Studio Diary: The Marking Time Sculpture at Bronllys Hospital, Powys, part 10: Finale!

Many thanks to Talgarth FYI and Ann Dierikx Photography for this:

Official Opening of the Marking Time Sculpture and Woodland Walk, Bronllys Hospital on June 22 2017

5 days ago in Community News by FYI:Talgarth

Official Opening of the Marking Time Sculpture and Woodland Walk, Bronllys Hospital

Thursday June 22 saw members of the Powys Teaching Health Board come together with artist Rebecca Buck, Veterans and Powys County Council Cabinet Ministers plus invited guests to officially open the Marking Time Sculpture and Woodland Walk.

Along with The Green Valleys Organisation (TGV) the Powys Teaching Health Board (PTHB) has been working with and supported by Powys Forces Covenant to create a woodland walk which will allow patients, staff and visitors alike to take some quiet time in the small mature woodland adjacent to the hospital. TGV working with forces Veterans over the past year have created a route through the wood featuring a large fired sculpture by Brecon Beacons artist Rebecca Buck. The project group also worked with children from two schools, Mount Street Primary in Brecon and Llandrindod High School, children from Mount Street Primary attended the opening and were delighted to see the fired tiles they had created in situ.

The event was opened by Carol Shillabeer Chief Executive of the Local Health Board and attended by Chair of the LHB, Professor Vivienne Harpwood, Vice Chair Melanie Davies. After an introduction and thanks to all working on the project, Veteran Mick Farrell gave a small speech of thanks to those who made the project possible especially volunteers such as Mark Christmas who has worked tirelessly on the project along with Gareth Ellis of The Green Valleys.

Many elements of the walk have come from other areas of the local community such as garden design by Seza Magdalena Eccles of ‘Hideaways in Hay’, poems commissioned for the walk from poet Emma Van Woerkom and Mark Christmas. The mosaic which forms part of the sculpture was made by the children and the created tiles fit in and around the sculpture which were made and then cast in 3 sections.

After some light refreshments and a display of the works, groups were led around the walk and the children from Mount Street joined the group for photos. Rebecca Buck the artist commissioned to make the sculpture which draws inspirations from Welsh icons such as Dragons and Red Kites gave and emotional speech. A poem which was written by Veteran Mick Farrell, especially for the Walk was read by Michael Eccles of Hideaways in Hay.


We are the child of nevermind
Who, finding dreams lost, unfind
Who, wandering, walking paths unknown
to find a woodland overgrown
And seeing in that woodland Glen
Who elfin laughter laughly speak
Of how we humans keenly seek
Some new haven overhewn
And child stars of the moon
Mick Farrell, 2016

The sculpture is viewable in the ‘Woodland Walk at the Bronllys Hospital Site just opposite the Veterans ‘At Ease Garden’ created by the same Group.

Powys Teaching Health Board Website: http://www.powysthb.wales.nhs.uk/home
Artist Rebecca Buck: https://ospreystudios.org
Garden Design: Seza Magdalena Eccles : http://hideawaysinhay.co.uk.

Photos supplied by Ann Dierikx Photography : http://anndierikx.com

Artist Rebecca Buck (rhs) talks to Chair of PTHB – Professor Vivienne Harpwood and guests

Vivienne Harpwood (lhs) with Carol Shilabeer and other guests with Lydia Powell and Paul Evans of the Bronllys Wellbeing Park

Jacqui Wilding Community Health Council Welsh Assembly Appointed Representative (Veterans) with PCC Cllr Aled Davies

Children of Mount Street Juniors, Brecon

Mark Christmas with Carol Shillabeer

Janet Eppleston with Veteran Mick Farell and Melanie Davies Vice Chair PTHBT

Gareth Ellis The Green Valleys with Sophia Bird PTHB

Gardens designed by Seza Magdalena Eccles

Guests Adele Nozedar and Emma Bevan

Leader of Powys County Council Rosemarie Harris chats with Mike Lewis former High Sheriff and Aled Davies Leader of Welsh Conservatives PCC

Paul Evans talks to garden designer Seza Magdalena Eccles

Seed packs were given as gifts to the children who worked on the sculpture

Gareth Ellis of The Green Valleys with Talgarth County Councillor William Powell and ‘Forager and Writer’ Adele Nozedar

More wonderful photos from the event from Ann Dierikx Photography

The Landscape Series.

