Blogging the Blean

Big Circles

I came home to find 3 tree trunks (with the bark stripped off) on the pathway to my front door. That is what is great about being an artist, sometimes your just a regular person, then something like that happens and you flick into strange world.

So I am reflecting on my time in the woods, and two more months before I have completed my year recording each month. I am involved in the Wildart Trail, but outside of that I wanted this blog-the woods-the changing seasons to take me to new places, have new ideas and change the way I work. All of these things have happened on a small scale and really the woods has provided such a wide area of possibility I have almost drowned in potential. Unable to really make it work for me. I have done allsorts of things and met people and made connections, all fine stuff. Time has been the enemy…..nearly a year………I have been unable to steer a part of this year where I wanted. Unbeliveable.

But the woods will be there for a while yet and I can return to them again when the time is right. It’s all a big circle and I have revisited themes and ideas time and time again. Reworking revisiting something years later. It is only now after all these years I can see that about myself.

So I have been looking for a new place to make art about. When I have finished my sticks and not working on commissioned projects I’m walking out of the woods cos I kept getting metaphorically lost in there.

This is the biggest lesson I learned in there: If your building a wall in your back garden its far better to lay a few bricks now and then and gradually build your wall over a period of time which is as long as you need. Because if you wait for a block of time to build it, that empty block of time never comes along and the wall never ever gets made. The same with art because it is all a big circle and you can return when your ready.

Tales from the Woods

The month of April has been amazing! Definitely my favourite month along side with Nov. There were signs of life in March and even back in Feb but …BOSH…. in about 3 weeks everything has burst into life. It’s so GREEN the woods are growing, its so quick in woodland terms. I am expecting to hear a bird talk to me, see a wood cutter walk by and discover a house of sweets in a clearing all part of some performance art thing?

I have been busy on other stuff, but my monthly stick regime has saved me from missing this. It’s a Rip Van Winkle feeling when you walk in the waves of blue bells breathing ‘green air’ stunned when last time you walked past it was just twiggy trees against the sky…..where did all this come from?

I LOVE THE WOODS.

I LOVE THE WOODS

I LOVE THE WOODS

This is the stuff I’ve been working on:

http://wildartintheblean.blogspot.com/

this

http://stroodcommunitytrail.blogspot.com/

this

http://s213.photobucket.com/albums/cc3/robturner/Hand%20to%20Hand%20Olympic%20Games%20Values%20pilot/

this

http://s213.photobucket.com/albums/cc3/robturner/Springhead%20Markers/

and this

http://s213.photobucket.com/albums/cc3/robturner/Decorated%20Tree%20Stumps/

I took my dog into the woods with me on the day I cut the tree stump designs and he drank most of the water as there was very little shade where I was working and he was panting so hard just doing nothing. I came home with cracked lips and drank about 2 pints of water in about 20 seconds. Water tasted so good.

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If you want to read about more art….. then dont read this, cos there is none here.

I don’t know about you but sometimes I get full up with all this art……not to say that I’m going to quit, far from it, things are very healthy I have more work than I can do, but I get really bored of it sometimes and blah de blah, blah…… blah…..but I do remember years ago the head for my region for Creative Partnerships once addressed a seminar saying, ‘when you work in a school make sure you make contact with the head teacher and make it clear you are working in the school’………yeh I done that last week, when I never pulled the hand break up quite far enough. While I was in the school my car rolled gentally across the car park, and into the back of the heads car! oh-er I’m so sorry, and very embarresing.

Then; today I got a plan stuck in my head. This misguided plan was to turn my car around so I didnt have to reverse back up this very bumpy and steep track. I got stuck in the mud at the bottom and wedged into the soil bank at right angles to the road. My exhaust pipe was plugged, very nicely into soft damp soil sealing it perfectly while the front was all scuffed on the opposite soil bank. Cosmo was confused and getting agitated. I was stuck, and I had to phone for help. Two smashing ladies from the Kent Wildlife Trust came over with spades and all sorts of equipment and saved the day. We dug my car out and all is well.

Except my front bumper is just a fraction loose on one side after all this action.

Art….you can have too much.

but here are some nice pictures.

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I was so happy I almost started painting again!

Things have moved along with the project and I see a spring and summer ahead of me working in the Thornden Woods with tree surgeons, bushcraft experts, woodland wardens and Kent Wildlife Trust Volunters and other unknows? Its actually really exciting with a considerable budget now behind it to deliver ‘The Wildart Trail’.

Something else about it is I can mostly tell when I am working to commission, and art created because you just cant help your self is rare. But every now and then something lands in your lap: so when your commissioner asks you if you want to design two totem poles from Douglas Firs cut down in the very woodland you walk your dog in every week, the designs will be cut by a specialist chain saw guy, you walk off down the road whistling and high fiving people you dont even know ! Some where I have a book on Tlingit or Alaskan art. I know this wont be about Alaskan tribes and I will have to localise it in content, and in design things in my own style.

I was so happy I even made some non commissioned art, not so far as starting painting again, but almost.

some photos of ‘stuff’ done in the Blean

http://www.myspace.com/retcreative/photos/albums/the-blean/1634840#mssrc=SitesPhotos_SP_AlbumTitle_ViewAlbum

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The Artists Workbench.

Were has the that personel investigation into painting gone, what have I achieved in terms of making art from a personel exploritory point of veiw. Well I gave up on that and find I’m challenged on many fronts at the moment anyway, and being taken out of my comfort zone. Something that I regard as being paid to learn. So I am developing as an artist just not in a straight line!

On the artists workbench from left to right then:

Olympic Values project. A pilot educational scheme in St. Johns secondary school. I am well out of my usual thing here working with a performance artist called lucy Platel.

The Strood Community Trail Markers. Finished but waiting for dates so I can install them. http://stroodcommunitytrail.blogspot.com/

St. Georges, this is phase two developing a school garden; creating an environmental learning space. This really means a garden with a pond, and external seating for a whole class, growing vegetables, building insect homes and bird boxes with students, many with behavioural problems…..again. Working with Lorrie Thomas who is a breath of freash air in this difficult and challenging place.

Ebbsfleet Markers, these are maquettes for small artworks scattered over a large residential development , a project again where I’m working with special needs students and a good friend Andy Evans who was my partner in ‘Nam’ (St. Radigans a housing estate in Dover several years ago now).

The Blean Men: Now one should have been painted at the winter solstice in Dec, but I never finished him, the other will be painted in the spring equinox. That will then complete the set of four heads.

And below: are my Febuary Sticks. This is going to lead into my Blean Residency working in partnership with the Kent Wildlife Trust to create a sensory trail in the my local woodlands. (I think I might be contractually bound to include Canterbury City Co. logos at the mention of this project, so here they are anyway). http://wildartintheblean.blogspot.com/

So no painting, but I am developing in other areas, which makes it all worth while, plus with friends along the way.

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