Finding Home
Photography & Words By Patrick Kerry (@PatrickOfSussex)
Home is a peculiar concept. In the west we value it as something we will find or, reach, once we earn a certain amount of money. Once we find that right person to call a home. Once we get over that hill all the way over there, in the distance… Elsewhere it’s as simple as being in the place that we are born. The place where family is. Where we find our feet.
I am aware that I am my home. I can be anywhere in the world and find belonging, through plants and people. I am also aware that living with family doesn’t always allow us to live a life true to ourselves. The rules and expectations of others. There is a balance. To narrow down my search for a home I have had to put certain limits on location. I chose to find a home within the UK county of Sussex, the county I was born and have lived in all my life. It is an area of 1460 square miles, plenty big enough for me. To further help in my search I took certain aspects of other places seen on travels which have inspired me, to locate or replicate nearer to our family home.
That row of homes on a Welsh hillside being one place, they have a long, shared vegetable garden growing along the lane directly opposite. There is a Sussex hamlet in the high weald that I’ve walked through a few times now, each time new banners for celebrating special occasions. They hold scarecrow competitions which are then strategically place, along with ‘children playing, cats crossing’ signs to slow the trickle of traffic that flows down from either end of the hamlet. Steep hills surround the homes on all sides with a gentle stream that cuts through remnants of old mill workings and a shared log pile large enough to warm the 10 cottages. There’s also a village post office I went in to buy an ice-cream and overheard everyone greeting one another by first name. That is community.
Alongside walking from village to village, a walk to arrive slow, welcomed and to experience a place and its people on foot I’ve been carsharing or travelling by train and bus to the bigger Sussex towns. My self-plotted route avoids built up areas, such as those along the seafront. The route is a spiral, North from my family home and clockwise around the outer edges of Sussex. Eventually curving inwards about 10 miles for a second loop, before arriving back to where this journey began. The trips to town help me learn if that area would have all that I need. Places to share my artwork and join in with groups. A post office. A nice place to eat when I don’t want to cook. Accessibility for arriving on foot or bicycle. A place with a heart. Some towns feeling young and vibrant, with volunteer groups for maintaining the public gardens. Others feeling slightly run down, with corners as grey as the winter stormy sea it looks out to and yet jewelled with art galleries in all colours. The same but also so different.
The volunteer days that I do are somewhat random, often having the theme of being a start-up, often a market garden that is in the early blooming stages of concept. People are naturally drawn to these places; people like to help. To be of community, and so I've got to meet many more people through these than I ever had imagined I would. Growing up as a third-generation builder, my work has taken me into people's homes and for a period of time, their lives. It brings a certain skillset to be able to fit in, with least disruption to their routine. Which has helped me to cut through the small talk into deeper conversation and find out what it is that people really want.
I guess I'm in search of somewhere to grow. My food and flowers. A regular supply of work projects to create an income. Some stability in my working life, instead of earning money just before I've needed it. My walk will join these dots up. The people and places that I know. Many already marked on the maps, like stars in the sky. With many more to be found.