Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail Diversity Project
Temporary works, Jane Spray
Artists Statement
Peace Day event, Beechenhurst, September 2002
In the summer of 2002, just at the beginning of this residency, US President George Bush had started making hostile threats toward Iraq. In response, I initiated a ‘Peace Day’ in the Forest, linked to the Sculpture Trail, on Sept 21, the UN’s annual ‘Day of Peace’.
Community participation was encouraged through the local press and radio, and other artists were also invited to contribute, with stalls and activities both at Beechenhurst and at stops along the Sculpture Trail (for instance, at Beechenhurst, Erika Tan organised an Origami dove making workshop, and Sue Holpin sang ‘Flowers of the Forest’ at Bois Mort).
I designed two sculptural shelter structures for the occasion.
The first, a floating white ‘Peace Shelter’ was suspended between trees at the Grove of Silence, for quiet contemplation. The second, a ‘Circle of Reflection’ at Beechenhurst, acted as both a play and gathering space during the afternoon, with members of the local community contributing songs and peace chants. Roving sound recorders captured both the music and people’s comments and thoughts on war and peace, Bush and Iraq. At twilight, hundreds of candles were lit around all the large oaks at Beechenhurst, and in the Circle of Reflection.
Radio interviews were also given. The event gave local people the chance to be heard and to contribute creatively. It did not stop the war!
Copper Beech
Near the beginning of the residency, while introducing Erika to a local hardware store, I was struck by the beauty of some thin copper tubing. Soon afterwards, on forest wanderings, I came across an unsuspecting dead beech tree to wind copper round, reinventing it as the more decorative variety, a ‘Copper Beech’.
This particular tree, tucked away quite secretly, had been ring-barked by a forester’s axe, - a method of thinning, giving the other nearby surviving trees more room to grow. It was still sound and upright when I came across it, but not producing leaves anymore. The smoothness of the beech bark accepted the smoothness of the copper coil very well.
Being in the forest, and wandering through it, brought about a feeling of the interconnectedness of all life. So, a more private, yet photo-documented, action: wrapping a dead, road-kill squirrel in copper wire, digging a hole by the copper beech, lining the soil with copper, and burying the ‘copper squirrel’ in the ‘copper earth’.
This led on to work with children at Clearwell Primary School. First, we played the guessing game, ‘Animal, vegetable or mineral?’ with them, looking at life cycles and connections between one living thing or material and another. Then, we let them investigate this themselves while spending some time in the forest, and taking ‘Animal, vegetable or mineral’ photographs, both in the forest and in daily life. I then helped each child select one of their favourite photographs, to be printed on acetate. These see-through, overlapping and interconnected images were used in an installation on the Sculpture Trail, over the autumn half term week.
A few years ago the Copper Beech was mysteriously ‘recycled’ by someone and is no longer there. Only the underground copper and the squirrel bones remain, well hidden.
wind.blow.fell.bend
This happened in February 2003 at the edge of a small woodland clearing area near the Sculpture Trail path, on the other side of the path to the Grove of Silence. It happened against a background of the Iraq war ‘brewing’. I felt, along with many others, a sense of foreboding, and of frustration, of forces pulling in different directions and being bent by circumstances. This came out in the work.
In the Grove of Silence, where the Scots pine stand was substantially thinned many years ago, the remaining trees have had room to grow to a majestic size and height. A little further on from the Grove, on the other side of the path, some much younger trees, again mainly pine, have not been thinned and were growing together crowded and spindly.
Some were bent over, by wind or snow, or both, into beautiful, asymmetric arches. I had a few young pines thinned by ranger Andy Davis, to make more room for the remaining trees. Then some three or four pines, and one birch, were bent over into a curved composition with the already arched trees. The trees were arched over in different directions, leaving a forest tableau of both tension and grace, a feeling of both beauty and disturbance, unsettling, and puzzling, to look at – what can have happened here?
