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.)