shewhomust | Spending a penny in the Cistern Chapel (Reply)

I said, when I encountered Esturiana on Ha'penny Pier, that Anne Schwegmann-Fielding's award-winning toilets at Colchester Arts Centre looked well worth a visit. Colchester was, after all, our next destination, and the Arts Centre was close to a stretch of the city's Roman wall, which we would surely want to visit.

I had it in my head that an Arts Centre must include some public exhibition space, and maybe a café, which would make access easy. I was wrong there: it turned out to be a converted church, not an exhibition space but a performance venue, open on selected evenings (for a programme including some folk music events we would gladly have attended, had we been hanging about for the next few months). But the Box Office was open now, so we went in. The staff within seemed a bit surprised to be told "I hear you have the best toilets in Essex, could we see them?" (I can't imaging why) but one of them was willing to give us the tour, and very generous with his time.

We started with the backstage facilities. These are palatial, and fully functional:

I feel a little guilty to have sneaked this picture of our guide, who was careful not to allow his reflection to intrude in those mirrors:

I hope he will forgive me for including him in soft-focus background, alongside the ceramic image of his younger self. The project was rooted in the community not only by inviting the public to contribute their broken china and discarded pennies, but also by the creation of a number of specially printed designs incorporating ephemera from the history of the Arts Centre: press cuttings, advertising, tickets, photographs... In this case, the plate on the right incorporates a photograph of a band rehearsing at the Centre, and that's me on the left...

I love these single colour borders - maybe even better than the portrait of Esturiana herseld. Nonetheless, if the full-length figure is your preferred mode, there are plenty of local references in this one:

A musician, who better, to represent this music venue, but a figure based on an image which is part of the existing church fabric:

An androgynous figure, but based on Saint Joan, with - what? something percussive, perhaps? - substituted for her sword and a lute (I think) for her lance. Beneath her feet, the motto Never Knowingly Understood is a nod to the Arts' Centre's own Tony Roberts. The mosaic relies on large areas of white, neatly created by reversing the pottery to show the undersites of dishes, the blanl white strewn with the makers' marks.

What is Joan of Arc doing in Colchester? I have no idea, but her window is opposite one depicting Saint Helena who is the patron saint of Colchester: is there a sort of symmetry there?