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Do we need forests? Do we need trees? Do we need reefs? Or can we just, sort of, live in the ashes of all that?

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Celia Smith: working with wire.

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"Born in 1974 Celia studied Fine Art Sculpture at Wimbledon School of Art. Having experimented with many different materials, wire became her favoured medium, with which she creates animated sculptures of birds. Growing up as a farmer's daughter, Celia developed a passion for the natural environment and birds in particular are her inspiration.

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Bianca's frames ready for tomorrow's making-day

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Bianca's frames ready for tomorrow's making-day

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Because there are 18 bulbs within the one light, the light is coming from multiple places which makes shadows all over the place. If you put it to channel 255 it's the brightest setting and then you can choose white and alter the amount of green/blue in it which is effective.

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After experimenting with various lights, LED mains powered seems to be the way to go because you change the warmth and colour subtly.

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Ewan from Eshiels' Community Woodland group got back to us to say they would be happy for us to use their woodland for the installation in Spring 2019.

I feel we need a shorter, mini project in the mean time to test how the forms look both in the trees, with lighting, and on film.

We will make 100 wire forms and hold an event on Thursday 20th December for participants to cover them with tissue paper to complete the forms. This will open the project up to social engagement and involve more people which has always been one of it's aims.
We will meet on Friday to make a poster and an event on social media to invite participants to the event.

Once we have enough forms we will create a short film, using stop motion animation, to show the forms slowly covering a tree.
Doug, a musician friend, has agreed to compose an ethereal prog rocky original piano track for the film.
Another mutual friend, Nelson, who usually works on outdoor installations at festivals has agreed to help in any way he can having heard about the  project. We plan to meet with him in Glasgow to record the music for the film before Christmas or just after.

We are also thinking about speaking to a tree surgeon to help us to get the forms very high up in the tallest of trees.

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A reflection on universal patterns in nature.

Like any living entity there is a growth with reaches a point of entropy, eventually.

Humans forget we are also subject to this law.

Cells split in two, occasionally mutating amongst the great and small of us. Patterns occurring, mathematically governed.

In our case we pervade, at the expense of other life. Our nature is imposing, but is it terrible?

It grows as it must, our numbers as a species. It simply is. The morality unobjective. There is beauty and tragedy in all things.

"What are we like?" Conjures questions in the viewer regarding our affect on other life in this world. We consider our use of resources and the differing subjective view each of us can have on how we are, what we need, and what we look like.

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Anthropology Between Art and Science: An Essay on the Meaning of Research by Tim Ingold 

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Anthropology Between Art and Science: An Essay on the Meaning of Research by Tim Ingold 

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"You will likely never find what you seek, for it has a way of receding as fast as you approach, or – chameleon-like – of altering its character. The mountain, as we have seen, is never the same twice. But you press on undeterred, driven by a desire that seems as insatiable, and indeed as imperative, as the will to live. You call it curiosity."

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We need a camera set up for taking photos every 10-15 mins with a memory big enough to hold every image. A mutual friend can lend lighting. We will set up the lighting very early in the day behind the camera out of shot. Then we film one tree from sunrise to sunset. Between the 5 mins intervals we add one or two peices with staple guns starting small and slowly building up to a mass. Ensuring it ends at the end of the day and also getting out of shot every time the camera will shoot. We need timers.  Then after twighlight we put the lights on continuing into night then let the camera take some more images without more growth into night. Then we put the stop motion together and should get a few second film enough for a promo.

We'd need to make enough peices in 4 weeks to cover a tree so that we can do a 2hr test run. It would be a push but ideally it could be done.

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The binding wire rusts and stains the tissue paper.
In this version, the shape is open, like a mussel.

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We took some forms outside to look at how they looked in twilight.

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Building forms onto a tree trunk.

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Steel binding wire, tissue paper, PVA glue and wheat gluten.
Next to make one that is on a much larger scale.

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Paul Klee writes that we must "stop and listen for a response [to the world] in ourselves" which means "becoming intimate with objects, reaching a stage where we can wait attentively and silently until the essence of their being is revealed"
Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbooks (1953) quoted in Werner Haftmann, The Mind and Work of Paul Klee (New York: Praeger, 1966) p.89

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Anthony Goldsworthy (film, 2001)

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West beach, St.Andrews, 11.11.18

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Made from steel binding wire and tissue paper.

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Organic, contained lines. Wire sculpture.

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Creating shapes inspired by lichen, fungus, cells in the body.

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Working with steel binding wire to create sample structures.

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Mimicking cells and cellular structures.

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art installation sculpture paper printmaking bookart textiles altered books environmental conservation

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Julie Dodd, environmental artist, installation artist, printmaker and bookmaker

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Made from paper.

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art installation sculpture paper printmaking bookart textiles altered books environmental conservation

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Julie Dodd, environmental artist, installation artist, printmaker and bookmaker

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Woodland Trust Scotland has partnered with five landowners to link up a vast continuous native woodland on the flank of iconic Schiehallion.

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Heart of Scotland Woodland Partnership

by George Anderson, PR & Communications Officer - Scotland

Woodland Trust Scotland has partnered with five landowners to link up a vast continuous native woodland on the flank of iconic Schiehallion.

