#My Biosphere: Frauke Watson

In our regular feature in Isle of Man Newspapers, authors from different walks of Manx life offer a personal perspective on #MyBiosphere. This month, Frauke Watson, a German Manx-speaking multi-media artist working with found objects, writes:

Ancestry runs deep in me, it appears.

On my mother’s side, I come from a dynasty of bargemen and owners on the River Elbe in Germany.

My father, too, loved the river, but his heart belonged to the sea, so all our holidays were spent on the Danish or Norwegian coast. To this day, I feel somewhat uncomfortable too far away from a large body of water. Perhaps it was a small wonder, then, that I married a mariner.

When we came to the Isle of Man in 2010, I immediately felt comfortable here, although I had never lived in Britain and this Island was very unlike my own place of birth, or in fact the Pacific coast of California and the hinterlands of the French Riviera, where we had spent the previous 20 years.

I came with good reason, it turns out. Last year I took a DNA test, on a lark, and learned to my complete surprise that almost 50% of my heritage comes from the British Isles - and of that, mostly the Gaelic part.

And the funniest thing was that at that time, I was already fluent in Manx. So, as my husband says, I really have come home.

Shortly after our arrival, I decided to support the struggle of Manx Gaelic, for had I stayed in northern Germany, I would have done the same thing for my own mother tongue, Low German.

I say mother tongue but when I was little, children were as actively discouraged from ruining our prospects with learning a “dying” language as the Manx people. All I could do was listen, and I listened avidly.

Hence, while I understand and read “Plattdeutsch” perfectly, my speaking level is, unfortunately, relatively low.

We know now how wrong this sort of thinking is: The more languages you have some knowledge of, the better for your general brain development and creativity. I can say this with confidence because I worked as a translator for 25 years, and I speak/read/muddle my way through roughly nine languages.

So Gaelg aboo – hurray for Manx – and many congratulations for having evolved from an officially dead to a ‘merely’ endangered language.

And the Island itself – what can I say! What a privilege to live in a UNESCO Biosphere. It is becoming more and more worthy of its name every year. Back when we arrived, the place was a Mecca for rubbish collectors and I was heartbroken to see layers of layers of human debris on the beaches and in the roads. This has changed to an astonishing degree.

As an artist, my focus has always been recycled and discarded material, and thanks to efforts like the Beach Buddies, the Island’s beaches are now practically pristine.

Ten years ago, my car was full of trash for larger artworks after a beach walk, but no longer.

It was somewhat lucky, then, that due to some serious injuries on both my wrists, I am now more and more focusing on smaller things. Most of all, I am returning to my first love, jewellery as art.

I am strongly influenced by Modern Art of the early and mid-20th century – in terms of jewellery, my absolute hero is Alexander Calder. My art is evolving with the Island and with what is available – now, more and more, crockery chips and pebbles.

There, I reckon I will never run out…

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An example of Frauke's artistic work