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.