Artist & poet
Commissions & residencies
Voices of the Holocaust, British Library
202316 new collages made for the British Library's sound archive resource: Voices of the Holocaust, which looks at the events of the Holocaust through interviews with survivors and people who fled Nazi persecution before, during and after the Second World War. I wanted to make a break with the ubiquitous photographic images of hollow eyed camp victims that had been used with this material before, and instead take inspiration from the real voices of the real people I could hear. Survivors, immigrants, workers, parents and so on, who built interesting lives and contributed to the UK in so many lively ways.
Poetry 101, Poetry Foundation
201830 new portraits for fully accessible online education resource: Poetry 101, a series by The Poetry Foundation, Chicago.
Including Alice Notley, Audre Lorde, Ed Roberson, Edward Thomas, E.E. Cummings, Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, James Wright, John Ashbery, John Donne, John Keats, Joy Harjo, June Jordan, Langston Hughes, Martin Espada, Maya Angelou, Muriel Rukeyser, Robert Duncan, Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman, William Blake, William Butler Yeats, William Carlos Williams & William Wordsworth.
Feast Linen, Thames Festival
2007300 metre hand printed tablecloth for The Thames Festival's Feast on the Bridge.
Peleh Family Residency
December 2019 - May 2020Based in Berkeley, The Peleh Residency is one of the few fully-supported, specifically family-friendly residencies in the country, and it emerged from the vision of the Peleh Fund to support both the creative process, and a new kind of cultural infrastructure that honors a commitment to family and work. The program reflects two core beliefs of its founders. First, that the universal experience of caregiving and working must be acknowledged and supported by our institutions if we are to thrive as a community. And second, that art and culture have the power to cross boundaries between people and ideas, bringing historical identity into modern life in new ways.
‘This period of intense studio time in northern California drew me back to painting, and a concentration on colour. I was thoroughly enchanted: process blue birds darted in front of pink houses with symmetrical orange trees out front. Huge cacti doubled up as washing line posts. It was a life changing few months in which I was able to take a break from commissioned projects and my domestic scene, and immerse myself in observation and experiment. The entire second half of the residency took place in lockdown, which added a twist of extremity to the freedom/loneliness dichotomy of working so far from home and the usual networks. I have blogged extensively about the whole experience.’
Hawthornden Fellowship
January 2019 - February 2019Hawthornden Literary Retreat at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland was founded to provide a peaceful setting for creative writers to work without disturbance. The Retreat receives writers for 10 months of the year. It houses six writers at a time, known as Hawthornden Fellows, in sessions lasting four weeks each.
‘I used this period of retreat in Scotland to edit and collate poems towards a collection. It was a great delight to me to spend time in a place full of such distinct flora and fauna, and I was prompted to write about hawks, dippers, siskins, and the river Esk, as well as tuning up the poems that would appear later that year as 60 Lovers to Make and Do. It was great to read, think and chat with the other writers in the evening, we were taken care of so well by Hamish Robinson, who manages the fellowship onsite, and Ruth the wonderful cook who made us beautiful dinners and packed us little hampers for lunch. An owl flew past each dusk to call us from our rooms towards the sherry bottle! Images below are from my castle notebooks.’
Migration Museum
June 2015 - November 2015We collaborated with the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich to explore the theme of Migration with visitors from June – November 2015.
RE·THINK at the National Maritime Museum offers visitors the space to explore, discover and reflect on the museum’s themes and to create responses within the gallery.
From June until mid-November, RE·THINK focussed on Migration, one of the National Maritime Museum’s seven themes, and the Migration Museum Project worked with the National Maritime Museum to engage with visitors, school groups and community groups.
Casa Ecco Writers' Fellowship
September 2023 - October 2023Run by the Hawthornden Foundation, this presents an opportunity for six writers to make their work in a supportive environment beside Lake Como.
Financial Times
2023A pie made for the article 'Is eating out a luxury again?', photographed for the FT by Rick Pushinsky.
