Migration into the Garden and Significance of Place

This last post of 2016, on this last day of 2016, offers a nice opportunity to bring together what has been the primary focus in my work since the late Spring/early Summer.
The past 15 posts (except one), mostly published in November, all come under the Label of Migration into the Garden (click for a grouped overview of all 14, or click on 'Migration into the Garden in the Series/Themes menu on the right of the screen), labelled as such because they log the progression of work that spanned the Spring, Summer and early Autumn months when the garden became my work space. As I put it then: 
The warmer weather always brings a change in the rhythm of life and work and, although this spring has not exactly been glorious weather-wise, the outdoors has certainly been calling. So rather than working in my studio - which is simply a slightly glorified - but glorious - garden shed and which starts to feel a little too hot and closed-in when the sun is shining and birds are singing - the outdoors beckons. And this year I have undertaken to do some things in the woodland, mainly, but also in the garden, seeking to tune in to the surroundings and creating things that intimately respond to the immediate environment.
This requires a very different approach from what I do in my studio when working on my form-finding pieces for instances. The pace of things outside is slower, the atmosphere more serene, calmer, less intense. I seek to open myself up to everything that surrounds me, tune in and invite a way to respond to what I see and feel.
So many ways to interact with this wonder-full environment.

This was breaking totally new ground for me; my work up until then had been very much studio-based. As I said in my post of 7 October (Autumn Is Upon Us), the process of what I've been referring to as my "communing with the garden" evolved over the weeks: starting with work made in the Shed - i.e. my studio - and subsequently placed in the garden, then work made in and for specific/dedicated places in the garden with materials from the Shed (predominantly clay), and finally work made with materials from the garden.

But although the work process and immediate working environment have been very different, what has remained constant are my total commitment to what I consider the 'Constants', the guiding principles in my work (as per my website page The Constant): integrity of material and process; purity through paring down to the essence; and evidently for this series, significance of place, which has found ample expression here. As I said in my post of 28 Jan. 2015: I am who I am as an artist because of who I am as a person, where I work, where I live, where I've lived and worked in the past, where I grew up, my upbringing, my education, my family and friends. 
All of these influence and affect what I make because they shape and have shaped who I am. (The Significance of Place). 
Where I live now, where I work now shapes what I make.
And who I am as a person and as artist shapes how I work.
Which leads me onto the final point I want to make here and leads us very conveniently into the coming year: the collaborative aspect of my work, which first took shape in my Art Residency project at Tonbridge School last year and will continue in 2017 with this Migration into the Garden project, as per my website page 2017/16 and 2015.


    

Playing with the Colours of Autumn Leaves

Drawn into the garden by the bright sunlight and the extraordinary Autumn colours - they have been magnificent this year - I had some fun on a couple of days placing some leaves from a neighbouring tree in amongst the yellow leaves that had dropped from the tree in the picture below. 

The path found itself, i.e. I simply placed red leaves in the gaps between the yellow leaves having first spent some time finding a line of connected gaps that led from the tree trunk to the edge of the 'carpet'    

Image taken as the leaves were in the process of being swept up by the lawn mower - I enjoyed the clearly defined shape of the 'carpet', which was swept away by the mower 5 minutes later 

The next morning

The second day after the passage of the mower; looking for a line through

Beautiful leathery brown leaves from a nearby Magnolia

Chapter 8: The Mighty Douglas Fir

Paying tribute to the mighty Douglas Fir in what we call the 'Secret Garden' ('Secret' because it's a long, narrow, fairly dense stretch of garden, to which entry is gained through a clearing leading to what feels like an entrance gateway guarded by two large pine trees; like entering a hidden, 'secret' place. Probably also romanticised memories of the book...).
Difficult to do justice to this magnificent tree in a photograph as it's not possible to stand at a sufficient distance from it to capture all its grandeur.
It took me considerable time over the summer to find a way properly to connect with this Douglas Fir. And by properly I mean adequately, to do it justice. 
I am in awe of its size - height and girth - and of the beauty of its bark, the latter of which initially led me to considering exploring the bark texture using clay in some way. The danger, of course, was that this would be too close to what I'm seeking to do with the Redwood Imprints (The Redwood). I also felt that introducing a 'foreign' material would do neither the material nor this particular tree proper justice (powerful though clay can be). 
I forgot to mention that as I have passed beneath the Douglas Fir over the years I have loved the pine cones that are scattered over a huge radius beneath it. So, one day, the solution seemed so obvious: do something with the pine cones ...
So: 

The tree

And the fir cones

I went about gathering them up from within a fairly close radius and brought them together directly beneath its canopy, radiating out from the base of the trunk.

After the first session

After the second session, with the cones from slightly further out; cones now reaching right up to the fence and the beginnings of a meaningful shape/flow forming on the ground

After the third session, with cones from the outer perimeter of the canopy radius; having cut back a couple of the overhanging branches from a neighbouring magnolia on the left to allow more light in on that side

And some further images just to indulge my enjoyment of all this textural beauty:  

And this is how it's looking at the moment; Nature playing its Autumn hand! I shall clear the leaves once we've moved a little closer to winter and pick up where I left off. Lots more Douglas Fir cones freshly blown down by the recent strong winds ...

An Interlude: The Beauty of Wasps Nests

Nature's own sculpture in the garden: two wasps nests in our garden this summer.

Amazing how they building their nest around/encompassing the leaves

I love the textures and the rhythms

And a second, much - MUCH!! - larger one, deep under the roots of a fir tree.
A hungry badger came in the night; this is how it was left in the morning:

Still beautiful, despite the devastation

This is what he/she was after

The preditor's trail

And then the subsequent repair job, a couple of days later: 

Here too beautiful textures and rhythms and patterns; Nature does that so well ...

The beauty of these shapes!

And these exquisite hexagonal cells

Including the grub (escaped the badger!)

Inside

And outer side

INSPIRING!!

Chapter 7: Homage to the Eucalyptus

A magnificent eucalyptus stood in the walled garden until a couple of years ago, when it came down in a winter storm:

The base of the trunk, and a piece of bark from higher up on the trunk that had previously come loose and dropped down onto the neighbouring tree: 

This piece of bark was the inspiration for what follows - first the hand of Nature:

and then the human hand (the first version):

with the pieces of sawn up trunk grouped together nearby

the marks of the chainsaw cuts, and over time the bark shrinking away from the trunk as the wood dries out 

The very base of the trunk, with on the other side the exposed roots torn from the ground:

And a slightly different angle:

And then the second, slightly more elaborate progression:

I have now taken this installation down and stored the bark away for the winter.
A third to follow in the spring ...