October Residency 2022
Audrey Grant
17/10/22 - MONDAY
I arrived, accompanied by my partner to Arcadia Sculpture Centre, near Drymen, the old Drumbeg Farm. Unloaded, unpacked and settled into our cabin in the woods.
I have come here with some ideas - the poems about autumn by Rainer Maria Rilke and inspired by lines from the poem Autumn Day - to build a woodland shelter. Something I have never done before but I want to leave something here in this golden landscape from nature, and that would return to nature.
My thoughts: autumn; history and objects; How to build a shelter; the woodland - oak, birch, ash and sycamore; and fallen branches
Falling beauty..
What is a shelter? Protection from the elements; a protective layer; a shelter for our vulnerability.
We walked the Sculpture Trail and found a spot in the new woodland and began to build a shelter amongst the trees, a solitary shelter, a small intimate shelter for protection, for reflection, for contemplation.
We gathered branches of all lengths from the forest floor, we found a tree with a good ‘V’ shape to place the backbone branch, from which others would be wedged against to make the ribcage for the structure
The ground was wet, everything was wet, the rain and wind bellowing around us but we continued until the light began to fade.
A good start, a good beginning of my shelter in the woodland in Arcadia.
It sounds like a contradiction to say we need such a shelter in Arcadia, but even in Arcadia we are mortal.
ET IN ARCADIA EGO
18/10/22 -TUESDAY
A new day, bright sunlight through the trees, the golden light is incredible. Thinking of Thoreau at Walden Pond, I have much more luxury but that sense of being deep in nature, somewhere else removed from the rest of the world.
10am A walk around to see if what we started yesterday still stood? Intact and beautiful in the golden light.
Then a walk to explore the area, to find the old sand quarry. Along the path and into the fields where the sheep grazed. An undulating surface, post extractive, the ground wet and pools filled with bullrushes.
After lunch I went to explore the old barn and stables - what a wonderful place, so much history here:
old stables, horses names still on the doors,
metallic basin
metal pot
rusty horseshoes
11 school chairs
3 blankets
fire wood pile
old lamp and saw
old machinery
Thinking about a Plan for an Installation
Poor Objects; Everyday objects; Discarded objects; Object with history; multiples
Traces of the past; left behind, the previous life of an object when it was of use, now forgotten, discarded. There is a sort of melancholy about this old barn.
Then back to the woods to gather more big and long branches for the shelter, dragging huge branches up from the lower woodland.
Exhausted at 5.45pm
19/10/22 - WEDNESDAY
Plan for today:
Continue to work with found objects in the barn
Continue to build the shelter
Print some images using new Instax wide printer
The shelter has a structure now, feels like it has some substance to withstand the next layer - fern leaves to be woven into structure.
I set up a little indoor studio space that Rob said I could use. Shown around his studio workshop and the other buildings - what a treasure trove!
Thinking more about Rilke and a sequence of poems from the Book of Images, First book part two:
Lament
Solitude
Autumn Day
Autumn
Memory
End of Autumn
Rilke ‘ the poet of memory; of childhood; of leave-taking and looking; of night and its vastness; of human separation; of thresholds and silences; of landscape charged with remoteness and expectancy; the poet especially of solitude in its endless inflections’ (Edward Snow)
How much the place suits Rilke …
After lunch, pottering in the studio space with some found small pieces of wood, layering them with lithium grease then gauze bandages. Little sculptural objects.
20/10/22 - THURSDAY
Dark and very damp today and worried about the shelter as there were very strong winds last night so I walked around first thing to check - and it is still standing tall and proud!
After reading more from Gaston Bachelard’s ‘Poetic of Space’ I’ve been thinking about the immensity of the forest and the solitariness of the shelter. A shelter for the solitary dreamer for the day dream.
Raining all day
Working in the dry studio space after lunch, and continuing to work on the little sculptural objects, layering more and more lithium grease and more layers of gauze, plus a special beeswax paste I made. Back in the barn, leaves had been blown in and had landed on the school chairs. This got me thinking and experimenting, so collected handfuls of leaves from outside and let them fall onto the seat of one chair. I piled them up until they began to fall onto the floor and created a ring of leaves. The leaves are falling, we are all falling
The metallic basin somehow relates to this.
I’d been printing photographs to get a better look at what was emerging - three basic groups:
1. The Shelter and its progress
2. Objects and surfaces in the barn
3. The Arcadian Landscape
4. Small sculptural objects
21/10/22 FRIDAY
NOT raining today so collected the strimmer from Rob to cut down the fern. Again with Mary’s help we collected piles and piles of fern leaves.
We began to weave the leaves into the structure.
Several rounds of exhausting activity required to have enough ferns.
Flocks and flocks of geese flying north as they have all week. I find their sound so moving
The shelter as a place for daydreams but also for shelter from the rain and the wind. Maybe not so watertight!
Amazing to spend most of the day working outside, physical labour, building my own shelter.
I reflect upon our relationship with nature, and how out of kilter it can be. What so many of us can take for granted yet everything is so fragile and transient.
Only one full day left!
22/10/22 SATURDAY
Started the day with more work on the shelter to complete it today. Collected handfuls of fern leaves to finish. Started to put handfuls of fallen leaves on top of ferns but this didn’t work so we stopped but they were useful for the roof of the shelter which was hard to reach. Mary raked the ground around the shelter, and I sat inside the shelter to contemplate. I need more time for contemplation and reflection - what it took to build it; the physical effort required; we were fortunate as there was plenty of materials in the forest - what if there weren’t?
The rain was pouring now so spent the rest of the afternoon in the barn creating a series of ‘still life’ set ups, photographed them using Iphone and analogue film camera.
Still to photograph shelter, Sunday’s job before leaving.
23/10/22 SUNDAY
All packed up, vacated cabin by 10am. Car packed and time for a walk to the shelter for a final look and to photograph using Nikon camera.
The week flew by, and I built a shelter in the woods for the Arcadia Sculpture Centre, build from nature and it will return to nature as it decays over the coming months.
An incredibly wonderful and creative week with so much to take away and work on back in my Edinburgh studio. Thank you very much Susan and Rob Mulholland for having me!
Audrey Grant 2022