See Paddington
2022Fellow poet Jo Bell and myself were commissioned by Poet in The City and the Steer Group to write new poetry in response to this bustling area of central London, as part of a plan to way mark this place that is home to so many people, institutions and developments. St Mary's Hospital, (where penicillin was discovered) Paddington Station, the confluence of The Regents and the Grand Union Canals at Paddington Basin, and all the other roads west... Our words were then melded and etched into brand new street furniture, now installed, and hopefully slowing and smoothing the journeys of the crowds passing through. This work was commissioned in 2019, but underwent a long pandemic related delay before it reached fruition.
See Paddington is a narrative trail between South Wharf Road and Bishop’s Bridge. It incorporates pattern, imagery and stories drawn from Paddington’s heritage, culture, people and nature.
A Great Miracle Happened Here
2020To mark Chanukah, JW3 and Brent Cross Shopping Centre have commissioned artist and poet Sophie Herxheimer to create an installation of personal miracles, through stories shared with her over these past few weeks in lockdown.
The miracles range from the everyday to the seismic, and are a collaboration between the teller and the artist. Sophie has collected these stories through live conversations, listening to each person one by one and using ink and a paintbrush to create her versions of their stories in front of their very eyes.
Each picture flag contains a miracle recounted, shedding light into, what for many, has been a dark year.
Moon and Me, CBeebies
2019Colour palette creation for Moon and Me, a new children’s television programme.
Winchester Poetry Festival
October 2018 - November 2018Artistic Co-directors Sasha Dugdale and Sarah Hesketh programmed a diverse and stimulating menu of events aimed at fulfilling our intention to ‘surprise and delight’. Loosely focussed around themes of place and identity, and bracketed by riotously entertaining performances from Ian McMillan and Hollie McNish, the festival included poets from Macedonia, Iran, Ireland and Jamaica.
Artist/poet ‘in residence’, Sophie Herxheimer, animated the festival space.
‘As part of my residency remit, I had the pleasure of working with students at Hampshire based Treloar's College. Students made poetry flags choosing words and pictures to show the world who they are and what they like to do. I hung the flags in the library, where they were admired by many visitors. During the days of the festival itself, I rolled out my story collecting side show, where I asked questions and listened on the subject of books and reading. It was a treat to hear stories from many of the participating poets, as well as the people who had turned up to hear them. Samples of these drawings can be found on the Stories Collected Live in Ink page of this website.’
The Museum of Liverpool
February 208 - March 2018With the funding announcement today the project aims to carefully remove and conserve the historic tiles from the shop’s façade and recreate it within Museum of Liverpool, protecting it for future generations. We are also looking to use this great opportunity to work with Liverpool’s Jewish community, unlocking memories of Galkoff’s and build up a better picture of the city’s Jewish history.
‘I was invited by project curators, Poppy Learman and Liz Stewart, to come and collect stories from people in Liverpool who had lived or worked around the changing area of Pembroke Place, in Liverpool 3. On the trail of an iconic former kosher butcher's shop, we went and met the elders of the Jewish community at their Luncheon Club, as well as the younger generation who we met and worked with at the Jewish Lads and Girls Brigade at King David School. I loved my visits to this city. The light glancing off the docks and buildings as well as the interesting and beautifully recounted stories, made this a residency full of energy and revelation. The final installation of the restored facade of Galkoff's in the museum, and the wall of inky stories (visible from the pavement outside!) has echoes of the city's grandeur, and remains on permanent display in the People's Republic Gallery of the museum.’
National Poetry Day (Hull)
May 2017 - June 2017
This year, 2017, National Poetry Day will be launched from Hull, in honour of its status as city of culture. Hull, with its proud abolitionist history, via celebrated son William Wilberforce, is also behind this years NPD theme: Freedom.
'I was invited by Susannah Herbert of National Poetry Day, to assemble a team of poets, and work with NPD manager Andrea Reece, to roll out a four day poetry extravaganza in Hull for primary children, ahead of the day itself in late September.
The idea being that the children of Hull could lead the way in showing how freeing it might be to work with poets, and find poetry of their own to explore and document their ideas and feelings, and the world around them. We prioritised getting a wide cross section of voices and styles so that the students would discover that there are all kinds of poets, and many different ways to work creatively with language.'