Iain Moss of Woodland Trust Scotland helps with some of the first planting. (Photo: Kevin Lelland)

Schiehallion is an iconic mountain and regarded as one of the easiest yet most satisfying of the Munros to "bag" - as those ticking off Scotland's highest peaks like to put it. Those who do make it to the summit can, on a clear day at least, look east to see one of the challenges to meaningful forest conservation. There are woods but they are fragmented. Well, not for much longer!

The Heart of Scotland Woodland Partnership brings together five landowners with the aim of linking up existing woodland to create a thriving wildlife corridor stretching across more than 50 square kilometres between Schiehallion and Loch Tummel. Working at landscape-scale gives the partners more conservation clout than we would have individually.

Five partners

Partners involved are John Muir Trust, Forest Enterprise's Foss Estate, Highland Perthshire Communities Land Trust's Dun Coillich Estate, Kynachan Estate and Scottish Wildlife Trust's Keltneyburn Nature Reserve. Co-operation will lead to more conservation clout than the partners may have individually.

Flourishing wildlife

The plan is to turn this vast upland area into a living breathing landscape of native trees, woodland corridors, flourishing wildlife and picturesque footpaths. A further aim is to bring locals and visitor closer to the land. Willie McGhee of Highland Perthshire Communities Land Trust, which manages the Dun Coillich woodland said: "We believe this project will benefit the local community right from the start by bringing new funding into the area and creating training and employment opportunities. We want to encourage people to get involved, deepen their knowledge of nature and learn new skills."

Based in Highland Perthshire, at the very heart of Scotland, the six partner organisations bring together public, private, community and NGO landowners. Collectively the partners have committed to work together for the mutual benefit of wildlife and people.

Woodland Trust Scotland is delighted to be a part of it!

More and more of our work seeks to have an impact on a landscape-scale - and we can only do that by cooperating with others. The Heart of Scotland Forest Partnership is a classic 'sum greater than its parts' initiative.

Partners gathered for the launch of Heart of Scotland Forest. (Photo: Kevin Lelland)

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by George Anderson, PR & Communications Officer - Scotland Woodland Trust Scotland has partnered with five landowners to link up a vast continuous native woodland on the flank of iconic Schiehallion. Schiehallion is an iconic mountain and regarded as one of the easiest yet most satisfying of the Munros to "bag" - as those ticking off Scotland's highest peaks like to put it.

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Focusing her work on two materials - tracing paper and wheat paste - Mary Button Durell produces surreal and organic paper works that can range from 6 inches to 10 feet. She takes her inspiration out of the desire to simplify and explore the challenges of working with limited materials.

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Looking at organic shapes and paper as a possible medium.

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Several months ago, we visited the studio of our friend Mary Button Durell. Mary, a San Francisco based artist, creates translucent and abstract sculptures using only a single material which is handmade by layering sheets of tracing paper and wheat paste. Her delicate and complex sculptures are reminiscent of cocoons, bee hives, and underwater organisms. Honestly mind blowing and inspiring. Thank you for the day of fun, Mary Button!
(images by Honestly...WTF)

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Several months ago, we visited the studio of our friend Mary Button Durell. Mary, a San Francisco based artist, creates translucent and abstract sculptures using only a single material which is handmade by layering sheets of tracing paper and wheat paste.

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Shuna has been painting on wooden boards with images that come to her mind from our weeks of woodland ruminations.
The result is fantastically reminiscent of folk tales. I feel the urge to write a story in response.

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interactive session

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I have  always had a fascination with oak trees, and have recently been working with them myself and in interactive sessions.
http://www.revelationarts.org.uk/one-in-a-million.html

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26/09/18 Creating the feeling of being lost. 

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26/09/18 Creating the feeling of being lost. 

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Thinking about how it might be possible to give the participants the illusion of being lost, since one of the most common emotive words in my survey was 'lost'.

Some ideas:

Participants could be sent into the woodland at intervals so that they cannot see the other participants.

The art works could be set at angles so that when looking ahead down the trail you cannot immediately see each piece.

We could pick a particularly dense piece of woodland where the trees are close together.

Thinking also about scale and how this can evoke a feeling of childlike-ness.

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In our second conversation together about the project, Anderson, O'Neil and myself discussed using paper as a possible medium for creating a mushroom-like installation along a woodland path.

We talked about how people enjoy being made to feel surprise, thrill, mild fear, or uneasiness - for example in a carnival, theatre etc.
To initiate an emotional and memorable response to the installations and woodland, we ought to introduce some element of surprise/ the unexpected.

We talked about how we might 'trick' the viewer into thinking at first that the 'mushrooms' or fungus-like cells were real. We would position them along the trail in the same way that one might find a fungus growing on the trees, gradually increasing the number of 'cells' until at the end of a the trail an enormous structure would appear.

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Environmental Musical Activist Laura Brown (The Story Trees, 2017) expressed an interest in my developing SEA project. Brown has experimented with another Sound Art installation in woodland.