This Series is a collaboration with Photographer and Documentary Cameraman Stephen Foote.   Click on any picture to see it full size.

Stephen Foote and I met up after 30 years in 2014. We were good friends as teenagers, both rather disengaged with school, both making art in our own time. 30 years on we both still use art work as a major part of our interaction with this nutty world. Sharing our images was a key way we got to know each other again and harnessing that process in a joint project was simply a way of capturing what was occurring naturally. We set a straightforward ” Artists Respond to Landscape ” brief and kept a very open mind while we walked, talked, Steve took pictures and I just took it all in. We met every few months and sent each other pictures of the ensuing work in-between times.

Steve is also a Cameraman and was involved in filming for Panorama during the early, very heated phase in Kiev and the Crimea. I was coming to the end of the Up Is Down Series . Our first visit was Bracelet Bay, Mumbles, Swansea. Then we went into Porth Yr Ogof caves and had a mind-blowing day for me; we spent hours in the dark, natural cave while Steve took a fab series of photographs. I stood in the river in the darkness, held the lights and listened to the flow of water, felt the under-ground breezes. From there the project clarified for us as the travels of the water from the sky above the Brecon Beacons to the river, especially the Tawe, on down to the wide bay at Swansea, and out into the Ocean where much of it will return to the clouds and begin the circle again. As it flows it leaves it’s mark on the stone, the ground, the life it passes.

These pictures are roughly in sequence for the progression of work over time, with Steve’s photos next to the related sculptures in some cases.

1981984_10203331966200635_1180227792_n_F147928_F146711_F148822_F148792

Rebecca Buck, Osprey Studios

Wyvern, 10cm H x 18cm L x 11cm D.

Rebecca Buck, Osprey Studios

Wyvern, 10cm H x 18cm L x 11cm D.

Wyvern X, 21cm L x 12cm H x 11cm D.

 

Water and Stone, Bracelet Bay, 2014, 24cmH x 56cm L x 33cm W, Marbled architectural ceramic.

Water and Stone, Bracelet Bay, 2014, 24cmH x 56cm L x 33cm W, Marbled architectural ceramic. Photo by Stephen Foote

Stephen Foote; Dunes

Stephen Foote; Dunes

Bracelet Bay, Mumbles, Swansea by Steve Foote

Bracelet Bay, Mumbles, Swansea by Steve Foote

in progress, July 2014

Wyvern I in progress, July 2014. 68cm H x 64cm W.

Bracelet Bay, Mumbles, Swansea by Steve Foote

Bracelet Bay, Mumbles, Swansea by Steve Foote

 

Bracelet Bay, Mumbles, Swansea by Steve Foote.

Bracelet Bay, Mumbles, Swansea by Steve Foote.

It was this fabulous picture of Bracelet Bay that shifted me abruptly into figures, much to my own surprise. The character of the Wyvern developed while making the public sculpture the Balarat Pit Marker in The Edge Series: the coal, a buried treasure to be used wisely or there would be consequences, watched over by a shape-shifting Welsh dragon.

Busts in progress, Aug 2014.

Wyvern busts in progress, Aug 2014.

Here the Wyvern is a guardian of stone.

_F149565

Wyvern V, 2015, 27cm H x 51cm L x 25cm D, black ceramic. Cavin Morris Gallery, New York.

_F149575

Wyvern V, 2015, 27cm H x 51cm L x 25cm D, black ceramic. Cavin Morris Gallery New York.

_F148027

Porth Yr Ogof Cave, Brecon Beacons, by Steve Foote, 2014. We spent hours down here and as I assisted the photography, standing in the river and pitch black, I felt the underground wind and heard all the sounds of water travelling through the rocks. Extraordinary. A living, breathing world of unparalleled beauty.

_F148012

Bracelet Bay, Mumbles, Swansea by Steve Foote

_F147944

Bracelet Bay, Mumbles, Swansea by Steve Foote

_F147861 (1)

Bracelet Bay, Mumbles, Swansea by Steve Foote

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The Wyvern III, 2014

Rebecca Buck Osprey Studios

Wyvern II, 2014, 69cm H x 54cm W, x 31cm D, ceramic. Photo Stephen Foote.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The Wyvern IV, Sept 2014

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The Wyvern and The Leviathan. in progress, Sept 2014.