This picture features (L to R) poets: Sarah Stutt, Joe Hakim, Chris McCabe, me, Mathias Tornvig, Joseph Coelho, Kate Fox, Shazea Quraishi.
Arvon Foundation
October 2016A short art residency at The Arvon Foundation.
‘The brief was for me to spend a week in The Clockhouse, neighbour building to John Osborne’s grand and gothic former home The Hurst, and make visual art in response to the place, as well as on any themes I was preoccupied with already.
I was invited because Arvon, working with Jo King at Ludlow Open, was looking for an artist for whom image and text are inextricably intertwined. With the Arvon Foundations expertise at generating all kinds of text, with their incredible year round programme of writers and courses, it was felt that fostering visual art alongside could build in further inspiration. Also resident at the Clockhouse that week, were three Ukrainian writers over on an exchange with Writing West Midlands. We had a lot of interesting conversations in the evenings, and I gained some insight into contemporary Ukrainian literature and the already fragile situation in relation to Russian aggression.’
Beit Venezia
November 2015 - December 2015Beit Venezia invited eight international Jewish artists to design a New Venice Haggadah after a full immersion in the city, and a residency at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica.
‘This 3 week residency in the heart of Venice, involved working with a small group of artists on creating a series of etchings to illustrate a commemorative Haggadah. Our lead artist, Jacqueline Nicholls, had organised this project in collaboration with Shaul Bassi, of Beit Venezia. It was amazing to work intensely in a city so famous for its art, culture, tourism... we studied together, visited the ghetto, synagogues, museums, and came together to form a dynamic printmaking team.’
Fermynwoods: The Listening Forest
December 2014 - March 2015The Listening Forest is a publication of poems, prints and paper cuts by Sophie Herxheimer, made during her 2014-2015 residency in Rockingham Forest.
Sophie had been collecting stories on the concept of home at Barnwell Country Park the previous year as part of Habitat. Fermynwoods invited Sophie to trade her normal London scenery for the forest for a longer residency – this time collecting and drawing people’s stories about nature in front of their eyes.
Sophie describes her process as “a jaunty collision between therapy, sideshow, and performance”. With her brush loaded with ink, a conversation ensued. You don’t have a story about the woods? I’m sure you do. And soon tales of naked cyclists, bee stings in unfortunate places and barefoot running with deer materialised on the page. “What I choose to draw from their story, and what I choose to write down, is perhaps only 10% of what they’ve told me, so I have to choose the right bit, and that is poetry.” At the end of the conversation, the storyteller was handed a copy of the image they inspired and the original made its way into The Listening Forest.
Project Phakama - Edible Garden
May 2014 - June 2014Then as part of a project called The Edible Garden, put together by Project Phakama, in which I was one of a team – artists, actors, musicians, chefs and dancers, we worked together to create a musical in an old peoples’ home, devised and performed by BTEC performing arts students from a sixth form college.
Stories collected by me from the different generations of participants helped form the core of the piece, and I once again took up residence in a shed to collect more stories from residents and audience members at the end of the show.
Fermynwoods: Habitat
June 2013 - July 2013Habitat was a 2013 series of temporary, site-responsive interventions and sculptures made by artists in residence exploring real and imaginary places where people and wildlife co-exist. Researched by independent curator and writer Angela Kingston it was also an opportunity for Fermynwoods Contemporary Art to make themselves at home at Barnwell Country Park.
Sophie Herxheimer was the Artist in Residence during summer 2013. Working with diverse groups and individuals in Northamptonshire, Sophie exchanged ideas about different notions of home, journeys, and how we live, on and off familiar ground. With fairy tale embellishments these stories were brought to life through Sophie’s inky paintbrush, seemingly in real time as she listened to members of the public. Once a story had been shared, participants received Sophie’s illustrated version of events, capturing the essence of the conversation and hinting at much more beyond. These drawings also formed props and furnishings for the Kingfisher Hut, which was inhabited during the exhibition opening weekend.
