weaving the willow (Knot Garden 2015/2017)

 

It’s been a couple of years since I wove willow around blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) stumps near the chalk pond at Stave Hill Ecological Park. That summer it looked something like what you see pictured above.

Nettles, garlic mustard and goosegrass were abundant and later on taken by new blackthorn shoots. This year I cut is all these back, ahead of birds nesting in the new thicket, and added freshly cut willow styakes from a pollarded fence nearby to the existing low fedges – see also this post from more info and images.

I might weave a few more stakes before the new spring growth prevents me from doing so and hides the work once again. I’m hoping this time to make a better job of documenting the transformation on the ground in the coming months. Keep you posted… 

time to sit back and do nothing

Spring time gardening seems to be all about taking it easy. I’m spending more and more time as a resident artist at Stave Hill Ecological Park not doing anything else than observing the amazing transformation that is taking place there.

Remember the piece woven with willow rods from a pollarded hedge to create something of a knot garden? If not take a look at this previous post and compare photos taken then with those illustrated here. My thoughts at the time were to grow different herbs in the various sections created by the network of willow rods. Since then so many plants have come out of the ground there is no need for this - garlic mustard, purple nettles, goose grass, wild strawberry and dandelion to name but a few have colonised the place. I’ll ask Rebecca Clark when I next visit to help me identify more of these. With twenty six years experience working in the park there are very few I know she won’t be able to identify!

garlic mustard

more garlic mustard

purple nettles and dandelion

grass, an unwanted weed

All I’ve got to do now is enjoy the verdoyant sights and to do nothing, except maybe a little weeding to uproot the invasive grass. In a few weeks time I’ll be able to  harvest the edible plants and reap the rewards of my inactivity. Could life be any sweeter?

goose grass and wild strawberry

a mix of all above and tree saplings

making conversation / making connection

Dailymade #130107

Making sculpture can be at times very physically demanding, but gardening is worse and I’ve a sore back to prove it! I travelled to East Sussex yesterday to help out my old friend Julian Wild to plant a hornbeam hedge, and the digging and raking is wot done it.  Still, a few yoga stretches and the improvisation movement class I'm attending tomorrow with Florence Peake at Siobhan Davies will put this right I’m sure.  After spending the day working in the clearing of a wood, we rounded it off with a quick pint  in the village pub talking about art and work before I caught my train back to London.

Indeterminate System by Julian Wild
japanned hardwood, 270 x 170 x 90cm

Dailymade #130909

We discussed making by instruction, something I've been thinking about in recent projects, made more pertinent since I've started working on a 'teach-yourself sculpture' book (see previous post). We also discussed the idea of creative collaboration (see also collaborating with myself and don't tell me, show me!) which led me to suggest to Julian that we develop a piece of work by exchanging something we've made, or maybe even an idea, then transforming it in some way, before handing it back and repeating this process.  It’ll be something of a game of creative chinese whispers, a conversation through making, until both of us have a sense that something have been achieved or resolved, even if it's only a reflection on the creative journey we’ve travelled.

Another World Wide Web
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney

Making the Connection by Julian Wild
Ironbridge

My reasons for wanting to partner with Julian may not be so obvious; he works almost exclusively in metal these days, I work in anything but that.  Julian mostly creates large scale sculptures with a leaning towards the monumental, I tend to make ephemeral objects and installations, often as a result of collaborative processes that have a performative element.  Despite these differences, we share a common visual language, as illustrated in the works pictured here. In short, our work demonstrates an interest in pattern and geometry, mostly explored through the use of lines, whether welded, assembled or woven. I'm excited to see what this process will generate given the differences in our material approach.

Making the Connection by Julian Wild
Cass Sculpture Foundation

Panoramic Pathways
Nottingham Castle Museum

So, let's get this creative conversation going.  Below is what I’m handing over to Julian, not an object but an instruction.  Let's see what comes back...

Dailymade #131114

green-fingered making

I've spent a fair bit of time this last week writing a synopsis for a book on sculpture in order to meet a publisher’s deadline.  This done, I am going through some notes taken recently during landscape gardener Dan Pearson’s Sunday sermon for The School of Life at Conway Hall and drawing parallels between gardening and making. Using plant materials for weaving as I do I am already tuned in to the connection between gardening and making, but I’m now asking myself the following questions: is gardening a form of making, or is making is a form of gardening?

Dan's subject was commitment, a word which has many negative associations - obligation, liability, restriction of freedom... He proceeded to demystify this by talking us through his own associations with the word with relation gardening. Below is a transcription of the notes I took during his speech where I’ve taken the liberty to replace the word 'gardening' with 'making' (I hope Dan won't mind) in order to address the question above.

craft - practical knowledge is acquired through doing

knowledge – making shows us a slower ongoing continuity which contrasts with our increasingly fractured accumulation of knowledge

process – making completely absorbs us in an activity / process is pleasure

investment – making is rewarding in itself / making give us a sense of things being ever changing

dreaming – we make in order to dream

contemplation – making makes us appreciate slower rhythms

control – editing and deciding what is important is unavoidable when making

planning – making requires you to keep an eye on the future

timing – making requires us to be in the moment as things might only happen once and for a very short period of time

sowing – making provides us with a sense of evolution

faith and hope – seeing a bright side of a wet summer (which allows things to grow and mature)

the micro and the macro – making brings together the past, the present and the future (in a borrowed landscape)

grieving – making is not about beginnings or endings but about process, change and transformation / making gives you a chance to recreate yourself

acceptance – nature will claim what you have made

connection –  making connects memories and the future in unusual ways

Reading the list above I realise these provide a much needed antidote to the fetishisation of objects that is all too common in the visual arts - taking time, allowing things to grow and change, creating connections with materials, history and the environment are fundamental. Now wouldn't these topics make great chapter headings for my how-to book on making and sculpture? 

pictures above are of Dan Pearson's Long Border, 

designed for his exhibition Green Fuse at the Garden Museum,

and taken on September 1st, 2013.

make bindweed a bonus

for information on twining and other basketry techniques using hedgerow
and recycled materials, see Practical Basketry Techniques

I made a basket last week using bindweed, the parasitic plant that is the bane of gardeners. I had no idea what it would be like to weave with, but once stripped of its leaves, dried and soaked again, it proved ideal to work with. I posted what I made on dailymades and twitter and this prompted such interest from makers and gardeners alike, I collected more to experiment with.

The basket above drew inspiration from a twining project included Practical Basketry Techniques. I next use a bunch of coffee stirrers and bindweed to twine with, inspired by a recent 3D doodle also posted on dailymades.

Experimenting directly with the materials and allowing for their physical characteristics to determine the  shape and pattern of the objects I made was a real adventure. Seeing the Thomas Heatherwick show at the Victoria and Albert Museum at the time I was making these also framed my thinking. As written in the exhibition literature, Heatherwick Studio 'investigate the physical behaviour of materials and celebrate the creative potential of an action or a single moment'. Their ‘creative process becomes one of choosing rather than designing’. So, it is no longer a matter of ‘form over function’ or 'function over form', as material now also has to be thrown into the equation!  Hmmm...

Now for the science bit.  If you are interested in working with bindweed, here are a couple of essential tips:

1. Allow the bindweed to mellow for a day also before stripping the leaves.  The plant material will have softened by then reducing the amount of breakage as you strip. 

2. Coil the stems and allow to dry for 2/3 days before using.  Simply soak in water for a couple of hours before weaving.  NB: Using hot/warm water will reduce the soaking time and bring out the colour in the bindweed.

So, all that's left to say is best with your weeding and weaving...