Showtime!

Still from one of the films made for my MA.

Finishing off and reflecting

Next week I shall be putting up my MA show. It is held in the Architecture building of UCA Canterbury, a surprisingly uninspiring space for any learning or presentation.

In the meantime I have to finish all the presentation materials that I hope to display, last week I handed in the last piece of written work that was required for the course. The Critical paper was fairly short, in words, but had to be concise and reflect on my final project which took a lot of photographs, drawings and film, so it became a fairly lengthy document.

To date there are four films that are on my Youtube Channel ‘Trace and Traversal’. Sharing the films on Youtube was the best way to publicly ‘air’ them. I hope to have two of these films running at my show. ‘The Summer Solstice full-moon walk on the Salt Way’ film has been edited by Erin Lauren-Hayhow and I find it beautifully mesmerising. This will hopefully be run on a loop, it has background sound but that is ok to hear as low noise in the display area. Watch the film here.

Second still from a moving film...

The other film explaining about the Storywalk concept has a narration by Chris Jelley and I hope to have some earphones ready for people to ‘plug in’ to the film if they wish.

Watch his introduction to Storywalks here.

  

Last night I worked on the profile of the walk. It is a foam-board cut out representation of the topography, which will show the length of the path to scale showing the undulations of the landscape. This is unlike a geological cross-section, which would possibly run across the area along a set grid reference. My profile is constructed from using a website that enables me to pin-point locations on a map and obtain the longitude, latitude and heights above sea level. It has been very useful for plotting the route using many historic references to the Salt Way. The website is http://gridreferencefinder.com

Photographs of the smallest three scaled models

I have nearly finished three small-scaled studio models that are to be on display. These are a set, which represent the site-specific way-markers that I have designed for the Salt Way which tell the story of Salt-making in their construction. The models construction needed to be thought upon, I refer to this in an earlier blog, but I finally worked out a method and I think they look quite beautiful. I have always admired the work of Rachel Whiteread and during my research I have further researched and referred to her work.

Here is a link to an article on her 

Next is an except from my critical paper that explains the process of making the models.

‘I cast the models in the natural environment, firstly creating a negative of the form that I wanted, putting a square mould around it and filling with plaster of paris, creating a square imprinted form that when extracted also left a trace of its existence as a curious feature on the ground. I had initially planned to make the models in another way but experimenting with the process itself encouraged me to explore the idea of imprinting my models using a negative form instead, staying honest to the ideas of my project has highlighted on the importance of trace in the environment.’

My project has been about finding meaning in the landscape, looking at how I could create a design strategy to connect people to an unfamiliar place by their interaction with it in a variety of ways. I looked in depth at traces left in the landscape and our traversal through it.

This hopefully explains why I am contemplating calling my show and related publication (yet to be completed!) ‘Trace and Traversal.’

There is tonight and another full day left to finish that and many other pieces of work ready to display the following week. Wish me luck!

the natural growth of things

The 1986 Prospectus of Medway College of Design, the view is from the college, still easily recognizable today.

The Gulf Between

It may be surprising but I have steered away from creating Art for most of my working life. I put this down to choosing to go to Medway College of Design back in the late 1980’s. It was not an art and design college. The environment was very creative and we had great fun. I am still in contact with a lot of my friends from that time. I studied Spatial Design and we did ‘Visual Studies’ once a week, which was really the only 2D creative illustrative work that we produced. The timetable for the week was full time. We would go in for 5 full days and have work to carry out over the evenings and weekends. I loved it. Most of the work was either working from a brief to create a design and concept or learning basic draughting skills, using parallel-motion drawing-boards, set-squares, understanding perspective and many other graphic communication skills. Drawings, photos etc were all about getting the concept of your design over to others in a clear way.

There is nothing wrong in this, it has set me up well for a career in design, but has created a gulf in my mind between the idea of Art on one side and Design on the other. This gulf keeps being bridged more recently. It is something I recognise and am now allowing myself to explore.

A metaphor perhaps, whilst preoccupied with one thing, another (often a treasure)can be found. A pupae, discovered when I was sweeping the earth around the art installation. 

