Edgelands work in progress

   busy  constructing 3D pieces

Edgelands

things that speak of place

Holmfirth Branch Line Berry Banks

Edge Combing

Holmfirth Branch Line Berry Banks

Edge Combing

Holmfirth Branch Line Berry Banks

Clowning Around, Cophurst Holme Styes Woods

Like children that once lived here the poppets are out to play, they’ve come out to see what’s going on, to watch over their wilderness. Usually safely hidden in the nooks and crannies of the derelict buildings, they observe and record the secrets of this space.  As nature reclaims the abandoned habitation the poppets look out for the wild things as they quietly go about their business.  The untidy corners matter, here nature mends and the wild things make their homes in this no man’s land, it’s nature’s land where the poppets play.

Installation in Art in the Woods Holmfirth Arts Festival

Art in the Woods - samples

       

Making Poppets to watch over the ruins. They will be made out of rubbish abandoned in the woods, each one also containing a little treasure from the woodland, then wrapped with nettle yarn.

My next project is about the edgelands, decay and recovery.

In the words of Paul Evans,
'I love flowers in the ruins; Nature reclaims our most audacious works and they disintegrate, becoming colonised by plants and animals.  I love the romance of decay.  Ruins have tearful edges, a melancholy which persists in places once cherished, alive, lived in, now desolate. Their stones, bricks, slates and concrete hold a recording of all that happened there and plays back to me like a distant gramophone.  Ruins have a residual life absorbed by water and earth; they are a becoming. Rot is beautiful.'
From Field Notes from the Edge - Journeys through Britain's Wilderness