Death - Things Find You

Assemblage made with found objects during a 

Back To Books Walk curated by Katie Smith

Naturtiums growing wild in a compost heap

A electricity cable sign broken by traffic

Willow for weeping or the making of crowns.

Things that have meaning seem to find us

when we least expect / most need.

Pricilla Miles nee Holland RIP 

2nd April 1934 - 9th Oct 2017

We must all walk on whilst waiting 

for the sun and new life to find us.

Petri Project by McFarland & Singer

I took part in the open call out - I don't know whether the piece was ever included in the DNA Exhibition but I called the petri dish Bloodlines - Leaf, Twig, Feather, Wing. The circles are made from left over prints made with twigs, leaves, feathers. The pinked circles are attached to each other like a chain. I couldn't manage a double helix but some circles and halved, quartered and folded to represent the way we inherit some parts of out forebears DNA. The red ribbon is the blood that courses through us. The structure can be left popping out of the petrie dish and if it is squashed and lidded it represents the way traces of our physical being is compacted and composted over time. We become fragments but sometimes there is trace enough left in those fragments to tell our story.

Link to the call out Petri Project by McFarland & Singer

About the artists

The DNA Residency and Exhibition

Mythical Beasts House Banners - Corby Old Village Primary School

Artist Kate Dyer and I were invited to work throughout the year groups at Corby Old Village Primary School to help the pupils create a banner for each class. Their theme was Mythical Beasts - Unicorn, Centaur, Phoenix, Dragon, Griffin, Pegasus, Pixie. Kate went in and explained the brief to the children who made line drawings of their mythical creatures. We enlarged them on the photocopier and I cut out the stencils ready to print.

The children worked with me to screen print their designs and whilst some of the group were waiting Kate helped them to draw and decorate paper flags. After the designs were printed the children stamped words to represent the virtues of their mythical creatures.

We had a week to work on the project in order to 

have them ready for the end of tern Fun Day

International Gymnast Daniel Keatings opening the Fun Day 

Continuum - Autumn - Battery

In autumn trees store up energy in the roots and stems in order to survive the winter wit this thought in mind Miles and Dacombe decided that a battery / bird-box which emitted a vibrating hum 

and sugar glass acorns suspended from the branches of a beautiful willow tree would make an eloquent end to their walk through the seasons.

 Participants gathered round the tree, sat beneath the branches and listened to my poem

We Follow The Seasons

We follow the seasons,

bare, then budding,

greening up, fruiting.

Gold leaves turn brown

as we devour ourselves,

sucking ourselves dry.

We see in red, follow the light,

seek out the sun,

drinking it in.

Breathing out oxygen,

we are your vital organ.

Lungs of the world.

Our roots talk and twitch,

threads dividing to a

thousand tiny tendrils.

Microscopic fungus

delving through rock

extracting nutrients.

We play the long game,

here before you, still here

centuries after your passing.

A timeline of tales in peat, in soil

in the rings of our seasons which swell

then diminish as climates change.

Our presence soothes you,

our shaded spaces cool you,

mind and body, heart and soul.

Our songs, our sighing

carried on the wind with a

creak-crack of bark and twig.

We are male and female.

Pollen, flower, root and branch.

We are patient, opportunistic

clever seed stored up,

lying dormant waiting

to become viable.

Carole Miles 2017

The photographs from this part of the walk can be found here

Continuum was commissioned by Deep Roots Tall Trees as part of the Our Woods Festival

deeprootstalltrees.org/          http://deeprootstalltrees.org/about-us/who-we-are/

Continuum - Summer

During our research period Jo Dacombe and I took plenty of images of the leaf canopies in Thoroughsale Woods plus a few other woods during the summer months of 2016.

Our original intention was to hold the walk in March 2017 when the surrounding trees would still be bare to give a contrast between what was and what would be but rain made this impossible and the walk was rescheduled for May. However this change of plan worked in our favour and created shifting perspectives and experiences.

Three fabric canopies were printed giving different viewpoints through the photographic leaves. These were tied high above ground level, ground cover and mats were laid beneath them and participants were invited to lay down, look up and view both the artworks and the actual trees through specially made kaleidoscopes

The photographs from this part of the walk can be found here

Continuum was commissioned by Deep Roots Tall Trees as part of the Our Woods Festival

deeprootstalltrees.org/

Continuum - Spring

In Spring the woods are carpeted with Bluebells, Miles and Dacombe wanted to recreate the many and various shades of blue in a more open space. Participants were asked to choose a sheet of blue acrylic and a pair of blue tinted glassed to wear so the could become fully immersed in the filed of blues. They were then encouraged to form small groups, working together to form drifts or sculptural clusters to represent the Bluebells.

The photographs from this part of the walk can be found here

Continuum was commissioned by Deep Roots Tall Trees as part of the Our Woods Festival

deeprootstalltrees.org/