The Eloquent Fold - Creative Retreat Day - May 2018

The Eloquent Fold applied to Tesco Bags of Help last year and were awarded a small grant. Our intention, had we won the whole amount, was to have a walking, book, print and wellbeing project inspired by the Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady by Elizabeth Holden. We have now decided to use the grant to host a creative day at Newton Field Centre in May. We had an inspiring morning scoping and meeting with Georgina Hand, the centre manager. By the time of our visit there should be lots of plants and insects just waiting to inspire those that join us. 

Our setting is the beautiful Newton Field Centre which was once St Faith's Church. The surrounding area has range of habitats and sites within walking distance of the centre. These include semi natural grassland, woodland, freshwater habitats, farmland, a Local Wildlife Site, an Ancient Monument and the villages of Newton and Geddington and adjacent to the Field Centre is a stretch of the River Ise.

We hope participants will be inspired by the small details and the bigger picture that the surroundings have to offer. This is a day to think, dream and explore, The Eloquent Fold will be on hand to help and advise but this isn't a conventional workshop day. During the day participants will be able to create their own sketchbook with the option to design and make your own slip cover. Participants may want to work on loose sheets and assemble your book later. There will be plenty of opportunity to draw, paint, stitch, print etc and generally explore different techniques and mediums under your own steam. A range of materials will be available to try. We hope that participants will join us in a walk to help inspire them (weather permitting)

We are delighted to say that all the 16 places are now filled!

After Eden - Unquiet Dreams

Work made for Sculpture Network Brunch 2016

Theme - Nature as Material for Art

Host Susan Wiliams MRBS

Carrier - a wheelbarrow

After Eden - Unquiet Dreams

Carole Miles

We lie in an uneasy embrace with nature, 

our relationship is thorny or balance precarious.

Coupled yet separate

Together yet apart

Textile wrapping, rose thorns, flurecent acrylic sheet.

Copper fabrication - Michael Miles

More images here

The Last of Autumn

After sewing the dry oak leaf bowl for the Miles and Dacombe Flavour Exchange walk intervention in Birmingham I have been collecting other dry leaves without a clear idea of what i might do with them. 

Whilst in Paris last August I noticed how dry the city was, the fountains were still, the leaves seemed to have fallen very early. I collected some large grey green leaves and left them to dry in my shed.

In September, whilst exploring Totness I collected in a church a larger number of leaves, delighted and intrigued by the vast choice of colours, flame red, green/red, grey/green, toasty brown, gold, ochre, some already crispy, others softy and supple. I wondered how long they would retain their colour. 

So far my collecting had given me leaves of a similar type - the theme continued as i tryed to collect some of the tiny deep red Acer leaves from my garden - they crisped and crumpled away to practically nothing. However, whilst working in Northampton there were heaps of a different leaf shape (you can see how I am now dodging naming the exact trees, my leaf identification skills are pretty poor). These leaves were string, flat, rounded and came in a good range of colours, so I scooped up a bagful and took them home, still not really knowing why.

I had a thought about adding lights and putting them inside a glass dome, but during my kitchen studio antics for the NYB16 "Nature as a material for art" I broke the dome and decided that whole idea was pretty clichéd, so left that. As I am still trying to make things from things I already have rather than accumulate more things I cannot store I decided to repurpose the stands that had been used in a Brampton Valley intervention. I found some copper wire and decided that instead of sewing another bowl or embellishing a garment (done, done, done) I though I would use the aspects that made them hard to sew together - their dryness and the long, tough yet elegant stems.

I wanted to try an capture that sense of falling

I wanted to enjoy the colours,

the textures and the fragility of the leaves.

wrapped with wire, embraced by wire,

reflected in acrylic and supported on plum wood.

I had to be gentle working with a material that could be so easily crushed and destroyed, I ha to be careful not to do too much, just let the leaves decide on their shape and form, then wrap quickly in the copper wire. I like the sense that at any moment, wind or motion could alter or undo the leaves resting places and yet somehow they also remained strong. I liked the interplay of impermanence, strength and fragility, that they were an avenue of not trees. The colours were disappearing but there were faint traces of their autumn fire. All the bases should be in the same orientation, but one has been moved, I have just noticed this and it bothers me. I can't go back in time and change it, put it right, I have to accept that memory and actuality differ, are imperfect. 

This piece is about time and place, 

lightly caught and held.

The Last of Autumn - Jan 2016

Carole Miles - NYB 2016

Artspace, Kettering

An Invitation!

