Exploring the hedgerows of Shropshire
Have you ever heard of a Quillet? Me, neither until yesterday, but what a lovely word. It’s one of those that rolls off the tongue and I wonder if I could use it as a name for my next dog or horse (that’s probably quite personal). Heads up – a quillet is defined historically as small, often narrow strips of land that form part of a larger, communal farming system or are detached pieces of land. Don’t ever say I don’t broaden your knowledge from these blog posts! But more about why that is remotely related to this blog post… keep reading. And just for info, this post has a creativity rather than photographic slant – I wanted to share a wonderful experience, that I hope will weave its way through my creative work going forward.
Although I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook and Instagram, I have to say that for once they have turned up trumps, because over a month ago, up popped a post from CPRE Shropshire with the details of an ‘Art workshop, collage and artist books in conjunction with the CPRE Hedgerow Hero’s project’. And I just knew this was worth signing up to immediately (even at 11.30pm lying in bed).
So yesterday, armed with wet weather gear and so much excitement and enthusiasm, I turned up at the tiny village hall of Chapel Lawn, and joined a lovely group of individuals all with the same attitude; to develop our awareness of hedgerows and to see how we could interpret a physical experience out in nature, into artistic endeavours.
The day started with a lovely wander into the Brineddin woodland behind the village, led by Bob from the Redlake Valley Community Benefit Society. This is where I got to learn a little bit about ‘quillets’. The community owns and manages two small parcels of land (quillets), and is exploring the management of each in slightly different ways. This is to encourage the regeneration of the woodland using enclosures to manage deer activity around the cleared areas. It’s all a journey of exploration and finding what happens when you manage the woodland in various ways – how the floor regenerates and how to encourage certain species and trees. With my love of woodlands, I found this fascinating. Each quillet has a number historically, and the stones are being reinstated to hold onto a bit of this unique history. For more info on quillets there is a fantastic page of info here https://redlakevalleycbs.org/what-is-a-quillet/
During the gentle walk, we were encouraged to ‘collect’ items that we could use for referencing our experience out in nature. Armed with a paper bag I set about filling it with variation; ferns, leaves, acorns, sticks, flowers, moss and even some sheep’s wool. I also made some reference photos of movement and elements that caught my eye that I thought might be useful. Following on from a perfect piece of advice from David duChemin earlier in the week ‘you need to make the photos to edit them’ I used this approach in collecting anything at all, that I thought was intriguing with zero idea of how I might use it later!
Back to the village hall, and our workshop leader (and amazing artist) Andrew Howe https://www.andrew-howe.com/projects/ guided us through an introduction, as to how we might like to interpret what was in our bags and our imaginations, onto the small concertina books he had ready for us to fill. I was fascinated by the ideas of pattern repetition that he showed us. I have always loved the work of Escher, and was lucky enough whilst in the Netherlands to see his work up close and personal. If you have never come across his work, check out this link: https://mcescher.com/gallery/
Using words, weaving, collage and natural inks and dyes were also explained; all of which I was fascinated by. There I was wondering how many elements I could fit into one small concertina book! Turns out quite a lot! “Over to you” said Andrew and I was suddenly paralysed – you see I know I have a real issue with making the first mark on a blank page, and also often find making decisions insanely difficult – what if I make the wrong one? But I was determined to make the most of the day. My process started by selecting a piece of tracing paper, and a page of paper I could use as a table protector – turned out it became so much more!
While out in the woods I had noticed the way the nature grew and moved, and in my head, I had lots of descriptions – knowing my ability to forget things, I started scribbling these down all over my table protector paper. Actually, this was an excellent move, as I then worked with each of these descriptions throughout the day, and they offered me a wonderful structure and push to explore the various mediums that fitted the words.
Getting to know the cow parsley
I have to admit now, I absolutely love cow parsley, so this was the obvious place for me to start. I tied some cow parsley together with its stems to make a brush, and chose two different natural ink dyes that Andrew had previously made. Using the words ‘cow parsley wafts and shimmers, its tiny white flowers like star bobbles’ – I played with the way I moved the bobbly heads onto the paper. Initially I started by swatting the page – an effect I loved, and that seemed to replicate all the bobbles. Then I swished it back and forth across the page, to represent the movement. I swapped from a green dye to a reddish brown and started tickling the page with my brush. By now, I had a rather soggy concertina book – but it was a start! To wait for it to dry and the colours to show themselves.
An element of repetition
I decided to see how I could interpret repetition into the book, and so did some tracings round two different shaped and sized oak leaves onto tracing paper. These I replicated onto quite thin paper multiple times, and then played with some watercolour pencils to replicate the gorgeous damson, lime greens and ochre brown of the saplings and dried leaves I had found. While in the woods I noticed the thousands of tiny oak saplings littering the floor - ‘oak saplings proliferate’ and ‘leaves litter the floor’– I decided that in some way I would like to create a carpet of leaves in my book. Drawing a cow parsley stem onto tracing paper, using the shadows that fell on the floor from the sun as my guide, I added this as a repeating element onto one of my book pages as well.
Time sped on, my lunch remained in my bag, I was having too good a time and I was scared to disturb the flow that seemed to be emerging. The front 4 sides of my concertina book were embellished and added to, they became full, colourful and a wonderful representation of my experience of the walk. But I still had the back pages and a few hours to go. Now a dilemma – starting all over again on blank pages.
Inspired by a fellow participant, I took my pages outside with a spray bottle of natural dye, and held it into the wind and sprayed! Nothing like unpredictability. The ink blobbed, and as I tried to stop it from leaving the page by twisting the page so that little rivers of ink travelled all over my page, I realised that what I was seeing emerge on the page was a unique representation of the landscape around me. Undulations, hills, woodlands and hedgerows – how perfect. The ink was a beautiful sage green and how it interacted with the paper and my movement of the page was unique.
My book - a tale of two stories
Now, my back pages of my book could not be more different than the front. Using the natural landscape that had appeared on my pages, I decided to try and represent some of the elements I think of as unique to the Shropshire countryside that I am not surrounded by every day. I tore some bits of map and stuck them on, adding extra ink to blur them back into the page. I added some typed words. I drew a piece of barbed wire that wiggled its way across a page and then got all excited as I realised, I could stick the collected sheep’s wool onto the barbed wire (just like you find in the hedgerows and fence lines). I added to my landscape, sticking some small sticks and seeds onto the page for extra texture. Finally, I used a tiny fern and some printing ink to create a horizon of fir trees across the top of one of the hills.
I honestly feel, writing this, that I am reliving the whole day over again. The excitement, exploration, childlike squeaks and revelation that I was able to ignore the draw of social media on my phone for 5 hours! I was immersed, absorbed and filled with a childlike desire to ‘see what would appear on my pages’.
I mentioned early on in this post, that this experience had nothing to do with photography. It was however 100% a journey of creativity and exploration. It offered me so much on a personal level to bring back to the way I work. I am deeply in love with my new location and the way I am surrounded by nature. I know this experience will show its self in my work going forward. I hope you have enjoyed my ramblings.
Thank you so much to Shropshire CPRE for putting this day on, it was a unique and unforgettable experience. I can't wait to see where my journey with hedgerows goes from here.
When I got home I made a little video of the full concertina book that I made so you can see the finished piece. You can see that here on my Youtube channel https://youtube.com/shorts/DwJH04hD9zM?feature=share
