Working with village residents, we will walk, talk, gather and record this landscape. With the aim of collaboratively creating book forms using local clay, paper, beeswax and image making processes such as cyanotype and iron mordant. With pages formed from casts, prints, photographs, writing, marks taken from the landscape, and clay, gathered locally and fired using ancient firing techniques and fallen timber, or not at all. A process in which community gathering and ritual would be central.
A walk through Hollowmarsh on a July evening.
We planned to walk for an hour and ended up walking for 2, through the sunset and into the gloaming.
I meant to talk about the history of this landscape, which I did, a little.
But mostly we talked about memories, and places that were special to us, about witchcraft and our favourite tree. These places we walked though have an added layer of meaning now, remembering an evening spent pressing porcelain into the bark of that oak on the Hollowmarsh Lane, walking though Long Dole and mourning the destruction wrought there last year by plough and pesticide, collecting clay from the bank beyond that crossroads at Whitehouse Lane.
This walk was everything I hoped to gain from this project.
