Halton Court project (part 6)

Brancusi baskets

Last Saturday somehow felt life the first day of the rest of my life. It was the first official day of my artist’s residency at Stave Hill Ecological Park (see also First Moves post) and I spent the day there working by the water, with Chris, cutting brambles in order to weave with these.

We made twined constructions,inspired by my recent project in Darlington, with view of stacking these vertically to create a tall column. Conical in shape and joined tip to tip and base to base in a repeated abstract pattern, the woven piece would some kind of homage to one of my favorite ever sculptures, Brancusi’s Endless Column.

This project didn't exactly go to plan as we ran out of time to produce enough of the twined pieces and install these, skewered on a large pole, in what seemed an ideal spot in the middle of the pond. I did I take off my shoes, rolled up my trousers and waded in, but couldn’t get the post to stand up securely. Luckily Chris missed in the opportunity to record the whole messy business on camera, so my dignity still remains intact, for now. It's only a matter of 'chose remise' however as I’ll have another bash at it next week. I can’t wait, especially as the trees have started changing colour and did look glorious in the autumn evening sun. A gorgeous sight indeed!

In the meanwhile, I did try other ways of installing the woven pieces, but couldn’t decide on where best to place work, this probably on account of not having enough of them to stack up. What we need it seems is another 50+ items to achieve a sizeable height for the sculpture. As there is no shortage of brambles on site, this could easily be done. The great thing about stacking these as illustrated above, is it will allows viewers to peek into holes in through the centre of the weaving at different heights and in different directions, framing the view of the park, its surrounding and the sky above.

As we are yet still to see the Brancusi inspired column emerge from the water, it seems a second project at Stave Hill is already on it way. Keep you posted on this…

The Darlington Post

Here is a visual account of the installation at the Festival of Thrift and some of the twined baskets produced by visitors at the event. 

Three kilometres of sisal twine, a few days to stitch the installation, heaps of green materials, more sisal and yarn still to twine with, involvement from numerous, help from volunteers and well of course as the assistance from the Festival of Thrift's great team and Home Live Art, is all it took to achieve this! A fantastic experience all round and I certainly look forward to going up there again in a few weeks for another outdoor project in the making...

Highlights of the Festival of Thrift weekend? The Disco Bingo girls, thinking about landscape gardening courtesy of Nu-urban Gardeners, hearing but not having to dance the Lambeth Walk lead by Ida Barr during her now world famous Mash Up and meeting all those friendly Darlingtonians to name but a few things. Last but not least I have to add scything reeds and bulrushes in the nature reserve near Lingfield Point when foraging for materials to weave. This was done with the help of Peter and Tim (pictured below). Thanks to them and also to Stella, Alex and David who brought in clematis, willow, crocosmia and peony stems, as well as all the kids fro the nearby school who contributed their gorgeous twined constructions for the occasion.

basket bonanza

Forget loom bands, baskets were in at the Festival of Thirft in Darlington a couple of weeks ago (see previous and forthcoming posts). Here are some of the baskets and makers of them, and the director of the festival grabbing a few at the end of the event. She more than deserved them!

part of the installation stripped bare of
its twined hanging baskets