TfL Poetry Residency
March 2013 - April 2013Several poets were selected and deployed to bring live poetry to the underground, as an initiative for National Poetry Day in October 2013. I was allocated Knightsbridge Station. I had hoped to borrow the tannoy to broadcast my poems to the stressed out commuters, but once I'd said If you see something suspicious, it's poetry' I had all amplification removed from about my person. The campaign we were part of was called Travel Better London, and was set up to try and encourage respect and good manners on the tube. Poetry can't really do this kind of thing, but it was a good excuse to chat with strangers and write underground verse. Fellow tube poets included Jacqueline Saphra, Raymond Antrobus, Keith Jarrett, Jools, Amy Acre, and Amy McAllister. A high spot was when a small and impeccably dressed Italian man stopped before boarding the escalator. Have you got a sad poem? he asked. Yes I have, I said, and read him one about my mother's death. He stood still and listened. Tears slowly ran down his face. Thank you. He said, before heading to catch his train.
London Printworks Trust
March 2011 - December 2011She is currently Artist in Residence at London Printworks Trust, which will see her collaborating with different groups in the making of textiles, as well as exploring the possibilities of print in the creation of a new body of her own work, culminating in an exhibition in 2012.
Marine Studios
December 2010 - March 2011It's all kicking off in Margate at the moment with the opening of the Turner Contemporary. One of the (quite simply) fantastic projects that has been happening in the buzzy run up to the event is the 'Pie Days and Holidays' - Margate food stories collection. This inventive Taxonomy, the brainchild of artist Sophie Herxheimer and Kate Kneale of Marine Studios, has seen illustrated stories collected around the town from it's residents - all about food. This is a project that Sophie has used before as a means of showcasing the colourful social histories of everyday people in a regular town. In 'Thames Festival Feast on the Bridge' Sophie collected stories about food (good / bad / funny/secret/home/abroad/snacks/meals) and screen printed them, in her own illustrative style, onto tablecloths for a huge community feast. She has this year succeeded in collecting a further 175 food stories from Margate, and created a wonderful exhibition of them, illustrating just how diverse and interesting the funny folk of this town are.Starting out as a simple attempt to get to know the residents better, the project has grown into an exhibition, a feast (of all of the described foods), a limited edition book, and decoration for the boarded up shopfronts of Margate!
Arnold Circus (Home Live Art)
January 2010 - February 2010The Sharing Picnic 100 was a broad-based collaborative event produced by Home Live Art in partnership with The Friends of Arnold Circus – over 50 local artists from Shoreditch’s artist community joined with local groups, schools, volunteers and neighbourhood businesses and invited people to share in a vibrant community event around food and friendliness: a sumptuous picnic, artists’ fair, bandstand programme and the final challenge to cycle 100 times around the Circus and alternative vehicle parade.
Feast (LIFT)
August 2004 - November 2004A year-long project to create a celebratory school dinner that was grown, harvested, cooked and served by school children. The children worked in partnership with an allotment association, a gardener, a chef and a team of five artists.
Artists in residence for each season ran weekly workshops to devise public celebrations connected with the growing cycle and to create something towards the final feast. The allotment became an outdoor classroom for exploring all areas of the curriculum.
Unicorn Theatre
1998-2006Various printed ephemera for Unicorn Theatre, including their Storytelling Festival.
Teletubbies, BBC
1997Direction of two segments in episodes 37 & 73 of Cbeebies' Teletubbies.
The London Lighthouse
1989-1993Various printed matter for The London Lighthouse 1989-1993, including posters for their annual sponsored cycle ride "To the Lighthouse".
The London Lighthouse was a centre and hospice for people with HIV and AIDS, in Lancaster Road, Ladbroke Grove, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It opened in 1986, offering "an innovative model of residential and day care for men, women and children living with HIV and AIDS and provided a refuge and respite to people marginalised and abandoned because of their diagnosis."
With the growth of effective HIV treatment in the 1990s, the need for residential care became much less, and by 2015 it was decided that the building was no longer required. It was sold off, and the site is now the Museum of Brands. The memorial garden, where the ashes of many people who died at the Lighthouse were scattered, has been preserved.