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It is some time since I have written about the Landscape & Arts Network, of which I am a long-time member. Actually, to my surprise, it’s been over three years, during which time we have all been on many journeys and adventures, both inner and outer.

Three years ago,  I explained that The Landscape & Arts Network  (LAN) was one of the very first Arts and Environment membership organisations to advocate and practice interdisciplinary working and full engagement with real life as it is lived – as well as carrying out a strong educational role. I followed this with a few examples of the sort of projects that LAN and its members engage in.

Today the Network still flourishes, guided by the same principles. There continues to be a wealth of activities and opportunities that will interest anyone concerned with creative involvement in the landscape – whether urban or rural, local or far, far away. To get a flavour of current events, some of which are coming up very soon – take a look at their website: www.landartnet.org.

You will find news of Edible City coming up on June 16th, which explores various aspects of London and food-growing. And there is Layers of Response II, a unique opportunity to investigate and respond to the stone landscape of Nidderdale, Yorkshire. (That’s coming up on the weekend 31st August – 2nd September).

Then there is member Jeffrey Higley’s crowdfunding appeal, requesting support for a new performance collaboration Another Time. “In this collaboration, a world both ancient and mythological, yet full of contemporary concerns is brought to life through masks, music and dance”.

One thing I don’t think I mentioned in my earlier post, is the by now extensive library of informative and fascinating articles contributed by members and special guests. For many years, these were contained in a printed periodical: the Journal. Today, articles are sent by email to LAN members, before being published online at a future date. Through the years, these articles have done much to underpin and maintain the vision and aims of the Landscape & Arts Network since it was first founded by Francis Carr in 1993.

To be kept up to date and enjoy the many benefits of membership, you can join the Landscape & Arts Network free of charge from their website.

I will write occasional posts here too, though let’s hope I won’t be keeping you waiting another three years for the next one!

PS  I am currently the Landscape & Arts Network representative for most of South West England. I welcome all enquiries, and will happily pass on any news relating to this part of the world.

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Spring is here! Images and sounds gathered from recent explorations around my local landscape.

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Above is a snippet from recent work along the water’s edge near where I live. It is somewhere I come a lot, for peace and tranquillity.

Images were taken on three separate days in the same place. The first day, I looked out of my window at 6.30am, and could see nothing but grey mist… but by the time I got down to the river, the mist was clearing in the warmth of the sun, until there remained just a soft dreamy haze. The other two days were idyllic sunshine.

I have mixed up the days a little, to give you a clearer idea of this extremely small piece of coastal land. The proliferation of flora and fauna, and the subtle differences here from day to day is just incredible.

“… As I come to my favourite bench up high overlooking the river; the daffodils that were flourishing here just a few weeks ago, have died down now, and are replaced by bluebells.

It is here that people sometimes bring wild bird seed, and deposit it on either end of the bench. One end of the bench has been carved into quite a sizeable bowl by the pecking of a myriad beaks over time. A robin parades around in front of me, looking bright and handsome. I pretend not to notice. I hear the quiet fluttering of many wings around my head, and spot a chaffinch hanging around in the bushes. I never bring anything, (I am so mean!).”

I lay back amongst the sea campion at the foot of the cliffs, soaking up the sun… I sat very still, watching the river, at that motionless low tide point when life seemed to stop … and then, in mid-river, I saw the beginnings of a thin stream of fast water run in from the ocean, causing the reflected world to shiver… The memories sank deep within and became a part of myself.

At the end of this video clip you can see the woodland stream running down to the place on the beach where I made the seaweed rings.

I am hoping to continue my creative explorations and researches in this area over the next year or so. But unfortunately it is being threatened by the possibility of what most of us would consider inappropriate ‘development’. In the knowledge that our physical and mental wellbeing, indeed our very lives depend on our natural environment, this is sad news indeed.

Is my experience of this beautiful place all the more precious because of the threat of its destruction? Well, no – because I consider this infinitely complex balance of ecosystems is precious anyway.

