Migration

Migration

World Migratory Bird Day was set up in 2006 by the United Nations. It was initiated to highlight and celebrate migratory birds and the phenomenon of bird migration. A friend told me about WMBD,about a year ago and showed me the marvellous posters that advertise it.

An image from the WMBD website.

We decided to work together on some ‘birdy/journey’ artwork that we could then exhibit and bring this event to the attention of a wider set of people. We thought we could make some sellable artwork too, as the posters were well designed and a marketing tie-in would help us all. Over time this led to another couple of artists joining us and we excitedly watched ‘Winged Migration’ together.

This clip is one of my favourite parts of the film, along with the eerily beautiful vocals from the ‘Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares’.

It is called 'The Return of the Cranes’,

After watching the film, all of us more deeply appreciated the beauty and resilience of birds and the incredible journeys that they take, it  was staggering to realise that some birds fly for thousands of miles at heights of up to 3000 feet!

The Easterly direction from which the Brent Geese came.

We have continued to work together and I feel our artwork on display now, as part of the Canterbury Festival, reflects this wonder of birds, journeys, connectedness and resilience.

As I continued to work on my 'People-to-Place' project, I recognised that the bird/journey artwork was very relevant as I had, in my MA research touched upon human migration and the paths they took to move seasonally from one place to another. These routes were what I was now looking for in the environment, in my bid to reconnect people to the places that they live in. Native peoples would have been more aware of migrations as they had to be more connected to where they lived, for their very survival and so, observed and understood seasonal changes in their environment.  We may have lost that knowledge and understanding as we have ‘evolved’ as a species, but, birds and the sheer endurance required to complete their long migrations filled me with awe.

Brent Geese

On Monday this week, I went with a friend for a long walk along Seasalter beach.

Looking towards the Isle of Sheppey, Seasalter Beach.

As I was walking on the foreshore, I thought I could see the white tops of waves towards the estuary, all along the horizon. It was only when we got closer that we saw the white shapes were in fact white tails of numerous floating birds.

Brent Geese, close to the shore.

They were facing due West, into the wind and were fairly quiet. As we walked back to the car, I asked a birdwatcher what they were. ‘Brent Geese’, he said. ‘All the way from Siberia, they prefer our winters.’ When I looked them up this morning on ‘Google’ that I realised they had flown 2,500 miles, following the coastline from northern Russia.

Could this be their tracks?

They will now be our guests, increasing in numbers up to January, mainly eating the inter-tidal eel grass, Zostera spp. leaving our shores in late February; they fly for over 3 months, to return to the Arctic tundra in June.  My father-in-law regularly digs along the intertidal area of the north Kent coast, (for archaeological finds, not bait), and often tells me of the birds he sees.

Looking for clues.

He goes out when the tide is right, all throughout the year and has become very aware of the passing through of many species of birds. Through his passion for archaeology, he is deeply connected to the tides, seasons and migratory habits of the birds in that area. He knows where the eel grass grows that the Brent geese favour, whether it’s a good year for it and all the other plants that live on the marshes. His regular connection with the landscape has given him specific knowledge of the area.

The sign for the 'Saxon Shore Way' path, leading around the Kent coast.

Journeys

I have always loved a journey; it is the path to the destination and a part of the whole experience. I like to explore a map and plan a route, look for landmarks and feel confident I can find my way home/back. I use the same method whether I am driving a car or walking. (I don’t use sat-nav.)

Sheep following a well worn path.

I feel that movement in itself can be remembered, sometimes as much as the physical landmarks. Walking up a hill will be remembered in the muscles of my body, where it felt easy, where I overstretched, where I rested etc. I wonder whether the physical act of walking along a route regularly enough physically and mentally connects us with the environment.

The choice of paths at Seasalter, along the grass or walking along the seashore.

 

Walking along the beach means having to step over every groyne.

I remember reading while researching for my MA that there is a link with movement and body memory. Just as we know that people can learn in a variety of ways, including kinaesthetic, then the act of walking may in itself allow us to learn whilst moving. I will experiment with this, in the next week I may try to learn a new poem whilst walking the same route regularly.

Close up of a groyne post, often holding small pebble treasures in its weathered wide grain.

