THE GREAT CLAY MOUND

It was really exciting this week at our Spontaneous Communities workshop as we had a really fantastic turn out. I think we had 10 families along which meant the energy in the room sky rocketed!

Mandy had planned a brilliant session using clay, toys and recycled stuff for the group to play with. A mad metropolis sprung up out of the ground with tubes, funnels, cars and all sorts of creatures all vying for a bit of space in the great clay mound. 

For those that found the city life too hectic they took themselves off and built satellite towns. It was like watching medieval town planning in motion. An amazing day to document. 

More architectural drawing

Today we went to the Cathedral to follow up on some of the architectural drawing that we began back at base a couple of weeks ago. It is courageous of some of the group to be drawing in public, remembering that several are pretty new to drawing all together. We used view finders to narrow the field a bit and identify and area to study. Even so I think it was still quite challenging, making an attempt on this vast and awe inspiring space, perhaps we should have set narrower parameters and focussed on more close up features. Still there were successes and Sheila was unstoppable, even in the cafe afterwards.

Drawing Buddies at the Castle Museum Study Centre.

The Drawing Buddies went to Norwich Castle Study Centre. Sadly I couldn't go because I got a horrible bug. I think I really missed out, everyone was delighted with the experience, some members of the group had never been before and didn't know about the resource and they were made to feel very welcome and encouraged to come again as a group or individually. Ruth the curator had arranged for several wildlife objects that might be seen at the city centre sites to be available to draw close up and the group were given a room to themselves. I think the drawings they made are beautiful, full of character and convey just how involved they all were. Everyone is keen to go again and I will be joining them this time!

Enchanted Pavilion

We transformed the Sure Start space into an stunning magical pavilion, using an amazing selection of different coloured and patterned fabrics from Sophie’s own collection. All made more enchanting by her fabulous disco ball. The families explored and pegged colourful scarves and ribbons to laundry airers, crafting a spacial divider (screen!). We transformed into strange bird like creatures with conical beaks, created light drawings with fairy lights and sang songs, and made dens for teddies.

Swanny day at Cow Tower

January 2012: we all had a trip out to Cow Tower on a bright January day to see the sculpture: five of us squashed into my little Nissan Micra, blinking in the sunshine and bright riverside of Norwich.
Watched the 21st century swan family scoff bread provided by the anglers, the swans probably unaware that upriver was England only cygnet hatchery(from 700 years ago) - early battery farming?
Anyway, the trees look great, bare of leaves and showing off their arms. The sculpture also looked great, high up and at home in the tree. Much speculation about what would live in there, and admiration of how it fits in the place - very different from a metal sculpture on a plinth.
We talked about making some box sculptures ourselves, combining recycled garments with a stacking sculpture: watch this space!

Grape's Hill Community Garden

More herbs are being adopted.

On Monday 16th Jan Dan went to see Ieuen and Jeremy who are part of the force behind the wonderful Grapes Hill Community Garden. To see what is possible in a small area and the benefit to the local people is really inspiring. The gardens are open to the public during the day and are a sanctuary.

I was keen to find more people who would be up for adopting herbs. They will publicise what we are doing and Ieuen likes the idea of adopting Parsley after a great chat about Welsh cooking. Jeremy writes a blog which is full of research and stores about herbs and plants. He has written about so many herbs that he said it was hard just to choose one to adopt. I will link his blog from the herb collection page on the www.adoptaherb.org.uk site.

January's tasks are to firm up the dates when workshops will take place. I have started getting interested individuals joining up now via the website so the net is widening. Love it.

Large felting panel (Garden Birds)

Heres some pictures of the felting in progress...

Needlefelting progress

Thinking of the garden birds and which might live in the boxes at Cow Tower, we have started to work together on one large felted panel, so far featuring a spotted woodpecker, thrush, robin, bluetit and goldfinch.
Its nice working together on one piece and all becoming more confident with the technique and the emerging outcomes.
Needle felting has also been interesting - it is so simple and effective, practising on our small samples. The process of stamping the fibres repeatedly it a bit birdlike and repetitive: perhaps we should all wear large false beaks whilst we do it?!
Talk is generating around various ideas of developing work to display in the new Charity Shop due to be opened at Baseline: this might be a good way of linking up with the other Spontaneous Community groups?

Referencing architecture

The Spontaneous Cities reference the architecture around them so we took a close up look at some features of Norwich Cathedral which could be seen from Cow Tower, if you were a bird in a sculpture, up a tree ! Drawing from cropped, close up photos of architectural features gave us chance to do a little mental warm up ahead of a planned a visit to the real thing in a couple of weeks time. We also did some collaborative group drawings attempting to draw 'as if we were one artist' questioning the subject out loud, externalizing the internal dialogue, guiding each other and rotating ourselves and the drawing. We were against the clock but there was a kind of inherent editing and correction that went hand in hand with the discussion, unruly but fun and I think I got to see the Drawing Buddies as their six year old selves !