Open Day

Inner light

A big thank you to everyone who came and visited me.  Wasn't it windy!  I hope that seeing my work in progress and speaking to me personally added something to your understanding of my work!

Rim

Today, I looked out over the valley and saw a rim of light lining the hilltops.  I reached for my camera and it was gone.  But it had been there.  That line of light had started this whole journey.  The metaphor of line as journey, started through seeing that rim of light on a Welsh hill a few years earlier.  It slowly seeped into my being and has formed my journey here. I had started to believe I had imagined it, fancied the idea out of somewhere but today it was there in front of me in my valley. 

Official end

Today is the official end of this project.  Since 1st May until today 31st August, I have been charting my view from a Welsh hill.   

I look back over the blog and realise how the focus of my work changed.  Also how little I showed of my work in progress. This is mainly because most of the work I was/am trying to do is to organise a large scale installation on the quarry site on the Welsh hill.  This is an ongoing process which means I will carry on this project long after it's official end.  I still hope to have at least a date when I can install this work by the open day on 15th September.  

I have realised also that the nature of what I thought using film could bring to my work has shifted.  I am interested in showing movement not narrative.  And to use this as part of my installation  rather than recording something around me.  It is not documentary I'm after.  It's a way of re-focusing on the obvious - obviously!!  It's more about overlaying images projecting one on top of the other.  Recording shadow on created objects in order to emphasise 'something'... Creating alienation by revealing something in a new light making the viewer look again.  This is to do with scale and detail I think.  I don't feel I have achieved this in any of the films I've made so far.  That is also one of the reasons that this project will go on after it's official ending.

I have realised also that my approach to a landscape as a woman is fundamental to my work.  It means a gentle, quiet, poetic approach regardless of scale. 

Lakeland blue

Nearing the end

Now less than a week away from the end of this project and I am looking already at what has worked and not worked.  It has been a great opportunity to focus on my work.  Having a self imposed time limit is important, it's like having a deadline.  The hardest part has been not enough time - sound familiar?  A day a week is unrealistic.  You can't just switch on after six days working on something else.  So I ended up doing blocks of time.  That pottering 'empty' time that is so important. Learning to relax into your work, removing the need to 'produce'.  

Thinking time is so important and part of this project has been the re-education that to indulge yourself in dreamtime is the only way work can happen.  To just believe.

To take that leap of faith has been wonderful.

Thorns from there, slate from here

Thorn Line

Fault Line

Site as self

My work is site specific but it is also personal.  I am finding that I am increasingly drawing on other landscapes to inform my work for many reasons - such as emotional or historical resonance.  I am building on past experience and where I find myself in this new landscape.  It is my journey.  It is how I am affected.

Quarry

On the hill is a quarry which is slowly blasting the rock away.  Hill is becoming basin.  The 'historical fabric' of the landscape is being changed.  We are experiencing a physical transformation of the countryside.  

Positive space is becoming negative space.

Convex to concave.

Emptiness where once solid.

Earth becomes air - birds will fly where slow worms once slithered.

The poetry of emptiness.

View from a French Hill

I've just spent time in France, getting to grips with a new landscape and my reaction to it.  The quality of the light was very different as was the warmth.

I managed to create some small works, which I may show on the open day; as a way of recording the summer and my reaction to landscape in general.

Open Day

I've managed to secure a space to hold an open day to show what work has been created over the summer.  The open day will be on Tuesday 15th September!  It's strange to be thinking about the end of a project when you're only just getting to grips with it...

Making marks

Why follow the tracks being made by the sheep...  The sheep tracks are now hard and compacted.  They are not straight lines - the shortest route somewhere but they are traced time and time again.   This making of tracks  is seen in any landscape, urban or rural.  In a city a derelict scrap of land will have routes created as people cross through it making short cuts.  The sheep trails are more meandering - I wonder what this says!

I think my looking at the sheep trails is to do with my fascination of how man makes his mark on the landscape. The sheep doing the same.   Buildings in a landscape give a sense of scale, a reference point.  How the landscape is used.  That interaction between man and nature.  How man is trying to tame his surroundings.  How people/animals move through that landscape.  One imposed on the other, how the other is oblivious.  This making of lines, mark making is seen as man tries to make sense and clarify boundaries, borders.  Straight hedgerows.  A wandering boundary between Wales and England.  

Lines are important.

