The Open and the universe

 

The year has thinned to its closing chapters. Early this morning the moon formed its thin crescent low in the east. A liminal time, a time of respecting the lost knowledge of our pre-colonial past, and a time when we humans need to learn that love should not be exclusive, that we desperately need to love our other than human neighbours as ourselves, because truly we are of the same stuff. 

< I have decided to enter 2 works into The Swansea Open at the Glynn Vivian.

One piece called Craig gigfran, was made in response to a walk myself and fellow artist Eleanor Greenwood did a few weeks back. There is a hidden valley behind the mountain we live on, it has largely escaped the industrial extraction of coal and minerals elsewhere in the area, and retains its ancient hedgerows and small field patterns. As we walked away from the forest plantation on our side of the hill, Eleanor pointed out the top of the mountain and explained that it was named in welsh after the presence of ravens, just as she said this, four ravens took off from the rocky outcrop and tumbled down the hillside and up into the blue air.

I feel a deep connection to ravens, their deep gravel throated calls have followed me through my journey in life. Their presence always lifts me, and I feel their flight in my soul.

Craig gigfran

Four ravens cruck call from gravel throats

Ancient sounds like fossil birds

Flighty flowing

Twist and twirl

Swoop the blue looped sky

Drop over mountain and moor

Over bilberry whinberry

Flowing down over the edge

They see two valleys

And are between two worlds.

Making the wall piece was informed by my love of fossils and of visiting museums when a child. I particularly love the old Swansea Museum with its plaster casts of Ichthyosaurs in the lobby. The process of making took me through thoughts of deep time, and our fragility as a species, although there are still many of us who do not see it.

The second piece is a sculptural work made up of casts from the bark of trees in Craig Y Nos Country Park in the Upper Swansea Valley. The piece was sparked by seeing a fallen tree limb that had formed a kind of vessel within which was growing young tree saplings, ferns and mosses. This vessel sailing into a more than human future, was full of hope and potential.

I have been reading and listening to podcasts related to environmental issues, and the wisdom of indigenous peoples, and it is this wisdom that we need to heed, acknowledge our mistakes and listen to nature.

I'll see what happens with the open submissions, even if they are not selected, I have learnt a lot by making them.

Playing in my small studio and recycling materials - I have had some fun making a piece about the universe. We are made of the elements of the universe. This piece is a work in progress.