I chose to go back to the same place to study for my MA. Part of this was admittedly through nostalgia, another was that it was comparatively easy to travel to and had a MA course in Design. Ironically my research during the last couple of years has led me to more art that I had ever imagined would be useful in a design MA! I have created three way-markers for the Salt Way route that are site-specific art installations, or put another way, site-specific design interventions. Perhaps they are the same thing. I now understand that one informs the other, there may be no separation of discipline. But for 20 odd years I have believed that there is. So the realisation that actually it is all creativity and art may be used to communicate an idea is going to take a little longer, but I am getting there.

The scaled piece completed. When scaled up this would have trees planted around it in a circle.

This weekend I have created a half scale model in the woodland part of my garden of one of the way-markers. It is the first one in the series of three that celebrate the process of salt making. Bearing in mind the Salt Way is an ancient salt trading route, which has been forgotten in time I believed the markers could be a catalyst along the path that would not only show the way but also form a narrative, prompting questions and hopefully enthusiastic answers from the local community.

This is the area in which I would like to site the scaled up version of my design. Just above this woodland rill, on the flat ground.

I found the whole process of making this piece very meditative. Firstly I measured out the circle with a hoop and then cleared the inside of fallen leaves. This in itself, working in silence was a pleasure. I moved the hoop and made the diameter slightly larger as the bowl that I had chosen for the centre was larger than envisioned and therefore warranted a larger frame around it.

Then I dug a shallow recess in the earth and placed the bowl into it. The wind got up and blew the cleared leaves back into the circle. I then thought that as I was clearing the earth, I could do it in an archaeological excavation way, brushing the surface lightly and revealing a more solid surface below. In doing so, I saw that the earth that was gently brushed away was weighing heavy on the perimeter of leaves, holding them steady, allowing them less to blow around.

Detail of the dampened swept surface of the circle and the magical reflections in the water.

When I was happy with the clarity of the circle I went to fill the watering can up with water to pour into the centre bowl. As I did so I accidentally sprinkled some on the earth by the bowl. This took on a deeper colour emphasising the contrast between leaf strewn wooded floor and a specially cleared space. I decided then to deliberately sprinkle most of the water around the bowl, in the circle leaving a smaller quantity for the bowl itself. The water in the bowl settled and the overhanging branches and leaves from the surrounding Beech and Hornbeam were reflected in the water giving it a magical, detailed moving surface.

This way-marker is to be about the process of gathering and harvesting. Saltwater would have had to be collected to make salt. This way-marker is designed to honour that part of the process; there is a bowl in the centre to collect water and the plan is to plant trees around the circle and form them over the years to a vessel shape, a form that tapers out as it rises. I will choose native trees that have purposely been coppiced in the past in this area. The Blean woods, through which the Salt way travels on its way to Canterbury, are a remaining part of the Northwood that covered most of Kent in the past. These woods have been worked and coppicing was a method through which people have sustainably harvested wood for many different uses.

The Ash Dome by David Nash

David Nash is an artist that has created a living sculpture using Ash trees, his work is called ‘Ash Dome’ and located at Cae’n-y-Coed in Wales. The circle was planted in 1977 and now is shaped to his vision. Kew had an exhibition of his work between April 2012 and 2013 called A Natural Gallery and these photos are from their website.

Here is a photo from the exhibition,it shows his artwork communicating the idea of the concept.

Here is a link to some more.

http://www.kew.org/web-image/ash-dome5.htm?gallery=Ash-Dome-through-the-seasons

The photo of David Nash sketching in the wood looks really like he’s enjoying himself and it has inspired me to emulate that idea of capturing an image outside, in situ. I have decided I shall go and draw and paint my design later on today, literally bridging that gulf between art and design in my mind.

 

David Nash sketching in situ. 

I now realise from completing this blog and reflecting on my ideas, experience etc, that from trying to dig deeper into my understanding of Design, through studying it at this MA level, I have found the treasure that has been naturally growing in me:  Art. 

Capturing Words

A page from Hamish Fulton's 'Walking Through'.

This is the eighth blog so far. The children have broken up from school for the summer holidays and it is hot.

This heat makes sleeping through the night quite tricky and anytime spent awake at night has been filled with anxiety and constant musing on the Saltway project, my final critical reflective paper and a myriad of other things.

