Faraway tree

lights and boxes people

Silver Sculptures at Baseline Womens Art Group

This session we launched straight into making bird sculptures and amazed ourselves at how, within 2 hours, we had made some great 3D work: a Stork (Jenny); Kingfisher (Pauline); Songthrush (Joanne); Owl (Sally); Blackbird (Theresa) and Heron (Jess).

Using silver foil to get the main shape, around a wire and newspaper armature, the birds were then clad in one layer of white cotton (from recycled mens hankies!! Washed first of course...)

Next session we plan to put coloured cotton fabric onto the birds, and will have a rummage in the charity clothes bags in the basement at Baseline for suitable patterned cotton we can use. Might also try to get some nice old vintage patchwork scraps to use aswell - anyone got anything spare?

We will also 'do' the legs using wire and string wrapped around the armature.

Anyhow, they look great and the session was good fun.

We also have some denim Owls to perch on our rather weird tubular denim tree, and a wrapped tree which is sprouting fungi made out of tights! If we have time, we want to make a giant willow cocoon for the exhibition: its great how this group has gathered confidence now and is ready, willing and able to make, well, ANYTHING!

Bungay Library Medicine Bed

I meet a lovely group of Norfolk and Suffolk boarder folk on Sunday to encourage them to adopt one herb each from the Sustainable Bungay Libray Medicine Bed. I really enjoyed taling about sustainable herbal healthcare and getting us all to draw our adopted herbs. I will be using my learnings with the allotment group in the warming months.
Thanks to Mark for inviting me.
His write up is below copied from http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-03-19/getting-connected
The Plants for Life events have really taken off. We began by Connecting with Our Roots in January and learned about Growing Organic and Biodynamic Herbs in February. And yesterday, local medical herbalist and transitioner Dan Wheals, showed us how to Adopt a Herb.
We each chose one particular plant to pay attention to, the one we were most drawn to, then everyone made a drawing of the plant and then took it in turns to speak our impressions of it out loud. It was magic. And totally absorbing.

Dan guided the whole process so gently I only realised when I'd got home just how much went on in those few hours. I had no idea Lesley or Richard could draw like that, or that Charlotte, who I've been living (and working with plants) with for years, knew that about parsley! Jeannie's enthusiasm on discovering herb Robert was completely infectious and reminded me of finding it for the first time myself all those years ago...
So what about me and my personal relationship with plants? Well, it's there, but I'm much more happy to bring, share and swap and join in with other people these transition days.
Dan Wheals shows us how to connect with the plants, March 2012 (CDC); Richard's rosemary flower drawing March 2012 (MW)

Hamlet Centre book beginnings

We started making some books today to accompany our work in the exhibition. First the group helped photograph each other in selected areas in and around the centre. These will be used to make collages in the next session. We then experimented with acrylics, stickers and tape onto acetate which will be layered over the top of our collages. There was a very calming atmosphere created by painting, its obviously something the group really enjoys and feels confident with. We had some wonderful results...see below!

The Hamlet Centre all up in the air

On our most recent trip to the Hamlet Centre we decided to send ourselves up into the sky, to get a birds eye view. We took it in turns to blow up helium balloons and see how high we could make it fly on string outside. We then printed out photographic portraits of the group and stuck them to the balloons so they could fly themselves. It was quite surreal at times! The last thing we did was write an invitation on a balloon to come to the spontaneous communities exhibition, we released this outside and watch it turn into a tiny spec.

Session three - Hamlet Centre

For session Three we decided to look more closely at the birds that might be inhabiting the spontaneous city and our toast sculpture, which unfortunately didn't survive the snow! We looked at and felt feathers and Georgies stuffed bird which she bought in. We thought about what the birds might be thinking when they see the sculptures and made speech bubbles with there thoughts in. Lucy had bought in her shadow puppet screen so we all had a play on that and then set about making our own bird shadow puppets.

Butterflies, moths and squashed bugs

The Drawing Buddies had another lovely trip to The Castle Study Centre, this time to draw british (and many Norfolk) butterflies, moths and bugs, also nests and animal architecture but these turned out to be too delicate to get out of their labelled boxes so we have deferred that session until we can see the best examples in the in the natural history galleries. When we first arrived I was worried that some of the drawers were "under whelmed" by the scale of the things that I had asked to look at and I thought we may have to split the session and go over to look at bigger things in the Galleries. However the courageous drawers were not to be defeated and became completely absorbed by the display cabinets full of british butterflies moths & insects some of which where miniscule! and squashed ! I was so impressed with their patience and tenacity and think that the drawings reflect just how involved they were. We followed up on a previous session (when we 'adjusted' each others drawings by drawing on top of them in a different colour, Trevor's inspired suggestion) by making sure we moved around and critiqued of each others work. We were helped by the Leonardo de Vinci quote "we all know that errors are more easily recognised in the works of others than in ones own, so that often whilst criticizing the small errors of others you will overlook your own great faults .........." and we used his trick of showing our drawings to the mirror which produced amazingly instant recognition of 'errors', not that this lot can put a foot wrong in my opinion. The challenge is to make the most of fact that we are a group, and use each other to develop our drawing but also finding enough solitude to be really receptive the subject, somehow it does all happen.