Brown explained that she is particularly inspired by EcoSono, a group of musical activists who seeks to sponsor musicians and artists who work with Eco acoustics and to find new ways of organising music and art ‘in relation to the natural world’.[1]  They hope to use ‘human expression in symbiosis with the spaces that surround us’ and anticipate that in doing this music will become a tool to create a ‘sustainable relationship between humans and the planet.’[2]

Her installations endeavour to highlight natural sounds that can be heard in the environment which are often drowned out, as well as raise an awareness of the effect of manmade sounds on the soundscape. She will connect a makeymakey to the leaves of a tree, so that when participants touch the tree a sound will play.

[1] EcoSono, ‘ecoSono Mission’, EcoSono, 2012, http://www.ecosono.org/projects/ (17th April 2017).[2] EcoSono, ‘ecoSono Mission’, EcoSono, 2012, http://www.ecosono.org/projects/ (17th April 2017).

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I visited Venlaw woods, Leadburn Community Woodland and Flotterstone this week to observe fungi, lichen, patterns...

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27/09/18 First conversation with artists (part 2) 

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27/09/18 First conversation with artists (part 2) 

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O'Neil said she liked the idea that it would a lot of skill to make one small unit, and that if that one unit was made repeatedly hundreds of times it could make one whole large, impressive piece. The large structure in itself might be easy to assemble but the impressiveness would come from the detail in each of the tiny units it was made up of.
We then discussed how this is similar to patterns in nature - insect wings, webs, cells reproducing.
The idea arose that man-made things don’t always have to be the opposite of nature. They can also be beautiful, particularly when we copy nature.

I’m now imagining creating something that looks as if it were a natural occurrence, something strange and beautiful, but also unnerving.

This is to be our starting point for our work together:
‘If there’s a basic pattern that we can all see in nature, and we’re programmed to see this, can we use that to create an emotional experience for the viewer? Because we all see those patterns, people from all walks of life or in different countries.’

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1/11/18

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27/09/18 First conversation with artists (part 1)

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27/09/18 First conversation with artists (part 1)

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I met with Shuna Anderson and Bianca O'Neil for the first of three conversations about where this project might lead.
We questioned how to give the participants a ‘childlike’ experience, and wondered how to evoke that feeling in adults.
We decided that we need to therefore  think about what emotionally stimulates adults.

We discussed that one way to create a childlike experience would be to make something on a large scale, so that the participants felt small. Whilst children would pay attention to small details, because they are lower down and more open to using their imaginations, adults would only be affected by something huge and therefore awe-inspiring.
I could imagine something large scale that could be physically entered by the participants would evoke such a feeling, for example climbing into a gigantic nest, or entering a long tunnel.

Questions were asked such as 'what else impresses adults in todays’ society?’ and ‘what if we put something in the forest that shouldn’t be in the forest… which would make the adults question why they value that thing in the first place?’

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Shuna Anderson paints on found wood, often pieces of old doors or floor boards.

Anderson and I spoke about a mutual desire to take art out of gallery spaces and into the outdoors. We discussed the idea of an exhibition in the woodland close to where we live, by an estate. An initial idea came to us that there could be performance theatre and large scale installations merged into spaces in the woodland. We spoke about the power of imagination in both children and adults, and how this can create strong emotional responses to a place.

I hope to invite two other artists to enter into a conversation with us about the potential project.

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Conversation flows to some interesting places while you're all busy with your hands. We talked about how we are manipulating the raw materials of iron and paper, creating our cocoon-like cells.

Human beings, beautiful in their own right, pervade everything in the natural world.

We can only live by stealing the resources of other living things, similarly to the lichen living on the tree.

An insidious living being can still be beautiful.

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Patterns in nature.

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Anderson showed me her paintings and some of the recycled wood that she has chosen to paint on.

We discussed whether if she included some of her paintings in the installation if they would be permanent or if we would take it down afterwards. Anderson said she would prefer that it would be taken down and exhibited again in another woodland or sold elsewhere.

We talked about the affect the weather will have on the viewers’ experiences. Looking at our timescale, it will most likely be winter when the exhibition takes place.

I have invited another artist, Bianca O'Neil, to meet with us next week to talk about the potential for collaboration on this project.

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Question: What is your strongest memory of being in a forest or woodland?  

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Question: What is your strongest memory of being in a forest or woodland?  

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23/09/18
Asked 20 people the question, 'what is your strongest memory of being in a woodland?'

Many of the answers described the feeling of awe, or being lost in the forest. Most of the memories were from childhood.
I thought that this was important since it poses the next question, why have they not made any stronger memories since adulthood? And how can this SEA project create a strong memory for our adult participants in a woodland environment?

I compiled the most emotive words from the answers. The list is as follows:

Awe
Alive
Calming
Grounding
Alone
Exploration
Intimidating
Invigorating
Frightening
Exciting
Haunting

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Who is using our woodland and forest spaces?

Why are our Scottish woodlands and forests important?

How can art enhance a person’s personal experience with a woodland?

How can we create a meaningful and memorable woodland experience for our participants?

Can SEA create a more personal relationship for our participants with their local woodlands?