I know, as a keen dancer, that the more I know a piece of music, the easier the moves within it become. The journey of the dance is led by the music. The music reminds my body of what way to go and what to do. Again, I think back to the ‘Songlines’, the navigable but invisible tracks in the land that allow Australian aborigines to walk for many hundreds of miles through their homeland.  These Songlines were memorised in an oral and aural tradition and used to tell stories of the earth’s creation. The people would walk the path and journey along the Songlines to a piece of narration in the form of a song, importantly the song is set to the speed of the walk itself. This reminds me of my body’s awareness when I dance. Subconsciously it remembers the music, the movements and the full dance. It is in the physical muscle of the body and in the memory of the sound. The dance movements release or realise the journey of the music.

Journeying

This is something I like to do; it is a deep, rewarding human activity and common practice to all indigenous societies throughout history. To journey in a shamanic way is to visit other landscapes, where the destination is unknown, but a clear intention can bring you to the right place. Shamanic journeys stay vivid in your mind, unlike a dream which is intangible and easy to forget. Listening to the sound of the drum which accompanies journeying allows for a more intense experience which gets into our subconscious mind. I may write more about this another time.

Big sky.

(I completed my MA in September 2014 and recorded the last two months of it in another blog called www.thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

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

Pathfinding

Pathfinding

A path is needed if we are to traverse an area regularly. For my ‘People-to-Place’ projects I want that to be an initial and essential part of working with the community. The route of the path when found, is the physical link to connect people to their locality. Route-finding is a very exciting part of early exploration of an area.

Walking in woodland, along a path.

To walk through urban and rural areas allows us an opportunity to steadily discover our surroundings, at a pace that informs and integrates the information at every footfall. It is something that we naturally do if we are visiting a new area, especially when we are away on holiday. We walk out and find the local amenities, bar, beach etc. Maybe we feel we have more time to discover things for ourselves when we are away, it may also feel like a kind of conquest, a feeling of wanting to feel in control of at least our knowledge of where we are, even if we don’t speak the language. It could be seen as a form of communication in itself.

 

The concrete promenade that edges this part of the Kent coast.

Walking around, trying to understand the place and connecting ourselves to the locality is an initial way that we use to build up knowledge and layer our understanding of an area.

The promenade along the beach in Whitstable is a good example of this.

Over the last few years, as the town has become more and more popular, there have been more people walking along the prom towards Herne Bay. They are walking along the coast to discover their surroundings, to put themselves in a geographical context. This would have been essential to us as early man. We would have had to explore our locality to see what food, shelter and dangers existed. Seasonal excursions would have allowed people to recognise important landmarks, for example the sight of spring blossom in one area would have been remembered, so that fruit could be found in the Autumn, tracks of animals would have been noted, routes of birds, high ground for observation etc. The whole locality would have been mapped in their minds and this was essential to their survival. A favourite route may have taken in many of these aspects and here is a thought, maybe we had ‘Songlines’ too, akin to the aborigines of Australia. Maybe we too had a method for recording this information in the form of song as we traversed the area on foot, at walking pace. That knowledge has been forgotten in our culture, but we could create a new form…

My Path

On a more domestic personal scale, the route that I use to my studio has been formalised and the path finished. I am really pleased with it. It has taken us just over a month of our spare time to find the correct route, mark up the edges, take the turf up and dig down to create a strong foundation in our heavy clay soil.

Detail of new path

Now it is complete. We used what we could salvage, a similar task to creating 'Green Build Tankerton', the straw bale studio that lies at the end of the path. We were given about 20 old concrete slabs; we found about 20 bricks in other areas of our garden and finally found a use for many very heavy fire bricks that we salvaged from dismantled electrical storage heaters.(We were intending to use them as a base for a cob built pizza oven, but that will have to wait.)

Fishbone looking path.

The different coloured paving slabs and bricks looked good but didn’t fill the space in its entirety so we finally found a use for my many, many collections of pebble, shells, pottery pieces, clay tiles and other wonderful pieces!

 

Flint collection with interesting markings.

I embedded them in the cement as carefully as I had dug them out of the earth in the past. It felt like reverse archaeology.

Fossils finds from Redcar beach, Easter 2014.

