04.10.2018
As part of our professional practice and placement module, we spent the day in Festival Park, Stoke on Trent looking into how an artist would interact with an environment and create an intervention within a space. We started off with some drawing exercises such as one minute sketches up to 10, created a Haiku for the space, and created short voice recordings describing either a route we were taking or what we saw on the route. I then also wanted to respond to all the fallen leaves and bare branches surrounding me, so i took to the pet cemetery within the grounds and patched back together some trees and branches. By using a very thin wire i was able to then attach these 'branches' back onto a tree or a bush, it was almost unnoticeable which i loved. No one walking by would ever have known that the leaves on the branch were in fact dead, and the thin wire gently danced in the wind identical to the natural branches. This very man made intervention among something as natural as trees gave a fairly confronting notion of how we as humans are so damaging to our natural environment, and think that by patching up the problems will make our damage go away. I also collected different amounts of pine and bound them into 3 different sized paintbrushes. Using these i created quick 5 minute landscape paintings of the surrounding area. This was a fun way of using the environment to help me recreate it.
I learnt a lot on this day about different approaches you can take as an artist to respond to any type of location. On reflection, being experimental and really taking time to take in the space and really explore are key to creating an interesting intervention.