Parking, texts and busses

It is such a privilege to have work installed. I am really delighted that the latest text piece has been adopted by Cambridge County Council Transport Department as a permanent artwork. The whole work has been taken from its original locations in the town and can be read as one piece, a sort of "Welcome to Cambridge" text. It is located at the Trumpington Park and Ride just outside the city.

 

The whole piece reads: this way for rippled hills and ripe, bursting fields blue sky and dressed stone formality. Dipped anthracite clouds poised to varnish. Domestic housing, waving effervescent flowers, pensive dogs and green flag grass. Quiet walls and walked stone lead to hidden squares and bursts of persistent lawn. 

It is the experience of 24 hours in Cambridge from the the viewpoint of a visitor. Many thanks to the Park and Ride team for installing this text and for their support in the process and of course thank you also to Text and Context Cambridge for inviting me to participate without them none of this would have been realised. 

lines out of context

Organizing things from a distance can be complicated. This Cambridge project is more fun when I am there to talk to people in person. Fortunately I have a whole support team (they deserve lots of thanks) all is starting to take a definite form and if the original plan is not working then the back-up one will.

I have been testing laminated signs in the studio to see how long they will stay fixed up to windows with tiny suction cups. This job really does lead to new worlds, I had no idea how sophisticated the manufacture of the suction cup is. It makes me realise how important it is to appreciate the little details. The smallest of things may take years to design and perfect.

Recently I was lucky enough to be in a location where I could spontaneously create and install a text piece. It would disappear in a few minutes of brushing or light rain. Leaving no trace is part of what I do, having fun while doing it, makes my job worthwhile.

 

Rock pools: lines out of context

 

 

...and tree shadows smile

new context

For a brief period of 24 hours I was in Cambridge on a site visit for a text installation I am making there. I travelled cross-country from Oxford to Cambridge with the bus. It was fascinating to travel through the English landscape after so recently being in Canada. The changes are subtle and the countryside is devoted to agriculture. The fields change in size and by the time I reached Cambridge they were huge and ripening.

The bus travelled slowly from one conurbation to the next, stopping in adorable stone villages and huge new towns like Milton Keynes. Agriculture filled the void between developments. The skies are huge and seem to grow as the hills lower and turn to ripples on the horizon.

It became a study of blossoming cloud and chasing thunderstorms. Two days of finding rain and running for shelter in the city and watching more of the same from the bus window.

Countryside from the bus

Snatches of views

Cambridgeshire

the road

This had been the first time I had traveled so widely in Newfoundland and Labrador. I am beginning to appreciate its size. Driving was such an experience. There was only one moose moment when a teenager ambled over the Trans Canada highway in front of me and was having too much fun on this asphalt thing to move away for some time.   

Sometimes the only way to fully understand a landscape is to move within it. I have seen so much road and so many trees. I've driven through strange boreal forest and arctic tundra. Landscapes supporting the thinest of berry bogs and raw moonlike rocks. 

the road along the bay of Islands

Bay of Islands 2

RV for two with trailed car

I am fascinated by the way other people travel. This RV was for only two and the car was trailed from the back.

bend in the road 

Newfoundland has so many long and straight roads.

Terracotta meets pink granite

I can't begin to describe how much I loved Labrador. To start with I found one of my favourite types of rock outcrop: made of pink granite.

pink granite coast

Red Bay was one of the most moving and powerful places I had seen. The Basque Whalers apparently concentrated their work on Saddle Island and there are remains of "try-works" (whale oil ovens) everywhere on the sheltered side of this tiny island. It is industry on a huge scale for the 16th century. 

remains of Basque terracotta tiles on Saddle Island from a roof of a caved in building  

The same terracotta tiles appear in Pasaia and other Basque ports. I am fascinated by the tangible link. The ties to history are so clear.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I loved the contemporary culture too. People were so amazingly friendly and prepared to work with me.  I grew extremely fond of curious objects. Looking at everything with new eyes, I had never seen so many manufactured products with geographical directions on them or relishing their location. The water came from True North, the laundry liquid was from Down East, I washed my hands with North Woods soap. We drank bottled iceberg water called 80 degrees North (L'Eau d'Iceberg) but my favourite one of all so forgive the product placement was the soap called Kiss My Face. It's sold by American importers but I love the name.

True North Water

 

traveling through Basque Newfoundland

From New York to St. John's Newfoundland. There is a energy in the city, the harbour works late, the lights are on all night. The influence of oil money shows.

The harbour at night

 From there to Port Rexton to begin the Newfoundland travels.

Port Rexton

I crossed from one side of the island to the other. We saw so many trees and long straight roads slicing through forests and bouncing over hills. For moments, hours or days I would stop to study Basque ports en route. The Basque presence in Newfoundland and Labrador is visible, I started to become adept at recognizing good natural harbours and deep anchorages.

Port au Choix-one of the Basque ports.

green, dusty and traveling

Returned from Newfoundland and Labrador, it was absolutely amazing trip. I was researching the Basque (whaling) ports and looking at rocks as always.

This whole trip can can best be described as a journey of traveling. I started in Connecticut with very dear friends (trying desperately to return to the human state post jet lag). I then travelled to New York for 24 intense hours before reaching Ottawa by plane.

road / pavement crossing in Danbury from the bus to New York City

Outside Manhattan

I have been using my phone camera as a notebook, for a visual diary of these travels. New York was hot and dusty but now has a familiarity to it.

gorgeous orange school buses

Times Square

The ultimate NYC experience: Times Square at night. I am somewhat allergic to crowds but the wonderment of brightly-coloured lights supersedes that. I grew up in a village without pavements and street lights, the inner child in me sees the fairy lights... 