Especially when I embedded the large fossil finds from Redcar beach into the cement. I am especially pleased with the ceramic pottery finds from Conyer, near Sittingbourne in Kent.

Victorian pot and glass bottle base.

Conyer once had a thriving brick making industry, which emerged in the nineteenth century and was finished by the 1960s. Thames barges when fully loaded could carry 40,000 bricks in them. These bricks were urgently needed in London for the Victorian housing ‘boom’.

Pottery shards, some from Conyer, some from our garden and Seasalter and Swaleciffe beaches.

The areas from which I dug up my treasures are the remains of creek-side embankments that were built from London waste. The waste was carried on the barges as ballast and would also have had a price for being cargo. There is a really good book written by an old family friend called Don Sattin, that tells the story of the barge building village of Conyer, called ‘Just off the Swale’.

Uncle Dons' book on Conyer.

 

When I was young I remember going for walks around the old brickfields and can remember seeing industrial remains of the old tram tracks etc.  More than once we watched the raft race from the embankments and cheered as we saw our uncle and other family members merrily sinking into the Swale. I think even at that young age I was aware of what I was standing on, coloured pottery shards and interesting glass medicine bottles would be poking out of the earth spoil but I wasn’t encouraged to dig them out.

Camp Coffee glass bottle and pottery bottle.

My grandma once decorated an old clay urn with small fragments of broken patterned pottery, I loved its chaos, it was so ugly but enchanting. It still stands in my parents’ porch and holds old wooden walking sticks made on our long country walks that I remember even now.

Embedding the finds in was akin to doing reverse archaeology.

Found objects

The pottery I searched for as a child, as a teenager and as an adult has always fascinated me. Victorian Britain wasn’t as much as a throw away society as much as we are. They could never have understood how we are now able to dispose of something because it has either, been made as a single use item or is just not wanted anymore.

 

One collection embedded in cement.

When I used to dig up the broken pieces of pots, teacups, plates etc, I used to imagine the terrible moment that that thing was broken. What happened? Had they tried to mend it? How many times had they mended it? At what point had they realised they had to throw it away? I am not the only artist to be fascinated by domestic rubbish and the human stories that lie behind the fragments of artefacts. There is an artist called Mark Dion who in 1999 worked on a project titled ‘Tate Thames Dig’. 

 

Mark Dions' book of submarine treasures.

He worked with many volunteers and found a multitude of pieces of broken pottery, glass, bone etc along the foreshore of the Thames. These he then organised ‘in the field’, cleaning and recording the finds, putting them into categories and finally exhibiting a selection of these into a 12 foot long curiosity cabinet. All of the processes were recorded and are shown in his book ‘Archaeology’. So, with validation of Mark Dion to see discovery and collection as a fundamental observation method along with the artist Mark Hearld validating the seeking out of curious finds in charity and salvage shops as inspiring his new work, I feel quite vindicated of any anti social habits of discovering and collecting stuff. Exploring, discovering and collecting is a natural path for anyone curious about the world we live in and it is this path that I will continue to follow.

My Path, traversing a curious collection of artefacts.

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

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

Autumn

 Autumn

I am going to start this blog with a quote from a friend, Alison Lees, who, as a fellow artist is incredibly sensitive to her surroundings and aware of the changes that the seasons bring.

‘Yesterday as I was outside, I noticed a particular movement in the trees. We looked up and stared and it was very clear, right then and there that Autumn walked in! Amazing and beautiful.’

Autumn always brings with it mixed feelings for me. I am disappointed by the darker shorter days and the general chilliness in the air, but I am enthralled by the beautiful display of colour in the foliage of both the trees and plants.

Early morning autumn sunlight on the wibbly-wobbly walls.

Autumn sunlight is low and sharp. It glows. This morning it shone on the side of our wibbly-wobbly straw bale garden studio and it highlighted the texture of the wall, the brushstrokes of the lime-wash and the beauty of the plum tree in its shadow form.

 

Shadow plum tree on cob rendered walls.

I find this time of year is a good time to focus on the detail, the wonder of it all, as we go into a slower mode of being.

 

Detail.

Autumn slows me down. It feels like there is less time to want to fit ‘it’ all in. I look forward to the darker evenings so that I can get cosy in the house and not expect so much of myself.

