her pencil’s scratching movements across the paper, capturing each petal on each busy cluster: the conditions, structures, memories of our time; references to the thoughts of others; the lockdowns, the lack of sleep, the careers, the gardening, our immunity, winter, spring, Instagram, nightmares, children, all those things we need to talk about but we can’t bear to talk about anymore. What is left to say?