However, it has given it certain intensity – a realisation that I cannot just sit back and take it all for granted!

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Wandering along by the river one morning, my eye was caught by the layering of dark rocks along the river’s edge, covered with bands of soft green weed. There was a sharp angular fragment lying in the mud – tipped with a luxuriant growth of green and looking like a stone-age tool, I thought.

In this small cove I am secluded from the noise of modern life –for a short time, at least. I crouch down, dropping into the rhythm of earth, water, stone, weed and air.

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I was tempted to try eating the green seaweed – but refrained because I don’t trust the purity of the water round here.

Next day was cool and windy, and I made another little circle. But it was cold, and I felt unwell, so I didn’t stay long. Oh and I found my favourite old hat that I lost yesterday. Someone had thoughtfully hung it from a bush by the side of the path.

For me, this sort of work is a simple interaction with nature, capturing a fleeting moment, a subtle experience of being alive. Of course one brings one’s knowledge and skills as an artist to bear, but it is not primarily about seeking decorative effects with natural materials. When the work is done, I dismantle it, leaving nothing behind.

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Feeling a little like Dr Who approaching a strange new planet, I squinted through the lens at a magnificent, highly complex world – a world of bushy frondy shrubby things and crusty flat spreading patches, a world of what looked like luxuriant leafy plants of intricate and convoluted shapes, in an infinite range of different colours of green and gold. This was the World of the Lichen.

I was at Ilfracombe. North Devon, about to embark on a lichen hunt, led by experts Maxine Putnam and Tony Holwill, and organised by the Devon Wildlife Trust local group.soon became immersed in trying to identify the different types – looking for little black spots, wiggly white edges, thin lines cutting across the leaves, little trumpets… and jam tarts. I was told the fruits of a particular lichen looked just like jam tarts, and I was thrilled when I actually found some. Trouble was – everything I looked at afterwards seemed to have jam tarts all over it. And to make things even more difficult, there were no common names on my list – only Latin ones:

Lichens are special. They are not mosses; in fact they are not even plants, but a symbiosis of fungus and algae. They are not parasitic – moss and lichens do no harm to the tree or whatever they are growing on. As we walked around, I noticed how different types of lichen grew on different parts of the tree – and Maxine reminded me of the subtle differences in air temperature, humidity, sunlight and a myriad other factors that would make up the perfect mini-niche for a particular species. I was utterly amazed, as I always am, when looking closely at nature.

Now, a couple of days later, I can remember clearly the physical descriptions and appearances, and also one or two of the names – but not which goes with which! To be honest, I can only match up with any confidence the name of one particular yellowish lichen, Candelaria concolor – a name I shall be sure to drop into my conversation at the earliest opportunity.

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Well, I woke up in the morning; the sun was shining and the birds were singing, so I made a rush for the secateurs in order to ‘tidy up’ the garden. Mistake! After hours of snipping and tweaking at our heavily overgrown clematis arch, I ended up with a large heap of dead (I think) twigs on the ground, but not very much on top! That is, the arch now resembled a small haystack on top of some bare metal supports –but at least it was tidy! I hoped I had not killed it.

Life is just not fair. Next day, I woke up in the morning; the sun was shining, and there were all the neighbourhood sparrows having a great time, prancing about on top of the arch, and pulling out all the newly exposed twigs for their nests.

Why did they not just grab the stuff I had chopped off the previous day?

I am sure I did not leave it looking like this…

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I have recently visited two fascinating properties owned by the National Trust. They could not be more different, yet the feelings they aroused in me were quite similar: a pleasant though mildly unsettling mix of detachment and personal involvement, and of stepping into the past whilst my feet remained firmly rooted in today.