Last night I thought enough was enough and I wrote out a four-week timetable of what work (and play!) I wanted to fit into this limited time before the private show on the 30^th of August. This, coupled with the fact that I go to yoga on Thursday mornings helped me sleep far better and therefore feel much more relaxed now.

It was very exciting to receive a link today from Christopher Jelley to the edited film of the Storywalk that he wrote and we filmed last week. It is a really good film that explains the Storywalk concept succinctly alongside beautiful images of that balmy summer evenings’ entertainment.

I will put a link on here to it as soon as it goes live, which hopefully will be over the next few days.

I have been toying with the idea of creating a publication for the MA show that explains about the Salt Way in the form of an Artists book, a psycho-geographic account of the experience of travelling the path. This idea came from looking at a publication, which was lent to me by a friend, by Hamish Fulton. It is an A5 size landscape book called ‘Walking Through’.

There are just two photographs at the endpapers; the main content is handwritten text. The words are evocative of the experience, the layout spread across the page like a beautiful poem. I wonder is this how we mentally experience a place or is this the unique work of an artist? Do we walk and create words for what we see? Do explanations come to us so naturally we dismiss them as familiar and therefore redundant?

To look at another’s record of a walk and the experience that that represents feels like a gift to me. It allows me a glimpse into another world, into one that I too could participate in if I just honoured the sense of exploration and dived in. Just imagine what words would come from just a regular walk if we just looked, listened to our minds and wrote the words down.

Digging up some London Clay from the foreshore.

Soon I shall walk to the beach with my sons to see how far the tide has gone out. I need to collect some London Clay from the foreshore to use in at least one of my models that I am going to create for the MA show. I shall try and listen to the chatter of my mind and see if I can capture any of it in words when I get to the beach. Then I shall do the same exercise when I walk out to collect the clay. A major concern is that I will forget the words, so I may try and take a Dictaphone, notebook etc.

So, I am off to capture words and therefore capture a period in time. We are taking two new shrimping nets to try out in the sea and a bucket for my clay. The combination of nets and words reminds me of a section in one of my favourite books, ‘Sexing the Cherry’ by Jeannette Winterson. In this chapter Jordan helps people as ‘their words rising up, form a thick cloud over the city, which ever so often must be thoroughly cleansed. Men and women in balloons fly up…and, armed with mops and scrubbing brushes, do battle with the canopy of words trapped under the sun.’

Ok so not quite as I remembered, no (shrimping) nets for a start. They are trying to eradicate the words by scrubbing, not capturing them as I want to do. There is one last quote from the book that I find enchanting.

‘I was sorry to see the love sighs of young girls swept away. My companion though she told me it was strictly forbidden, caught a sonnet in a wooden box and gave it to me as a memento. If I open the box by the tiniest amount I may hear it, repeating itself endlessly as it is destined to do until someone sets it free.’

I will practice capturing words very soon, I will place them in a notebook and hopefully this exercise will inspire me to listen more to the walking chatter, that is informed by our observation of the world around us, keeping the odd precious one as a memento.

Reflecting and Creating

 

Christopher Jelley, telling the Salt Way Tale in situ. 

Creating a Storywalk and Reflecting in a Journal, or two... 

 I feel like I really am at the end now. I have started writing on the last page of (possibly) my last Reflective Journal. This feels like a pivotal moment.

Photos showing some pages from my many Reflective Journals

Reflective Journals, of which I have many, are notebooks, which as students we are encouraged to produce to record the research that is undertaken on the MA course. I have found that they are invaluable as tools to remind me of where I have come from in terms of my exploration of design ideas and give me a direction to focus on and pursue. Of course I could go and buy another sketchbook and start a new one, but it feels like this is the point at which I now slow down and stop.

I have found that writing it all out, sticking in articles/photocopies etc all in one place has really helped my research process. I can follow my train of thought easily.

I need to write a fairly short critical paper on my project, finalise preparation for the MA show and yet still think ahead, enough to see where this MA could take me.