To my mind, the trees bowing down in different directions were suggestive of different religions – Islam, Christianity, Judaism, all worshipping and pointing in different directions (-not all neatly towards Mecca, for instance). Crossing one another, in tension. I wanted to bring this aspect more clearly to light by playing a recording of the Muslim muezzin’s ‘call to prayer’, from the top of a large pine, at intervals throughout the day.
Remnants may be left, but wind.blow.fell.bend is gradually falling back into the forest. New trees are now growing up, and no doubt more trees in the future will become gracefully windblown, or bent with snow.
Phoenix Roots
Again, this work was as much a response to the Iraq war as to the theme of diversity. Charred tree roots, suggestive of death, war, and destruction, yet also of sheltering and endurance. The blackened roots take on a life of their own, and contrast well against the green, or the russet brown of bracken. Within death, new life growing, new seedling trees, sheltered by the charred roots.
A place, in the form of a sloping oak wood, on the Northern borders of the Sculpture Trail area, and looking down on the trail where it becomes one with the cycle path. There I came across the cut stump of a once large oak tree that had been completely felled, yet was managing to grow back into a many trunked ‘coppice’ tree. This tree became the heart of the work, in itself demonstrating great natural resilience and rejuvenation. Oak trees are of course also valuable for the great diversity of other living species that they support.
Through the circles of charred roots sheltering newly planted oaks, themselves circling the central survivor oak, a curving spine of bright orange roots, like some earth and fire creature, and close round the base of the central tree itself, three very large roots, one charred black, one white with casein paint, one green with lichen. The orange colour was made from the striking bright iron stained pigment found in some local streams, which also matches the colour of an orange lichen found growing on tree trunks throughout the forest. A zingy orange, wonderful with the bluebells in May.
My first instinct was to try to keep the orange and white colours bright with periodic repainting, but only for a season or two. Now the work is no longer signposted it has become a peaceful spot again, relaxing back into the forest. The orange ‘spine’ has gone, making the work less colourful, yet simpler.
Where the bracken was initially cleared many little oaks are now naturally regenerating. I may sneak back sometime with a few hazel seedlings, to add to the biodiversity.
White Birches
This temporary installation came about from working as a member of the volunteer ‘Green Team’, on practical nature conservation tasks in the Forest of Dean.
Much of the Green Team’s work involves clearing birch trees and other invasive plants such as gorse from places that Forest Enterprise, the RSPB and the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust would like to keep open and un-wooded. This is done in order to encourage particular birds, butterflies, rare plants and other non woodland or woodland edge species, thus increasing the area’s overall biodiversity. An example is the restoration of lowland heath at Tidenham Chase Nature Reserve, the home of many birds, - for instance, nightjars, stonechats, yellowhammers, linnets, and snipe, as well as other wildlife.
The piece was made using birch trees that had been cut down around the Sculpture Trail by Forest Enterprise staff as part of their routine thinning and path clearance work.
It was inspired by the beauty and pioneering spirit of birch trees, forever growing up on open ground and seeding into woodland. A temporary memorial to all those birches cut down in the name of biodiversity and in the continuing nature conservation effort to create open areas around and amidst the forest.
Small trees, getting smaller with distance, and painted white for an ethereal look and to show up the tracery against dark trunks and branches, some apparently hanging like ghost trees in mid air…
The trees were hung in an ascending and converging ‘V’ to create more perspective, and the sense of skyward floating birch ‘spirits’.
The Latin name for silver birch is Betula pendula. The birch of ‘White Birches’ became a temporary new species, Betula alba ‘Ascendens’.
Considering its fragility, the work lasted well. It was removed after about 8 months, when the suspended trees had started to become a bit brittle.
JSsept08
Jane Spray, Hillside, Aston Bridge Road, The Pludds,
Ruardean, Forest of Dean GL17 9TZ, England
telephone +44 (0)1594 861404
email : Jane Spray
project link: Landscape and Arts Network