The first place, known as The Cabin, is a tiny clifftop cottage on the spectacular rocky coastline of North Devon. It was owned by two artists Judith Ackland and Mary Stella Edwards, who stayed and worked there every year during the summer months from the 1920s until Judith’s death in 1971. What is curious and intriguing about the Cabin is that it was left empty for many years afterwards, until quite recently, with its furniture, personal possessions and everyday objects remaining exactly how the artists had left them after their last visit.

Today the Cabin is owned by the National Trust, who are keen to carry on the artistic tradition, and continue to preserve the interior of the Cabin almost as it was.

I was slightly uneasy about intruding on the private history of Judith and Mary – but I needn’t have worried. The place had obviously been cleaned and tidied, and I knew that a number of people had been active there in recent years – and that by now the entire contents would have been thoroughly explored, removed, cleaned and restored. In fact, I noted the Cabin had an almost museum feel to it.

Yet the sense of the two women was very much present. As I gazed around, I tried to piece together fragments of their lives – the robust wood-burning stove now broken and rusting, that must have given off a good heat, the coats and wellies by the back door, the folded linen in the little bedroom cupboard, the shells and ornaments on the windows sill, the cosiness, the seclusion…

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I recognised some of the homely china, piled on the shelves as identical to some that had been left us by my mother-in-law. Then, when I looked around again, the room seemed to take on the atmosphere of my long dead granny’s kitchen. I re-felt that warm cosy feeling of the bright fire in her black-leaded range, the kettle hissing and bubbling, and a delicious smell of dinner cooking. How odd to have this unexpected personal memory.

And odd to be aware of all these different narratives going on in my head all at the same time. Usually we don’t notice.

As I stepped outside into the winter, I knew that, intriguing though it was, what interested me was not so much the artists’ domestic arrangements, but the call of the surrounding rocky landscape, the woods and the eternal ocean – that so inspired them, and that kept calling them back to this place, year after year.

There is a delightful blog by Kate Paxman, chronicling her artist’s residency at the Cabin in 2010 For me, her sensitivity and simplicity of approach is very moving, and brings the story of the two women vividly to life. http://bucksmillscabin.blogspot.com

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My second visit was to the magnificent Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire. It was the home of Henry Fox Talbot, the eminent mathematician, astronomer and archaeologist, though most widely known for his pioneering work in photography. It was here that he produced the first ever photographic negative in 1835.

cc attribution-only: neosnaps/flickr

I lingered outside in the grounds of Lacock Abbey, so entranced by the gardens, the trees and the intricate tracery of winter branches against a cold sky, that I left myself no time at all to go inside the Abbey itself! Bummer… but I will return.

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I did manage to visit the Fox Talbot Museum there though, where I did a fair bit of indoor lingering before going out into the gardens.

It was fascinating to follow the early history of photography, rekindling an old interest. No matter how much one might know about a subject, there is nothing quite like getting a physical sense of the real thing. Original prints, together with equipment, portraits and interesting textual information gave me a terrific sense of Fox Talbot’s work and the beginnings of photography.

But when I came to the final vitrine, I was startled to recognise the objects inside with a surge of familiarity. Old enlargers, printing frames, porcelain trays, tongs, bottles and a large slightly rusty timer – they could all have come from my own darkroom, many years ago. For one moment, I bitterly regretted giving away my old and well-loved kit when I moved here to Devon– though I actually knew very well I would never use it again. I knew my days of sloshing around with chemicals in the dark were over.

Once again I got that strange sensation of my own story being caught up and intertwined with others. I began to ask myself weird questions: whose past is it? Is any of it really real?

Too much lingering in the past will addle my brain, I thought – and went outside to listen to the rooks high up amongst the branches silhouetted against the cold sky.

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Having a strong interest in all forms of land and earth art, it is difficult in my daily browsing, to avoid reading about Michael Heizer‘s latest monumental sculpture destined for Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The work is a 340 ton boulder to be transported from Riverside, California, and sited in an enormous trench outside the museum.

