2019-20 A Living Coast
an artwork celebrating NWT’s acquisition of land connecting the Cley and Salthouse marshes
…… In the Domesday Book of 1086, Salthouse is entered simply as ‘a house for the storing of salt.’ Long before this, salt was made by the then worldwide method of boiling sea water in clay vessels; Cley is Anglo-Saxon ‘claeg’ for clay. It follows then that these two adjacent coastal settlements have connections going way back in time….
The clay (Cley) bowls of this work represent those bowls used historically to make the salt to be stored in the salt house
Heathwork 1997 – 2017
Curlew
bracken on birch
The neighbouring heathland is a constant source of inspiration:
Heath Drawings
At the beginning of 2012, as at the end of every winter, parts of the heath overgrown with self sown nursery woodland shed their superfluous branches in the winds and weather, all helped along by the deer pushing their way through the crowded undergrowth.
(click on individual images for enlargement)
It is like an ephemeral, impermanent, constantly moving drawing, lines are going everywhere in all directions, evolving in to different shapes and forms. I couldn’t resist adding to them a little, but was careful to move nothing; the heath had spread its branches at my feet, ‘tread softly ……. ‘
In the summer of 2014, these images were transported and transposed to Cley church in the Cley 14 exhibition: ‘A Conversation with Materials’ – nature’s apparent chaos of the wild place constrained to the grid of the hessian, the restriction of the form, and presented as a work of art, on to a measured piece of canvas.
Bracken pieces
Bracken Trail 2017
- IV & V November
- VII January
- VI December
- II early November
- III October
- V & IV November
Changing seasons,
autumn:
and winter:
details:
Heath Shadows II
Four Riders
Brush with Nature
Salthouse Heath houses many neolithic barrows. Over enthusiastic felling of birch trees early in 2009 resulted in the making of this installation which consists of 31 pieces linking two barrows in the form of an avenue reminiscent of the ancient standing stones.
from the top of Three Farthing Hill (the 2nd largest round barrow in Norfolk)
and from the top of the 2nd barrow, more than 100 metres away
Spring 2009
and Winter 2010
www.heritage.norfolk.gov.uk NHER reference Nos. 6202, 6203
(see all work from these dates under the heading ‘Heathwork’ on front page)
Salthouse Sculpture Trail
Garden Frames
Summer 2010
- willow, bindweed, frame
- detail
- perspective
- rush in frame
- rush
- detail
Salt of the Earth
http://www.edp24.co.uk/going-out/salthouse-09-art-festival-1-712296
Summer 2009
Burgh Apton Sculpture Trail