 I feel the final project, which has focussed on The Salt Way in Whitstable, can be seen as a generic model for other paths which when revealed, create a valuable connection between people and land. I have visions of working with this route and many others around the country encouraging people to explore their local area. I want to see people who may not have been aware of their local heritage, especially that of trade routes, to feel proud and connected to the place in which they live.

I think the idea of rediscovering the history of local commodities and the distribution of this distinctive local product via trade routes is fascinating. The routes will still be there in most areas, but temporarily lost ‘on the ground’ and in people’s consciousness. I believe that to reinvigorate the path through gentle publicity using layers of visible and virtual interventions is my aim now. I want to improve on the design process that I have used during this research period and create a formula that has integrity and which can be applied to specific paths around the country, perhaps starting with all the Salt ways.

The starting point for the Storywalk created for the Salt Way.

Earlier this week, Christopher Jelley and I walked the section of the Salt Way over which he will produce a Storywalk. It was very hot. I showed him the route ‘on the ground’, as his only knowledge of it before was from my research paper, emails and Google maps. We drove to Blean and parked up in the shade and initially explored the church and graveyard. The heat of the day was intense as we walked along the Salt Way, but we were still able to focus on the job in hand and get some loose ends of the story tied up and yet start unravelling some others.

As we walked together in the evening sun we were treated to beautiful views from the Salt Way.

After a day or two, (luckily Chris and his family had come to stay with us for a week), he had woven the story together, creating an evocative ‘taster’ of a Storywalk for me. This can be used to promote what he does in Kent, as he mainly works in the West Country.

Yesterday, he put all the information into the Storywalk ‘engine’ that he uses, geo-located the chapters to site-specific story zones and got the story ready to go. That evening, after a trip to the beach hut and a swim in the sea, (his family were down on holiday after all), we all ventured back up to Blean church and ‘did’ the Storywalk together. This inaugural walk was filmed and more still photos were taken to add to this blog, our memories and the Storywalk itself, when it expands.

The sun created a stunning 'skydog',(scientific name parhelion), in these clouds.

I hope to be able to obtain funding to pay Chris to complete this Storywalk and create others along the route. His Storywalk along the Salt Way is the virtual intervention that I knew would complete the way-marking formula that I have designed for the MA. I wanted it to be invisible on the ground yet way-mark the route in a distinctive, creative form. These interventions could be layered on to many varied distance sections along the route. The Storywalks are accessed on mobile devices such as smart-phones and i-pads which I hope will encourage another type of user, a tech-familiar walker. The Storywalks will become a destination in their own way and leave only a trace in the memory of the walker, not on the ground. The experience will allow them to share the story out loud with their family and friends as they read the text and see the images provided at each chapter, which is triggered to open as the device is carried into another Storywalk ‘zone’ along the route.

Chris normally incorporates an activity into the story that the users can enjoy. This, in other stories in other places, has included making clocks out of found objects along the route, creating fairy charms to open gates and ringing a hidden bell in a tree. Only Time will tell what he has in store for the Salt Way!

Making and Doing

A photo from the earlier 'Fullmoon Solstice Saltway Ritualstic Walk' that evolved into a comfortable sitting-in-a-circle-around-a-fire 'event'.

(I love this archetypal image.)

To Do Lists

This episode is mostly about doing. I have been busy putting together the basics for my show to be held at the UCA Canterbury Campus, (week starting the 19^th of August.) So my lists are full of ‘do this’ and ‘do that’, with a timescale alongside which is either mostly ‘do-able’, or done! When I am in this mindset, I feel there is nothing better than being able to tick, physically or mentally, the job done once it is written on a list. I have been known to add recent, unplanned-for tasks to the lower part of an existing list, just so that I can tick them off!

An experimental plaster of paris model, shown sitting in the copper bowl which was used in the 'Fullmoon' event, just to show its scale.

I started off this week making an experimental plaster of paris model. This is part of my ‘to do’ list, to create 3 scaled models of my site-specific way-markers. I made a mould out of an empty Tetrapak carton, poured the mixture in and then as it started to dry, I imprinted a large circle on its surface using a plastic lid. I then used a small plastic ball to create the central depression, which depending on which model I am working on will represent two elements. The first will represent a clay vessel in which the seawater was gathered/harvested. The second will represent a copper bowl to symbolise a fire that would have been lit to create salt through the process of evaporation.