Chainsaw marks

Water through wood

Making sense yet?

I think that I'm starting to make sense of what I'm trying to achieve.  I'm still not there yet but things are starting to form! Just letting yourself play is a hard but essential part of creating.  That's why grants like this are so important.  A day a week isn't enough though.  You need weeks at a time together.  Everything is so disjointed, and trying to be coherent is hard. Slowly things are starting to build.

Flight Line

Whilst on the hill watching the buzzards I starting looking at the clouds and filmed them out of curiosity.  When I got back and down loaded the images, I realised I had captured a buzzard diving in a straight line then dissolving into the clouds. 

Serendipity.

Tracks

My route up onto the hill has become too overgrown with nettles, so I have taken to using the sheep tracks. They are becoming more and more trodden.  Grass giving way to mud,  the lines becoming more sharply defined.  Mark making on the landscape.

Short and sweet

Here is a shortened version of my continuing fascination with tracks being created in the landscape.  If you would like to see the full 2.23 version, just ask!

Sheep on track

The last few weeks have been very limited in terms of sharing the working process.  Lots of technical figuring out on my part.  I've been coming to terms with how to use the Mini DV camcorder.  I'm still not happy with the quality of images I'm getting.  I've kindly been lent a tripod which I hope will help to some extent.  The quality of my stills images have been poor, which has made me reluctant to post images, especially the weekly ones from the same spot.  They've just not been good enough.  Though I hope they've given an idea of the view!  I hope the new camera will solve this!

I'm also trying to sort out some large scale work.  There are two ideas I would like to pursue.  One, if all goes to plan, will be implemented in August.  It will be sited on the hill itself.  The other may be more long term and have to happen over the winter.  So View from a  Welsh Hill will carry on.

I have also been told of some wonderful local stories, not all concerning this particular hill, so my horizons are already expanding!

Mist 

29th May 2009

23rd May 2009

Sound

Sound is becoming increasingly a part of my exploration.    The contrast between birdsong and the wind (as if on cue - a huge gust of wind has erupted!  The wind and rains recently have been quite furious, even hail falling yesterday.  The wind dogs have been driving the dog demented!).  

The sound of rain as I film.  The poetry of falling rain as I concentrate on a small detail.

The atmosphere changes from what I experience when I am recording and what the microphone has heard when the film is being played back. Sound has always been important to me at my installations and at the exhibitions held afterwards that document them.  Movement creates the need for noise?

Lines

Watching sheep making their way through the fields using  tracks that they have created again and again.  Sheep lines.

Tree grain in a stump.

Nettles and Fox

The track I walk up onto the hill has become almost impassable.  The nettles have shot up over the last week.  The trail through I have been creating has disappeared under all the growth and I carve through again trampling nettles, getting stung and wet in the rain.  The view has gone into drizzle and mist.

This idea of tracing a path through constant use, repetition, creating marks in the landscape.  The sheep trails visible in the grass.  Caterpillar tracks in the woods as machines clear felled trees.  The smell of fox through the undergrowth.

Sound

1st and 8th May 2009

VE day

A bracing day.  The wind has been howling through the trees.  Up on the hill it was magnificent, a sharp contrast to last week.   The rain blowing in your face whilst the sun sent strong bursts of light through the clouds.  

The first swifts of the season also appeared today, a month later than the swallows.

May day

I've been hoping for a sunny clear day to start this project.   Why, I'm not sure, maybe for the sheer sense of optimism of it all! And a bright day allows wonderful views across the valley when you can see cloud shadows moving across the hills opposite. The scale this gives, the size of the sky, is physical.  It is this that makes sense to me.  It's not the wonderful view per se it's the sensation of being in and part of this landscape.

This study over a summer is a record of my journey of making sense of this landscape and mapping it on many different levels.  It is also a time of experimentation.  I hope to use film as part of this project, but I'm not sure how just yet.  

I will start by using a simple note book approach, taking still images from the same location over the duration of the summer to chart the passing of time. I also hope to create larger works in the landscape.  To record hidden elements, to capture a fleeting moment - perhaps!

View from a Welsh Hill

Thank you to Arts Council Wales who have awarded me funding for research and development time and especially to Rolande Thomas who supported me through the application process.  

The project is called 'View from a Welsh Hill'.  It will take place between 1st May - 31st August 2009; the span of a summer.  I will document my observations and work process through this blog starting on the first May bank holiday.