willow weave / knot garden

A few weeks ago Rebeka Clark at Stave Hill Ecological Park mentioned that the willow hedge pictured below needed coppicing. The willow stems have put a heavy strain on the metal fence at the base of the pollarded willow after two years of growth that were periodically subjected to high winter winds.

So with the help of Tina Götschi and Jess Smulders-Cohen we started to cut down the hedge. We bundled up the shorter stems and used the longer ones to weave around the recently coppiced  black thorn shrubs at the other end of the park. We did this in several stages, illustrated below.

It’ll be interesting to see what will grow between the bent willow stems as Spring marches on. I suspect the weaving will disappear from sight only to reappear again in the autumn. At that point more willow might be added to elevate the lacy ground willow pattern into low hedges. Plants growing within this network of willow stems and black thorn stumps might give the appearance of a knot garden, albeit a very loosely structured one. We'll just have to wait and see.

it ain't nothing without you...

'Art isn't what you make, but what you make happen'
- Jeremy Deller

When working on participatory projects, the challenge always is to know how much information to impart to the participants. Saying too much can result in diminished creative input from the group. So how do you get the most from the participants? How do you best capitalise on their creative ambitions while also managing artistic control over the piece? How do you make on the spot decisions when exploring new creative ideas? These are some of the questions I asked myself during the Delve Deeper Intensive with Helen Carnac and Laïla Diallo last month at Siobhan Davies.

Choreographers by nature of their work are likely to be more familiar with this than other artists. I was most impressed with Laïla’s delivery of various tasks she set to the group: economical, measured, open ended.  It prevented us from ‘end-gaming’ what the outcome would be and helped us embrace the unexpected while also valuing the minutiae of whatever we were doing.

A large part of my installation in the Make Believe exhibition at Nottingham Castle, separate from the weaving between trees (see previous post), involved using fencing pins in the lawn, as you would pins in a lace pillow, to produce ‘lace’ around the grounds of the castle.

To prepare for this I practiced various stitches in the studio on an actual lace pillow and drew up a pattern to follow when making the work on site.  However as soon as we started, the pattern had to be scrapped. The action of working the sisal twine using custom made bobbins to cover the grounds lead me to rework the pattern I had and make up new stitches as we worked our way across the lawn.  What guided me through this was allowing the participants to find their own way of working with the materials and each other. This improvised method, based on set manoeuvres, proved the best way of making the ‘lace’ in the end.

It’s nice to think that with a different group, the outcome would have been very different, and without anyone, the piece could not have been realized at all.

lost in lace

Inspiration lies only round the corner. While in the process of developing my forthcoming installation at the Nottingham Castle Museum (see previous post), I now see now lace patterns everywhere! Here are some examples, alongside actual lace patterns.

This project is truly taking me on a new path of discovery, but might it also drive me round the bend?  No matter, I'm loving being lost in lace in the meanwhile!

knots for Notts

I spent two glorious days in the sun the week before last in the grounds of Nottingham Castle, overlooking the city and rehearsing the making of my next installation for the museum’s forthcoming exhibition Make Believe: re-imagining history and landscape.

The city’s history and connection with lace making informed my contribution to the exhibition: a large scale lace installation created on the lawn around the castle using fencing pins and rope. Helped by three assistants and a group of enthusiastic volunteers, we rehearsed the making of the piece by using our fingers and hands to stitch between trees. We then proceeded to do something close to formation dancing, acting as human bobbins, holding lengths of yarn and winding these around the (metal fencing) pins as you would on a lace pillow. Click here for footage of the rehearsal on the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art website.

Many possibilities and challenges were revealed as we worked and talked about what we were doing and at the end of the two days, I came away from from the activity with a head full of ideas which I’m now processing. I’ve now ordered nearly two hundred fencing pins and can’t wait for the next time I am up there with this lovely group.

Thanks so much to all the volunteers who helped rehearsing the piece, and to my assistants Jess, Sarah and Rossella.  You were all great!