Distraction

People to Place

 

Distraction found in a Hobbycraft visit

I didn’t get an interview for the ‘Home in Cliftonville’ commission. A disappointment but I am glad that I put in for it. It gave me a fuller picture of my project, looking at the budget, outcomes, timing etc. It would have been very interesting to work on, but instead I shall enjoy concentrating on existing leads and using my updated CV and artists’ statement to help me prepare for funding applications. I have another funding workshop to attend next week in Margate, which should focus my efforts. It is at Bernie’s Chocolate Bar again, so I am hoping I will not be too distracted by chocolate!

Distraction is a useful tool. I employ it quite regularly under the guise of ‘inspirational visits’. Often it is a trip to the Turner Contemporary, but on Monday it was a trip to ‘Hobbycraft’. So many things! On two floors! It was a wonderful place to go and see what were out there, what things people could buy that allows them to express themselves creatively. I could understand the attraction of becoming a jewellery maker, card maker, florist, cake decorator etc. It all looked possible. There were aisles and aisles of creative stuff to buy.

I even thought for a minute that I should be making and selling stuff. There it was in all its component form, perhaps I could do well at putting things together…However, I want to create a walking project which is intangible unless experienced. Therefore it is hard to sell. My project will allow people to reconnect with place, it has a big aim, I want people to be happy, healthy and feel part of a place. But it might be easier to sell a product.

A sustainable non mass produced or imported beautiful object.

Productize

This sounds very American. If I could sell my idea through a product, where people could understand it, then it could be marketed, seen and understood.

I plan to create site specific land art on the route, produce maps of the location, design and locate traditional way-markers etc. All of these products could have the route’s brand identity on it and the experiences of the users could be uploaded onto a website. These could all be marketed as products and the sales would help the project become sustainable. I have to get past my cynicism of creating products to be consumed for the sake of it. Perhaps if I looked at this more positively I could come up with a selection of products that relate to the walk that were handmade and individual which people would like to buy. It would be wonderful to create salt from the seawater at Whistable, which could be put in a handmade container and sold. Perhaps people would like to carry it along the Salt Way route with them; this could create awareness, a ritualised layer of intent, which I would like my products to possess.  In fact I could commission a range of artefacts which embody the place; these would be precious and not disposable. People may buy them for their symbolic value alone. For me this would be a better way to offer a sellable product than making something out of mass-produced creative components.

More natural beauty, in detail.

Mad dogs and Englishmen.

Well, two ladies and a dog went out in the midday sun. We started walking much earlier and by midday, it was hot!  We walked along the now familiar path that takes you off the entrance way and out and up towards the horizon.

An inland view of the horizon, with deep track marks.

We had had great rain showers the previous day, with an overcast sky, yet now, it was bright blue with little white fluffy clouds, this set off the horizon line and reminded me of a wonderful BBC Radio Four programme which I had been recommended to listen to on Monday. It was called ‘Playing the Skyline’. Radio producer Julian May was inspired by seeing old nautical charts at Greenwich Maritime Museum and commissioned this series. Courtney Pine and Anna Meredith create musical compositions based on the London skyline in the first episode. This looking at the landscape in a creative way is so very close to my heart, that I thank Helen for recognising that it was something I needed to hear. I have often wondered what the landscape could sound like. When I was in Scotland earlier this year, I could hear and feel the hum of its wild energy. A friend said she has hear the clarion calls of the mountains, I can imagine that. The horizon is a calling. When we walked on this hot sunny day, we walked down towards the sea and came across a couple of low ridges between us and the longer view. It was almost an animalistic urge that made us carry on walking, in that heat, up to the ridge to see over and know where we were.

Walking amongst buzzing bees and colourful butterflies.

Familiarity

It was a conscious decision to walk the same route again. I want to research whether walking a familiar route allows a deeper understanding of the place. I believe it does, but I would like to document it too. Even in the week since we last visited the wood, time had left its imprint on the land. The grasses were drier and lighter in colour, the purple pollen seen on one type had all blown away and clover had become taller along the edges of the path. I have never seen such tall clover! 

Tall, abundant Clover lines either side of the path on the open ground.

Seeing the place in bright morning light was a different experience to walking up there with my family one beautiful evening earlier in the week. I wonder whether it is just an acknowledgement of the details that create a new view. This could be seen in our daily attitude to life in general. William Blake understood this thought.

‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand, and a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.’

He wrote of Imagination. This is something I highly value, which seems financially worthless in the world today. As a designer and artist, I live on this, both for inspiration of the physical breathing kind and as a source needed to create an artistic output.  

The path took us to a cooler established wood, with dappled light and 'bitey' woodants.

Imagination

‘The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity…and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.’

Another William Blake quote. His writing was inspired by his locality and observations. I read that over the course of his life, he only once traveled any further than a day’s walk outside London. This seems unimaginable today, with our wide transport network and choice of travel. The opportunity to get out and see more, further afield, perhaps has blinded us to the place in which we live. Exploring a familiar route over varying times of day and throughout the seasons of year can be a rich experience that I believe will encourage us to feel more ‘grounded’ in our habitat. We are, after all, animals and our knowledge of our territory can only make us stronger, more resilient and content.

My ‘People to Place’ project is initially about route-finding, then the path is way-marked and then if walked regularly, it becomes your own. The path becomes a way in to the landscape, this entry point to a journey is very significant, it focuses the mind, becoming relaxed with the familiarity of place allowing more information to be taken on board. Familiarity allows the survival ‘fight or flight’ element of being in a new place to be relaxed. I want the paths that I help create to be about discovery, safety and enjoyment. It’s that simple; Connecting people to place.

Noticing the sun shining through the green leaves was an inspiration.

(I completed my MA last September and recorded the last two months of it in another blog called thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

Please feel free to look at that anytime, as it is from that, that I am where I am now.)