Celebrate the unveiling of Jodie Carey’s new commission, ‘Earthen’ at the Artist’s Garden on 7 May 2025.  ‘Earthen’ marks a major milestone in Carey’s work:  the pair of vessels are her first in the round earth cast sculptures and are her largest to date.  Earth casting is a physically and mentally gruelling process.  Undertaken entirely outdoors in the winter months to ensure slow drying times, the massive handmade forms are moved into place, their surfaces bound and sewn then buried and cast in the earth. Emerging with imprints of weeds and stones, ‘Earthen’ is a monument to the women ‘weeders’. Recorded in palace ledgers since 1500s, their pay was half that of their male counterparts.  They weeded formal gardens including that of Arundel House, over which the Artist’s Garden lies and which displayed England’s first classical sculpture collection [amassed by Lord and Lady Arundel].  The names of the weeders is not recorded, their vital maintenance work unremarked and barely rewarded.  ‘Earthen’ acknowledges long unseen women’s work and their unremarked lives and stories through the making and celebrates their monumental contribution to humanity in its form.