I worked on the outer edges of the circle imprinting grass heads and other organic matter to create a surface that could link with one of the actual sites in the landscape on the Saltway.

When the plaster was completely dry and I had stopped playing, I turned the mould over and out slipped the model. It reminded me of my Plastercast and Shakermaker childhood and felt very productive. But the crisp clean model that I wanted was not to be found, it looked like an early O-level preparation project, but what I did discover was that the underside of the model was perfect. Perfect as anything that could have been made out of a Tetrapak anyhow. The crease of the box was perceptible, it bore the traces of what it once was and I had an idea. The idea was to recognise that as my project looks at how we leave traces in the landscape, this is how I could create my model. I shall endeavour to create a scaled down negative of my model in the landscape and then take a mould from it. I don’t know quite how I shall do this but it feels like it is the right way to go about it.

The first paper stencil I used was for the colour blue. These stencils add up to create a chalk pavement way-marker.

Another element of the project that needed to be done before the show was to create a way-marker that can be put on the path itself to guide walkers through urban areas. My initial idea was for the marker to be sprayed on but this felt like a form of meaningless graffiti so I chose to use coloured chalks to give the path a transient ‘outing’. This approach means that if I choose to run any guided walks in the future, the start, middle and end parts within the urban environment could be temporarily way-marked.

These photos show the stencil for the colour green and the completed design. 

Working like this reminded me of another childhood favorite- Mary Poppins and the chalk drawings that Bert/Dick Van Dyke made. More information can be found here. 

Yesterday I created paper stencils for this. I quite enjoy breaking down an image into components; it is a method that is required when I have produced screenprints in the past.

The graphic I have designed for the Saltway incorporates three circles. These represent the three site-specific way-markers that I aim to create along the route. There will be two distinct versions of the ‘brand image’. The first one will be used for standard way-markers used along the route to literally point people in the right direction and this version will also be used for the surface chalked type.

The other version will be more of a ‘brand identity ‘stamp’. This one I will use on my business cards and the A5 booklet that I aim to produce which will be a psycho-geographical account of a specific section of the Saltway.

This photograph shows the comparison between my coloured paper design and the finished pavement graphic. Here it maybe easier to see the three circles as being representative of seawater collection, evaporation and saltcake production. 

So, lots to do and lots to make in a relatively short space of time. I haven’t mentioned the scaled section I want to make of the whole route, the film of the Storywalk taking place, the personalised map of the area and an accompanying aerial photograph…

In the meantime I will continue to look at my to do lists and my timescale and continue to add ‘done’ tasks to them so that I can happily tick them off!

The finished chalk design with shaky handwriting. This obviously needs to be improved upon, but I like the 'raw' feeling of it.

I have just found this link to a much more technological approach. I love this potentially subversive element of chalking on public surfaces.

Traversal and Trace

Large clay imprinted circle created as part of my first ritualistic walk for an event in the Whitstable Biennale, September 2012.

Imprint-

to produce (a mark or pattern) on a surface by pressure.

As the deadline looms for my MA final project, written paper and show I have found I am frequently in a state of general confusion. I wanted to write this blog earlier this week but I couldn't think exactly what to write about as there seems to be so much information collated over 2 years, now needing to be compiled into both a limited time-scale and final presentation.

I have been able to negotiate this confusion by revisiting my research paper and looking back over my reflective journals. In this way I have seen where I have come from and what direction I was heading to next.

There is a chapter in my research paper titled 'Traversal and Trace' which looks at how we move by walking, discovering our environment at a human pace and what traces we leave in the landscape as we pass through.

Earlier prefabrication of the clay circle in my studio, showing the imprinted decoration made using natural objects found on 'The Street', Whitstable. 

Deliberately leaving traces of our existence is possibly one of the things that we as humans want to do, it proves that 'we were here', it can be seen as our legacy. This can be seen in the micro occupations of early Beaker people, for example, who decorated their pottery with imprints of cord, comb, twigs etc to the macro occupations of the Romans, such as the super straight Stone Street in Kent.