_F148835_F147916_F147947_1020888

_F149441

Wyvern VIII, 2015, 39cm H x 71cm L x 34cm D, ceramic. Cavin Morris Gallery New York.

_F149423

Wyvern VIII, 2015, 39cm H x 71cm L x 34cm D, ceramic. Cavin Morris Gallery New York.

_F149448

Wyvern VIII, detail. Photo Stephen Foote.

Rebecca Buck Osprey Studios

Wyvern VIII, Cavin Morris Gallery New York. Photo Stephen Foote.

_F147762_F148186_F149794

Water moves from one sphere to the next in all it’s forms, changing everything it passes. On heavy, stormy days here in the Brecon Beacons it careens in sheets 10cm deep across the grassy hills, colliding in the streams and rivers to tear down towards Swansea Bay. It drops through the gaps and cracks it has left in the stone to the fabulous caves it has been cutting for Millenia. Standing out in the middle of all this you can see the mountain ponies, uncompromising, resolute and beautiful. They became the Guardian of the water, the Leviathan, in it’s mountain form.

_F149706

Leviathan V, 2015, 11.5cm H x 25cm L x 9.5cm W, ceramic. Photo Stephen Foote.

_F149704

Leviathan VI, 2015, 12.5cm H x 21cm L x 8cm W, ceramic. Cavin Morris Gallery New York.

_F149707

Leviathan V, 2015, 11.5cm H x 25cm L x 9.5cm W, ceramic. Photo Stephen Foote.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The Wyvern and the Osprey, 2014.

The Osprey followed as the guardian of the sky.

_F148170

Stephen Foote Photography.

_F149506

Osprey II, 65cm W x 50cm H. Photo Stephen Foote.

_F149503

Osprey II, 65cm W x 50cm H. Photo Stephen Foote.

_F148669

Osprey I, 40 cm W x 25cm H.Photo Stephen Foote.

Steve’s landscape photos unify everything exquisitely, portraying a vivid place with such clarity you can feel it around you. My sculptural response inevitably, and with some regret, separated the features which got me thinking more carefully about their connections.

The  sphinx-like form and majesty of the Brecon Beacons also showed up first in the Balarat Pit Marker. A classic sculptural motif, the reclining  figure, with it’s many options for themes. Like the complex internal aspect of the Beacons complete with breath, life (water) running through veins in the rock, hidden secrets, moods, supporting of forests, wildlife, and us since the dawn of time. The subtlety of age: the Beacons are especially ancient and have been many things in their past. ‘The Land’ sculptures are about this part of what we saw.

_F149767_F149751_F149774_F149776

Rebecca Buck Osprey Studios.

The Land II, 21cm H x 52cm L x 27cm D. Cupola Contemporary Art, Sheffield, UK.

Rebecca Buck, Osprey Studios

The Land VIII, 21cm L x 12cm H x 11cm W.

Rebecca Buck, Osprey Studios.

The Land III, 15cm H x 43cm L x 12cm D.  

Rebecca Buck, Osprey Studios.

The Land IV, 15cm H x 26cm L x 14cm D.

Rebecca Buck, Osprey Studios.

The Land I, 24cm H x 65cm L x 19cm D.

 

At this point the Series branches off into new territory lead by images and news about Climate Change rather than Steve’s photos and my local landscape. I have been following the fascinating progression of Climate Change for 35 years. At last it is a main-stream subject. It’s intriguing how people are still trying to avoid seeing it, the deniers but mostly the avoiders. My guilty secret is that I see it as thrilling: nature rejoicing in it’s power and spectacular magnificence, the wonder of transformation. Throwndown at Hoedown is an ongoing Series now.

This fascinating article by Randall Morris about Masks describes the process that I am trying to work through here. I have learnt a great deal from Randall since joining Cavin Morris Gallery. His amazing collection and beautiful writing brings clarity to, and pin points the essence of, what is important in art. I am an animist by nature and it is my job to portray what I see but the distractions can be over-whelming.

Short essay by Randall Morris

The Up is Down Series  proceeded The Landscape Series and was a transitionary point in how I put together forms, particularly in relation to their bases. The research involved clarified my thinking and ability to see.

Most of the sculptures in The Landscape Series are built with the technique explained in Heads and clay armatures.