Sculpture Information

I met Fannie when I lead an away day for the NHS voluntary Chaplains around 2016. After asking for the book to which I had referred, we got chatting. Fannie loved my sculptures, and we discovered that we had both visited and loved South Korea.

We met up regularly after that. Fannie was a keen photographer and came to take pictures of my pieces and came along when I was installing them once at Gloucester Cathedral. She shared the poetry she loved and stories from her past about her nursing abroad and life as a nurse in training. For example, she was a nurse in East London and was interviewed to gather background information for the TV series of ’Call the Midwife’.

Fannie was a force to be reckoned with, nurses she trained often describing her as the slightly terrifying Miss Storr.

Just before Covid, Fannie had a fall in 2019 and was placed in a care home. The doctors found a complication that they couldn’t get to the bottom of, and her health quickly declined. She was very tall and strong for her age, like a Viking, so watching her fade was hard. When I visited her in hospital, I noticed the beauty of her elderly worn hand. I asked if I could take a photo of it to sculpt. She said ”Yes, I would like that very much”.

Fannie died at the peak of Covid (but not from the virus) in a room where we couldn’t visit because of lockdown. What saddened me most was that she died without the presence of friends or relatives and only had a very small funeral after a life of giving so much.

After she died, I found a piece of alabaster with a hand within it. In grief, I carved ‘The Hand of Fannie Storr’. It was a fantastic convergence between the stone, my personal connection, and relevance for the time during covid. The sculpture helps us to remember that like her, other nurses gave their lives caring for others. The hand bears the lines of experience, care, and strength. A poignant reminder of the covid era and of those who gave their lives nursing others.

The sculpture has had quite a journey:

• Press release and article from Gloucester Cathedral:
  The Hand that Cared
  Sculpture installed at Gloucester Cathedral celebrates dedicated Gloucestershire nurse
• Selected for the 168th Exhibition (Nov 2020) for the Royal West of England Academy (RWA) Bristol.
• Winner of the Sculpture Award Prize for the Southwest Academy of Fine and Applied Arts (SWAc) 2020.
• Winner of the Guest Judges Prize for the Southwest Academy of Fine and Applied Arts (SWAc) 2020:
  
  

  ‘The Hand of Fannie Storr’ sensitively honours the life of a brilliant nurse. A very moving work which memorialises one of those many lost lives and one given to care, that reaffirm our shared humanity. The carving is very sensitive and imbues that one hand with such character and pathos rarely seen in a piece of stone. My congratulations to Deborah Harrison. Joseph Hillier (SWAc Guest Judge)

• Purchased for the Gloucestershire NHS Trust by Crowd funding.
• A glass cabinet made to house the sculpture was unveiled by the Lord High Sheriff at the 75th NHS Anniversary Celebrations at Gloucester Cathedral.
• Now has a permanent home at the Sandford Education Centre, Cheltenham Hospital.
  

You can see a video, and further information and photos on my blog post here.