I have studied two artists that have opposing views on leaving a trace. Richard long creates evidence of being in the landscape, for example an early piece of his art was called 'a line made by walking', which was just that. A photograph of it can be seen here. www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/long-a-line-made-by-walking-p07149

Hamish Fulton is another artist who walks in the landscape but he wants to 'leave no trace'. His art is based on the experience of the walk itself. Which can only be imagined by the viewer, his post-walk artworks are often large-scale graphic text interpretations of that experience. He recently had a wonderful exhibition at The Turner Contemporary. Here is a link to that.

www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/hamish-fulton

I have struggled throughout my project with the notion of how to physically way-mark the Salt Way and yet gently tread on the earth, 'leaving no trace'. Hopefully, by creating a series of 'earth kind' site specific artworks to act as way-markers and producing a digital site specific 'Storywalk' along a section of the route, this will become a creative solution to that earlier

dilemma.

 

A psycho-geographical recording of an earlier project within the MA. I am recording a walk in a number of different ways. Looking back, even here I am fascinated by traces and imprints, creating a collection of rubbings of suburban surfaces!  

So, now I need to leave this blog and get on with some preparation for my MA show. I want to create three models of my site specific artworks, to scale. In keeping with my interest in mark and imprint making in the environment I have decided I will experiment with Plaster of Paris. Using this as a fairly thick base for each model I will endeavor to imprint the surface. I hope to be able to use glass and copper too hopefully creating three beautiful precious looking objects. So watch this space, I am hoping that the actual action of moving forward with my project in a physical way will put any general confusion in my head into order!  

   

Weaving a Tale

A beautiful, intricate birds nest found on the grass in Blean churchyard.

 (...woven by a beak!)

The Salt-way Tales, a start...

My MA final project is about revealing the Salt Way as a significant trading route of the past and a place which we can still visit today to reconnect with the landscape around us.

I want people to find and explore the route easily. I have looked at how to mark the way by various means. There are two ways that I shall do this through a way-marking system. The first one is to place a series of site specific artworks along a section of the route that celebrate the process of salt-making itself. The second series of way-markers are of a more standard design.

Another way to encourage users to the path is to create a 'Storywalk', this is a means of engaging people with the path and their immediate environment by producing a story that is geo-located to a specific walk. This 'site-specific digital tale' can be viewed on a hand held device such as a smart phone or I-Pad.

Luckily, I know an award winning storyteller who has created a system himself to do this and is willing to help me.

I like the idea that this is another layering of meaning onto the landscape, but is produced without physically putting anything 'on the ground'. It leaves no trace in the landscape, only creating a memory path of the experience in the users imagination. Christopher Jelley lives in Somerset and is busy working on various Storywalk projects at a time. Find out more at Storywalks

I have sent over the bare bones of my Storywalk idea to him. The walk starts at Blean Church, just over halfway between Whitstable and Canterbury.

   Blean Churchyard looking out onto the Salt Way

It was here recently that I found on the grass a beautiful nest that had fallen from the tree above. My sons and I looked at the intricacy of the nest and wondered how birds could do this with their beaks. I would struggle to make anything half as lovely with my hands. The moss, sheeps wool, fine grasses, lichen, feathers and tiny twigs were woven round and around to form a tightly packed nest.

Detail of the nest

Looking back at my photos of this nest today as I was preparing the many photographs I had of the route to send Chris, I was struck by its beauty and the wonder of its creation.

As I sat at the computer trying to type Chris a basic explanation of my ideas for the Storywalk I recognised that this was how stories are made. A plan has to be made, 'ingredients' have to be found or discovered and then woven together to create a thing of wonder. Now when I think about the bare bones of my story, the plan is to bring a wise woman from Winchester along the Pilgrims way to Canterbury then up the Salt Way, past Blean church and out to the coast. The 'ingredients' include holy-water and salt!

 

An information board at the church. The church is dedicated to St. Cosmus and St. Damian, patrons saints of physicians and surgeons, (there are only 5 churches in the UK dedicated to these saints.)

Chris said he would work with my ideas and produce a story. I know he is an expert weaver of tales and hope that some of my ideas will inspire a tale that will be a joy to discover.