Notes from a village hall

07/09/2021 hot one

 

Friday 17th September 2021 

Hello and welcome to SAP. I’m Sam Pickett and I’ll be using this blog to share news, thoughts and images about the project Saturation Point plus all things related to art, the climate crisis and the local landscape. I look forward to your contributions 💚

I’ve been trying to develop SAP for about a year, the idea forming shortly after I moved to the village of Over Kellet in the North-North of Lancashire in 2020 - in the middle of lockdown with the prospect of a long, isolated winter stretching out in front of me. And so it began as I explored the footpaths leading away from my house and out into the fields, looking for wild spaces and noticing the pockets of land fenced off and designated for new housing or extended caravan parks. Set on a hill above Carnforth with views over Morecambe Bay to the West, the Cumbrian Fells to the North and surrounded by open grasslands the village is currently a target for developers. I began to think of ways to record the environmental changes and raise awareness of the importance of wild spaces for biodiversity. As ideas evolved, the outline for a longer term project began to take shape. I applied for arts council funding and here we are.

January 2022 marks the beginning of an eighteen month exploration of the wild spaces in and around the Carnforth area. My studio is in Over Kellet and will be the base for natural dye-making, tea making, view staring and open-days.

I am here

On Friday evening I gave a presentation about the project to the local Horticultural Society at the OK village hall. I was joined by Dr.Martin Lord, an environmental scientist with a background in meteorology who also lives in Over Kellet. His weather records (dating back over twenty years) will provide the data relected in the final textile artwork. His knowledge of our changing climate is important to the project’s scientific integrity. I’m grateful for his support.

This was my third presentation relating to Saturation Point and each time I’ve found it a bit easier -  I have things I want to share that I believe are important - about art, the climate crisis, our environment and well-being and so from time to time I find myself facing an audience of expectant faces (27 on this occasion).

17/09/2021 OK village hall

I’ll tell you more about the project in a future post but for now I wanted to write about the talk because it raised some interesting points that are still fresh in my mind. Someone asked me after the talk ‘what did the artwork have to do with the changing weather and scientific data?’

Well, that’s a good question… here’s my response plus some extra thoughts:

The art world has understood for a long time that capitalism and consumerism are destroying the earth; I had no idea growing up in the seventies and eighties that artists like Agnes Dene, Ana Mendieta, Robert Smithson, Li Yuan Chia, Andy Goldsworthy (I know there are many more these are just some names that sprang immediately to mind) and writers/philosophers like William Burroughs, Thomas Berry, Henry Thoreau even Ruskin etc were saying something urgent about the injustices, the decline of species, the damage the west was causing to natural ecosystems fifty, a hundred, even two hundred years ago with the start of the industrial revolution. So as my art practice developed I too began to realise:

 * the need to challenge cultural myths dressed up as traditions 

 * how art and creativity can provide a space to talk, to share anxieties and inspire resilience within communities

 * how the arts and sciences combined thinking can help to find new solutions. 

So what does climate data have to do with a textile artwork? Visually, the final work will reflect data as a colour-coded graph, patterns emerging that demonstrate the changing nature of our weather in the North-West. The artwork and essay film will be shown at art and climate events and the documented plant species will provide a record for future comparison. The fugitive colours will evoke the palette of the landscape, the ephemeral vibrancy acting as a metaphor for change… maybe the climatic conditions will affect the tonal outcome I don’t know. 

The natural dyes and textile artwork are just one element of the project. I will also be organising a series of foraging walks and talks. Encouraging participants to engage with the natural world, notice what’s growing in the wild spaces and recording what we find.

And I was also asked ‘isn’t all art visual?’ Well art is also experiential, it can be a familiar intangible feeling or a sensation - like the touch of soft dough or the smell of damp moss. It can be the sound of a bell ringing in deep woodland or a dog barking on a hot day (I’ve experienced all of these at art installations.) Art can be a thing but it doesn’t have to be. It can be anything. It can be nothing; a hole, the space between things, a dot. Li Yuan Chia said ‘a tiny dot can mean all or nothing.’ This is a big subject but there are different ways of looking at something - intuitively, mindfully, bodily… Art invites us to look, listen, touch or think again.

www.sampickettsomewhereelse.com

Photo credit: Martin Lord