Pasaia

Pasaia harbour

Pasaia is made up of four separate communities, the focus is the harbour and it is a real working harbour not a quaint tourist resort. I love this about the place. The image above was taken from the ferry boat that crosses the harbour enabling me to avoid the long double bus ride around the harbour.

Pasaia Donibane is one long street with the most gorgeous stone buildings- worn sandstone everywhere. I have tried to be dispassionate but this little town enters into the blood stream and demands to be loved.

Humilladero de la Piedad, shrine 16-17th century originally carved from the rock face 

Pasaia from the tiny ferry

There doesn't seem to be strict town planning like more northern Europe. Beautiful stone facades are overrun with electrical conduits and external plumbing. Everything is jumbled together. It is part of the charm but it must make it more challenging to live in.

hot fog

From yellow to turquoise, I landed in Bilbao en route to San Sebastian and it was suddenly over 30 degrees centigrade. As I journeyed through a Basque countryside in dusk all took on hues of blue turquoise.

Days of weather changing from over 36 degrees centigrade to a cool 18 with a fog that came in. It was a hot fog: warm, enveloping but strangely secure. Above 15 metres and things started to disappear. I'd not experienced warm fog blankets like these before.

outskirts of Pasaia harbour

slices of fog slipped over the road.

The lighthouse Pasaia San Pedro

I walked the two hours to San Sebastian wrapped in sea fog and dipping into sun pools-when the strong southern sun broke gaps in the clouds. I have taken this walk before or I wouldn't have trusted myself to make it over the tree roots and stones and slices of vertical cliff face.

canola fields

These were days of yellow, there were so many canola fields in full bloom. They glowed warmly against the grey skies. I was staying outside Oxford for a few days with family. It was beautiful but the cool weather was intimidatingly cold for May. 

Dusk over canola fields on the bus through Oxfordshire

I'm using a hand me down "Blackberry" that has become a new favourite camera because it has so many limitations and an almost random shutter, that takes the image at an unexpected moment. 

rushing past canola fields during day time, photograph taken from  the car

Suburban housing from the train to London

These travels were literally about that: traveling; the journey was part of the entire experience. When I reached Paddington station en route to Heathrow they were still doing building work. The blue wood hoardings splashed color over the cool white painted steel.

temporary rain shelter under building work at Paddington station

 

following flysch

For years I have grown more and more excited about rocks. From Basque Spain we went to Hendaye in Basque France to follow the "flysch" coast. An absolutely fascinating edge and I found one of the very few places where I could access the rocks from the ground.

The surf had been very big for a few days and it felt as if I was witnessing rapid erosion.

The entire coastline is made up of huge contorted rocks. It is was day with powerful waves and intermittent horizontal rain, polishing the glistening rocks further. It was beautiful but too soggy to draw.

Wet rocks

I have returned to the calm of home and northern Europe doesn't feel so cold anymore. Spain was wonderful but so unbelievably wet. It is not for nothing that their northern coast is called green. It was a week of learning about the landscape and experiencing the places first hand. I am researching the Basque whalers from approximately 1530 to 1610. Part of the reason for this is that it ties in with my earlier work in Newfoundland. I will be working in Newfoundland and Labrador later this year where the Basque fishermen hunted for whales in this period.

The Basque region is a country that feels enterprising and industrious particularly on the Spanish side. Basque sailors were the first to create factory ships when in the mid 1600s they built whale oil refineries onboard their ships. The same passion for invention extends today and the region around San Sebastian and Bilbao is rich in factories.

Walking from Pasaia to Hondaribba

I was working in Pasaia, a deep natural harbour that was one of the most important whale fishing ports. The narrow entrance to the port between huge vertical sloping rocks meant this port never silted up, unlike some of the neighboring ones. The place is now far sleepier than in its heyday. It has charm, it is an old port hugged by indifferent urban development. Gorgeous 16th century houses are followed by anonymous apartment blocks. There is a strong feeling of being in a living environment, people really work and play here, the old centre hasn't yet been re-created for tourists.

flat earth

Sometimes it is not clear if I am floating on land or water. This country is so amazingly engineered. We knew for sure that we were on water because the land fell away below us. The dykes hold the water back and the ground is below sea level.


This landscape is what I love so much about this place. Totally flat, the horizon is broken by reeds and the sky holds the potential of cloud mountains. Water and earth blend, rich farmland emerges. 20 minutes north of the city and the space of sky dominates. The houses are infinitely smaller in scale and hug the ground, the environment is all water and sky. Being able to see beyond that house, this tree... to have distance and views, urban intimacy gives me cravings for those. 

Zuiderwoude church in the distance

watching spring

The earliest beginnings of spring: the snowdrops are growing straggly and I am watching for the tulips to start pushing their bunched fingers through the warming soil. The days hover between fine, feeding, spring rain and sun. It is planning time in the studio and I am arranging the first research trips for the next part of the North Atlantic project.

This year I am working in Basque Spain and Labrador drawing the remains of the whaling ports left by the Basque in Labrador. They date mostly from the period of 1550-1610 when the Basque industry was at its zenith in this region. I am going first to Northern Spain to see where this began and to visit the forests where the wood for the ships came from.

This project encompasses an understanding of the history of both places to more fully comprehend the present day. It asks more questions than I can fully answer for now: what makes the people of the edges so passionate about our shared Atlantic Ocean, what is the sociological make-up of places like northern-most Spain (both then and now) and as a result what makes these places as they are and how do we all connect? I am in wonder that the small wooden boats used even managed to survive the journey. 

Most of all this is a chance for me to see these rocks for myself. To see huge coastal landscapes under the influences of chaining weather and erosion and to study the rock structures.  To make this possible I am behind the computer writing before venturing out to explore huge skies and rain dreaming.