Found Objects

Into the Magical Forest: Creative Schools

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Dod yn ôl at fynghoed: this is the title of the latest Creative Schools project I am working on in Tonypandy. In Welsh, it translates as “to return to my trees”, or “to return to a balanced state of mind”. The aim is to bring the children back into contact with nature through outings, stories, and creativity: collecting and printing leaves, working with clay, and willow weaving. There is a small area in the school yard that is to be transformed into a nature portal, a magical area the children can retreat to.

On an outing to a local forestry area, the children collected natural items to form a gateway into the  woods where stories would be shared. Some had never been walking in a forest before. They jumped through the gateway in turn reciting the password: I mewn i’r goedwig hudol! (Into the magical forest!)

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The Gateway to the Magical Forest

Discovering a fairy stone, and puffball mushrooms.

 

 

Doing leaf rubbings using wax crayons.

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Working with clay.

 

 

Clay sculptures inspired by the woods and stories.

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Alchemy and Healing

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Catherine Lewis has taken over the gallery 1a Inverness Place,  an empty shop, as part of her wellspace residency.

Cat works with materials that she gathers from her local environment  –  natural, local plant materials, and uses sustainable print processes and recycled cloths.

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Catherine had collected water and wood from a nearby healing well site, and was using it as part of the residency, encouraging visitors to draw and write using her wonderful inks made from walnuts, beetroot, hibiscous, turmeric.

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The spring, which still exists at The Oval and which was the principal reason for the arrival of St. Isan in the area in 535AD, is known as Ffynnon Llandennis. Ffynnon Llandennis is one of a number of healing springs in Cardiff which were considered to be holy and endowed with powers of healing…

‘It rises out of the soil with great force, and immediately forms a pool of considerable size, which is overhung with trees, and teems with aquatic growths of various kinds. The scene is one of wild and romantic beauty…’ (John Hobson Mathews, 19C city archivist).

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The well-tree dressing has echoes of the clootie well tradition, which are places of pilgrimage in Celtic areas. Strips of white cloth or rags are tied to the branches of the tree as part of a healing ritual.

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Catherine has created a well-ness space for slow making and recovery; a space that houses her urban ink making lab, using the well water and materials found whilst walking between the well sites and the gallery. She invites visitors to bring ink ingredients to her and also donations of old bottles to store ingredients and finished inks.

 

 

 

Seeking Transparency

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For our Saturday afternoon drop-in session to experiment with cyanotype, or sun prints, participants brought along an assortment of things to try out on the photo-sensitive paper. Beads and seeds, feathers and flowers fresh from the garden were laid out and placed under the UV light bed for exposure.

Creating compositions using a variety of materials.

The most effective were often the most transparent or delicate items. Mary brought along a tracing on acetate of grasses she had made for a lino cut, and this worked beautifully, with small skeins of wool for clouds. Experimenting with double-exposure techniques added depth and interest: netting placed over the exposed grasses gave the effect of light rippling through them.

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Rosalind, who is a wonderful illustrator, began to draw her designs on tracing paper, adding photogram items such as glass beads to enhance the composition. The tracing paper also adds varying tones.

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Glass bottles from a flea market became ghostly alchemist’s wares. Sally’s double exposure using feathers and dried hydrangea flowers was also magical.

 

 

 

Homage to Hannelore Baron

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Image result for hannelore baron box constructions                           Image result for hannelore baron box constructions

There is something raw and deeply absorbing about Hannelore Baron’s multi-layered work. Found materials are combined with enigmatic text and abstract figures in her collages and box constructions.

The work suggests both the condition of entrapment and the possibility of release, no doubt informed by her early traumatic experiences of war in Germany in the 1930s. Unlike Joseph Cornell, her box assemblages are not wrapped — or trapped — in the air of poetic-romantic longing. Baron’s boxes and notations insist that the human spirit can persevere, however damaged.

 

 

 

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Hannelore Baron website: http://www.hannelorebaron.net/