A Meeting of Minds and Materials

27/01/2022

Weather 12.45pm: dry/sunny spells 8 degrees Celsius

15 participants guest artist ~ Abi Barton, photography and film ~ Debbie Yare.

We set off from the tow path by The Canal Turn, heading South along the canal. At Thwaite Gate Bridge Abi talked a little about the site and the idea of producing a 'nature altar' inspired by Fritz Haeg's work in the Garden Marathon at The Serpentine Gallery in 2011. 

She also mentioned the farm house we would shortly be passing, Thwaite House Farm (formerly known locally as Cockle Hall) which was built c.1640. The mullioned property is only accessible by a narrow track which leads gradually uphill after crossing over the canal bridge.  The hedged track has probably changed very little in four hundred years. The farm house and land including lundsfield quarry woods is owned by Rodney and his wife who have lived there since the 1960's. He bought the de-commissioned quarry about 40 years ago when the council withdrew the license.Part of the withdrawal agreement was that the operatives would plant 40,000 trees in an attempt to re-heal the landscape and encourage wildlife to return to the site. Rodney has allowed the woodland to grow organically, fencing off marshy areas of scrubland that are now designated SSI's.

The woods and mosses have interested me since I came across them while following rights of way maps close to my home. I was drawn to the atmosphere of neglect that suggests wildness. There's a mixture of conifer and broadleaf trees, hawthorn, elder, crab apple, alder, ash, elm, willow, hazel, beech and birch. Trees remain where they fall and sometimes 'trunk hopping' is required to navigate a path.  

We followed the desire path through three fields, climbing the last rising mount to reach the woods. We began by exploring materials and textures: the softness of jelly ear found on Elder, the dragon skin like twigs of a fallen pine, bark, nibbled pine cones, moss and lichen. Abi talked about folk lore associated with pine cones - as a token of regeneration/fertility and the fibonacci pattern found throughout the natural world. We naturally scattered as a group, finding space to pay attention, look, touch, collect. We experimented recording natural pigments by rubbing materials onto paper.

We made pine needle tea, gathered in a circle around the nature altar and talked about the rupture between the human and more-than--human world. It felt appropriate standing in a human-made glade on the site of an abandoned quarry thinking about the unnatural elements that have contributed to the current ecological crisis.

In the studio I documented the foraged contents before macerating in rain water and a few jars of tarn water collected at the site. This blend of materials will create the natural dye colour which will be used later on in the project. 

27.02.2022 Lundsfield Quarry

Solastalgia: grief or despair caused by environmental change

The family of things by Mary Oliver

'We only see what we look at' John Berger

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(Images:Debbie Yare & Sam Pickett)