Snippet from film sound track we're creating for Light Walks , Carole Miles & Jo Dacombe

Light Walks snippet: Carole Miles and the Reverend Richard Coles in conversation, for video soundtrack

Draw a Flower to Present to the Queen

Draw a Flower to Present to the Queen was a huge project which was devised and completed within a very short space of time. Artists Kate Dyer, Jo Dacombe, Sophie Cullinan and I met to discuss what could be made to delight The Queen as she passed a very large expanse of concrete wall during Her  Majesty's Diamond Jubilee visit to Corby in the 14th of June. The initial proposal was to have a drawing competition and to reproduce three of the best drawings. I thought it a shame that only three children's work would be used if this idea was adopted. My recent involvement with a Jubilee Woods Tree Planting and the Royal interest in gardens and gardening made me suggest that children in Corby could be invited to draw or paint a flower to become part of a series of digital print silk wall hangings. This format would ensure that many more images made by the children could be incorporated. We wanted schools to encourage their pupils to look at real flowers or photographs of real flowers. To help with this I created a set of images on Flickr incorporating lots of different types of flowers captured in my garden and on my travels. A template and set of instructions was created and circulated to all the schools and within a very short space of time flowers of all kinds came flooding in to Corby Community Arts HQ! Jo and I used some of our allocated Beanfield time to work with children in the Nursery and Kate and I visited Year 6 pupils at Cottingham Primary School. We were delighted with the volume and quality of the work submitted and hugely grateful to the participating schools who made sure that as many children as possible took part. Kate and team of amazing volunteers scanned the images and then Kate laid them out in a huge grid - a long process but the end results were beautiful. Not every image could be incorporated on the hangings but every child's name was entered into a draw to choose two people to present a bouquet to the Queen and every child has been credited in the information board. My photographs don't really do justice to the work but give a flavour of the end results but the hangings are currently on display inside the Core.

Kate Dyer

View from above during installation

Beautiful Brigstock - A Day Planting Jubilee Woods

Jubilee Woods Tree Planting Day on Saturday February 18th, The Water Tower, Brigstock with Rosalind Stoddart FRSA, Independent Cultural Engineer. We were joined by artists, poets, storytellers, families and friends to undertake the planting. 

The weather was blustery with the constant threat of rain but spirits were high and the planting went smoothly. We planted 106 trees, 105 hawthorn, hazel, silver birch, rowan, wild cherry, dogwood and one walnut tree, all of which fitted in three buckets but took several hours to plant! 

Nursery Manager for AES Europe Ann Leonard, Proprietor - Mr Robert Cockroft and Operations Manager - Mr Anthony McKenna  -  donated the stakes and mesh to protect the young trees.

There was also the special tree grown from a seed from one of the Royal Estates. Poet Adrian Johnson read a The Heart of the Tree by Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855 - 1896) as the tree was planted and each tree was planted with a penny for luck. 

Our youngest tree planter was Hamish Young who is just over two years old. We were also joined by Annabel Amos during BBC Radio Northampton's Treasure Quest we were  the final destination and so the planting was shared with the wider community. Annabel was able to plant a tree before dashing back to Northampton in the radio car.

Indoor poetry reprise by Adrian Johnson

Afterward the planting we had a hearty lunch of soup, bread, cheese, carrots, grapes and fruit cake, poems were read and stories were told whilst we ate. Ros read a special extract from B.B a writer close to her heart and the subject of her most recent project BB and His World. 

Storyteller Allan Davies told a wonderful tale 

which he thinks is called The World Tree. 

I read the following poems

Go Plant a Tree by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Woman Waving to Trees by Dorothea Tanning

Trees Need Not Walk the Earth by David Rosenthal

Before the Snake by Nathaniel Tarn

It felt good to be planting trees, to be part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations, it was a celebratory day, so much more than a street party, as we were setting down roots, an act of faith in the future. 

The Tree Planters Were :-

Rosalind Stoddart

Carole Miles

Michael Miles

Ann Leonard
Annabel Amos

Amos Ballard

Millie Ballard

Sophie Cullinan

Kitty Cullinan

Jonty Cullinan

Emma Davies

Kate Dyer

Lorraine Dziarkowska

 Claudia Faehrenkemper

Jurgen
Nick Finn and Family

Adrian Johnson

Hilary Kantorowich

Gunta Krumins

Agris Krumins

Maureen Walvin

Sally Wilks

Lisa Wilkinson

Meriel White

Hamish Young

Graeham Young

There were also thoughts of, 

and trees planted for, 

people who couldn't attend 

or were no longer with us.