In this photo taken June 9, 2011, Stephen Vander Hart, co-owner and vice president of Stone Valley Materials, walks past a 340-ton boulder from his quarry in Riverside, Calif. The boulder will be taken by specially designed 200-wheel truck to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to make up the “Levitated Mass” sculpture. The 680,000-pound rock is 16 feet wide and 21 feet tall.

(AP Photo/The Press-Enterprise, Mark Zaleski)   from the LA Curbed site 

A few days after the photo above was taken, Curbed was saying:

Wednesday, June 15, 2011, by Adrian Glick Kudler. Image via Curbed

“A lot of people have been wondering why the LACMA lawn behind the Resnick Pavilion is getting all torn up just a short time after getting all nice and green. The spot is preparing for the arrival of artist Michael Heizer’s enormous “Levitated Mass” installation–a 340 ton boulder hovering over a 15 foot deep trench (which you’ll be able to walk through!). For a showstopper like that, you can’t just pick up some boulder off the street. Heizer’s had his eye on a particular rock at a quarry near Riverside since 2006, reports the Press-Telegram. He bought it for $120,000 and storage has been $100 a month. (Heizer’s had dibs on it so long that caretaking responsibilities have now spanned two ownerships–a worker says “It’s been in the way every day.”) On August 5, the boulder will board a 200 foot trailer and travel on surface streets at about seven miles per day. Nine days later, on August 14, the rock will arrive at LACMA to what a museum rep says will be a public celebration. Everyone start getting your “Welcome to LA, 340 Ton Rock” banners out of storage“.

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Now, in February 2012, news of this particular rock seems to have been swimming before my eyes for ever, as one inevitable delay after another (usually related to public safety and potential damage to highway infrastructure) has prevented its transportation. As far as I know, it still has not moved out of its quarry of origin.

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“The 340 ton bouldercenterpiece for Michael Heizer’s “Levitated Mass” installation still hasn’t started its journey from its Riverside quarry to LACMA–most recently, the transport company found that the route would have to go through Diamond Bar because the rig was too heavy for a bridge in Pomona. The smarties in Diamond Bar are now getting LACMA to cough up 10 percent of the cost of repaving one street, a $75,000 security bond, and $10k for dealing with traffic signals, plus the guarantee that the rock will only come through after midnight”.

 [San Gabriel Valley Tribune, image by Elizabeth Daniels]

Myself, I have never been a huge fan of Michael Heizer, (his most famous piece being perhaps Double Negative in the Nevada desert (made in 1969), mainly because of an inherent distaste for his practice of gouging out great chunks of our living planet, though I have to respect the scale of his vision, his conceptual rigour and his ability to get under my skin.

Heizer was the son of an eminent anthropologist specializing in Precolumbian American cultures who took him on excavations when he was a boy. He belongs to a generation that was determined to break with any notion of art as a containable experience, and I have a vague recollection of him saying that there were quite enough objects in the world, without him adding more. More recently he has asserted that as long as you are making sculpture, you might as well make it big.

During the ’60s he was one of the pioneers of Earthworks, the movement involving large-scale wilderness projects. Since 1970 he has been engaged on building City, in Nevada, considered to be probably the largest contemporary sculpture ever attempted (it is about one mile long).

Here’s the Google satellite image of this massive enterprise.

Heizer sees City as a work that will survive our doomed civilization, a self-contained, precision-built entity that will last in its wilderness for millennia. I have absolutely no quarrel with his fascination with prehistory – but I think there is a slight difference in our cultures between now and then – a difference in motivation, intention and social structure. Could Heizer’s City be the biggest ego trip of all time? Could this sort of excessive machismo be a contributory factor to the very doom he is forecasting? Could it be a warning sign? Is this work representative of our 21^st century civilisation (as he claims) just as we see the Pyramids or Stonehenge as representative of theirs?