Pace

Autumn is my slow down signal. I always used to try and ‘keep the pace’ up at this time, but now I tend to recognise that I need to slow down. If I don’t, I start getting the inevitable cold and cough and then things quickly start to go pear shape. That is one of the great things about walking, it is all about pace. Walking pace is, as a human, our natural speed to observe and understand our surroundings.

Last week I collected my first sweet chestnuts of the season, these were found by remembering where I saw the trees last year, walking up to and around them and looking down into the recent leaf litter and spying the bright green spiky balls. This can't be done virtually, digitally or any other way than to be present. I had to go there myself and seek them out.

One of Jo Barkers harvest mandalas, not chestnuts, but beautiful.

In making this decision to go and harvest these seasons’ gifts I was allowing myself the time and the commitment to be there, to pace myself to the season, to walk, look, recognise and gather. It could be seen as a bit trivial, but I believe the more we engage with the land around us in a seasonal way the more we begin to appreciate our connection with it and nature itself. In this time of gathering in the harvest in preparation for the colder darker days ahead it is only honest to recognise that we too are animals and will need to change our behaviour in tune with the seasons.

Process

It is with interest that I type this word and only just now, realise that that it has two meanings. I was going to write about the process of preparing a body of new work for the imminent Artists Open Studio event that starts next week. But as I wrote the word, I read it as process, as in to ‘walk in procession’. Both are about movement, the first one is a movement of thought that takes ideas through a series of changes to become something else. The ‘walk in procession’, speaks for itself, it is movement.

 

Above are two paintings reflecting the spirit of that place. Top- Canterbury Catherdral, Bottom- St. Margarets' Bay.

The project that I am working on is about how people connect to place through walking. This will involve them encountering exterior space as they walk. Trained as a spatial designer, I know the influence of how an interior space can influence the mood of someone either walking into/through it or spending some time in the space.

Detail of 'Cathedral secrets'. Playful movement.

Just imagine if we all became re-tuned in to our outside environments.

We may be able to recognise the ‘tricks’ of the trade; use of colour, finish, proportion etc that retail designers, for example use on us. We gradually lose this ability to see, the more familiar and safe we feel in that environment. Major supermarket chains use these tricks to allow us to choose our ‘favorite’ store and therefore feel safe enough to spend our money there, on a regular basis. If we were able to learn to recognise, at a walking pace, all that nature, the land and the changing seasons had to offer, we could become much richer without spending a penny!

Playing

The process that I have found to be the most successful with creating a new body of work is very playful. I have looked to my older original paintings to inspire me.

 

'I Dream', original painting.

I have always painted freely. I have never come to the canvas with a preconceived idea of what to paint, I wouldn't know what to choose for a start! I like the meditative quality of painting; the choosing of the colours, the paintbrush size, the way I mix paints together, the flow. So, in looking to my existing paintings for inspiration I came across a series of ‘motifs’ that frequently occur in my work. These are trees, birds and paths.

 

Working with motifs.

So I set out to simplify the originals by tracing over them, creating a basic line drawing from the positive and negative spaces on the canvas.I have written about this way of looking before, 'the space between'.

 

Looking at positive and negative space.

These I reduced down and then used carbon paper to transfer onto another material to colour in. The whole process has been like a form of Chinese whispers. The end result has been a joy to colour in with no overarching angst, just a playful experiment. The pace of the work has suited the season. It has transformed an older image into something simpler, quite new and fresh.

Working from my original designs.

I have started a Facebook page with a pseudonym, why? well why not? It is playful and fun. It can be found here.

Poetry

As the evenings get darker I find that I start to look for good poetry pieces to snuggle up with, as I get cosy. They can be beautiful to look at too, as the next photo shows.

 

These are Native American Lyrics; poetical verse.

I suppose that the words could be seen as processing across the page. Now that’s a thought…

I wanted to leave you with one other, a quote by Yeats but I cant find the correct words, it goes something like this ; to read a good poem in January is equal to a summers walk in June.

But in researching the correct words I came across these instead;

‘We live in a fast-paced society. Walking slows us down.’ Robert Sweetgall 

That will do, point made. I am off now for a walk.

(I completed my MA in September 2013 and recorded the last two months of it in another blog called www.thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

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