Coming back to Levitated Mass, the project in question… in the expansive 60′s this sort of work would have been culturally and art-historically relevant – but now, over 40 years later, I am not sure whether heaving enormous pieces of rock around the country is quite so appropriate. However, it is true that large monoliths were transported in Stone Age times, albeit probably for different reasons – and the concerted effort of so many organisations and individuals to get this current project under way must surely have its resonances.

Another thought – our culture is somewhat out of balance. It is one that is overwhelmed with information, mediated and edited by others through IT. Whilst being extremely useful, it denies us our full physical ‘felt’ sense of being alive, and our connection with the earth: the bedrock of our being. The slow, painstaking journey of the Rock to the Museum (when it happens) will, for some, be a powerful reminder of who we really are.

And the Los Angeles County Museum of Art? I would like to think that they regard this as a homage to our Stone Age ancestors and the very beginnings of what we call art. But I am sorry for all the beautiful lawns, plants and trees that have been ripped up though, to prepare the 456ft. concrete trench awaiting The Rock.

One of the functions of good art, I think, is that it should disturb, not necessarily be liked… giving us the opportunity to reconsider our perceptions and beliefs a little, in the light of life’s changes. All I can say is that Heizer’s Levitated Mass is certainly raising plenty of interest and plenty of questions of profound importance – so that has to be good.

Anybody got any thoughts on all this? I would love to hear from you.

http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/levitated-mass/

http://doublenegative.tarasen.net/ (a website about Michael Heizer)

http://doublenegative.tarasen.net/city.html  (city)

27th Feb 2012
To gain a sense of the enormous worldwide interest in this project, and some of the issues that it raises - browse through Observatoire du Land Art: a place for archiving, researching and transmitting land art.

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Having struggled most of the day with various forms of free video-editing software, and given up in disgust…   I would like to show you a real film –  by a real filmmaker:

Voices by emerging experimental filmmaker Jodi  Lee.  Music by Edwin Gordon. See further details of the film on the Vimeo link.

v o i c e s from Jody Lee on Vimeo.

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I went back to the fallen tree a few days ago, and developed my work a little bit further. Gathering and arranging the tiny fragments of pottery and china strewn all over the beach – I dropped, this time, into a slow repetitive rhythm of placing the pieces one by one, moment by moment.

Losing track of time…

I like working this way. I have a strong interest in Neolithic rock art, though since coming to live in North Devon, where there is almost none around, my focus has generally shifted from stones and rocks to the trees which prevail in this landscape.

I enjoy feeling that I am carrying out a similar sort of activity to our ancient ancestors, and probably for similar reasons. It feels warm, familiar and safe. I feel at home. In a weird sort of way it is a bit like how I feel when using my long gone grandmother’s rolling pin, or polishing her brass candlesticks at Christmas time.

What interested me, apart from the striking design that emerged, were the thought s and questions that drifted through my head… How and why did the first impulse to make art begin? How is it that these sorts of patterns are found in indigenous cultures around the world? What levels of memory am I operating within? I have a number of profound-sounding answers of course, that, as far as artistic expression is concerned, don’t matter one little bit. You might as well ask a bird what it thinks about ornithology!

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I left soon after 9 to walk to the estuary. After several stormy days and nights, I had caught a glimpse of the sun, calling me out. Water was running fast down the steep track, washing away mud, exposing stones and rubble laid by previous generations to support their cart wheels. Nearing the river, I was shocked to come across a crater right across the pathway. A big tree had collapsed and fallen down on to the beach. I climbed down and made work there to mark the occasion.

 

I wanted to make a sign to mark the passing of the tree. I gathered together small fragments of pottery, earthenware, pipes, bricks, flower pots and best white china – all strewn across the little bay and almost indistinguishable from the stones – residue from the past that had been pounded by the sea for many many years.

Oh no, not another circle… I would have liked to have marked out something different – a tree shape perhaps. But this was what I felt required to make.

Afterwards I took photos, then left. But before leaving, I removed the circle and the seaworn fragments, leaving the beach as I found it. When a piece of work is done, it is done.