ARTISTS TALKING

# 29 [12 July 2007]

Back to the old path behind Wood Dalling church yesterday evening. It's becoming quite a resonant place for me, and I wonder what is accumulating there with each visit.

This was the second of the three midsummer bonfires, collectively known as 'St John's Fires', but this one was actually for the eve of St Peter and St Paul's Day. The bonfires would have been rowdy social occasions with plenty of drinking and merriment. Mine was more reflective, but I was interested to see the juxtaposition of the primeval excitement of fire with the sombre church walls and (nowadays) peaceful graveyard.

St John's Wort was the herb I cast into the fire this time to make 'magical' smoke - as would have been done in the medieval period. I'd spotted lots of it flowering along the old railway track close to our home and planned to stop off to pick some on the way to the church. We just turned the car around to park on the distinctly unpastoral road close to the start of the walk - and I was surprised to find some St John's Wort right next to the car door!

No visible owl babies this time, but plenty of noise issued from the unglazed window where we saw them last week. Bird books describe the sound that barn owls make as 'hissing or snoring' and I'd put this into the former category ... nice to have some company, even if the Fire wasn't going to be quite the communal event that it would have been 600 years ago and more.

After last week's Fire, I'd had a few ideas I wanted to try out with the filming, including circling the fire and jumping over it. This was great fun and I was definitely starting to feel that something was happening.

www.world-tree.co.uk/festial 

# 28 [9 July 2007]

After a few hairy moments with the Corpus Christi mag - including a worried phone call from the printers saying that their machine was chewing up paper of all colours except for white and did I mind Kalender having a white cover - it's here! Because it was printed on a different machine, the print quality is different from the Rogationtide issue. It's rougher, more 70s fanzine-like. The detail is far less obvious than it is on a computer screen, but I think it's OK for what it is and what I always said I was aiming at: a spontaneous, low-cost publication as a giveaway multiple.

I have to say I'm glad that Kalender is also up on the website as a downloadable pdf, as some of the photographs really are 'enigmatic' in its printed form!

I've worked in a completely different way this time: making images for Kalender and working out relationships on the page has triggered new ideas to take forward that weren't there before. Ideas arose from putting together the Rogationtide issue too, but the looming slash07 exhibition forced me to make something more tangible before I started. So I was able to select from work that already existed and organise it into something resembling a magazine. I've learned a lot from both approaches, but the difference here is that the new festival - the Midsummer Bonfires and Display of Relics - is already upon me and without the spur of the exhibition I haven't managed to physically make anything except for Kalender in between.

As it is, the first Bonfire has happened - last Friday - and here I am, still stuffing cellophane bags with sweet woodruff as the Corpus Christi free gift and working on a late-night rubber-stamping production line with Trevor while listening to 15th century music on CD. Madness!

More on the Bonfires as they happen, but here's evidence of the first one on St John's Eve - Midsummer Eve itself. I threw camomile on and the pungent smoke rose as it would have done 600 years ago. On the way round the church we saw a fantastic sight: a clutch of barn owl chicks, all different sizes, performing for us through an open window in the top room of the blocked off porch. Did their ancestors do the same 600 years ago? Trevor has read that where barn owls make their homes, the pellets pile up for hundreds of years, so it seems quite possible. After the brief performance and much shoving and squawking the chicks retreated and we didn't see them again while we were at the church. But later, we saw the pale ghostly flapping of a parent owl. It followed the line of the graveyard wall, but didn't swoop in. I don't suppose it sees many humans around at that time, or not live ones anyway.

www.world-tree.co.uk/festial 

# 27 [3 July 2007]

It's scary to acknowledge how many hours I've spent producing the Corpus Christi issue of Kalender. And it would have taken far longer if I hadn't had the assistance of a computer genius! To think that when my mentor Jo visited and I hadn't any idea how I was going to put Kalender together, I was wondering whether I should ditch it to retain my sanity. Jo did suggest that I trim down the project workload in order to do fewer things well rather than rushing around making work like a whirlwind. She was right, though, in her conviction that Kalender was non-negotiable.

For one thing, I've flagged it up rather publicly. For another, I love doing it! When I had the initial idea I was excited at the thought of the publication as a limited-edition multiple that I would leave in random places for people to pick up if they were curious. But now I realise that it can be distributed more widely than my immediate locality - in virtual form anyway - by making it downloadable from the website, and that means it will potentially reach a much wider audience, which is great.

Preparing the images and text is, itself, 'making work' that can be developed in other ways, and I'm finding that further ideas are springing up all the time. The trick will be to record those ideas but not to try to develop them all right now.

After all, I've been rash enough to schedule four different dates to constitute one of my twelve festivals - The Midsummer Bonfires and Display of Relics - and the first Bon(e)fire for St John's Eve is coming up VERY soon ...

www.world-tree.co.uk/festial 

# 26 [29 June 2007]

Yesterday afternoon I had the opportunity to carry out the video shoot/performance I have been planning - and it didn't rain!! It's the result of an idea I had when I was at St Andrew's on Corpus Christi day and have been developing in my head since. It even developed and changed while it was happening, and then I went back again this morning and videoed a bit more. So, quite organic - but that's ok, I think.

I think of it as my Corpus Christi Play. One of the main features of the pre-Reformation Corpus Christi festival were dramatised biblical stories (myths) that were performed each year. Often the plays would have been performed on the equivalent of carnival floats - but I wasn't that ambitious! Traditionally, each play was performed by the guild whose craft was appropriate to the action so that, for example, the shipwrights would portray the story of Noah building the Ark, and the roof-thatchers would perform the Nativity play with Jesus in the manger.

I wonder what my story is?

The main purpose of the procession was to display the Host - the consecrated bread that people believed 'was' the body of Jesus and the idea of Corpus Christi was to celebrate the wonder of this miracle, with all its gruesome implications. Medieval people would hang their best beds and bedcovers from their houses and stew their front doorsteps with herbs and flowers to greet the procession, and I took something from this idea as well. I was very curious to discover how it feels to strew, and to experience the smell as the strewn herbs were walked on.

I'm not into the bible, myself, and found that the snatches of myth, folklore and story that habitually swirl around in my head proved ample inspiration for my Play. Well, it's not a fully-formed entity yet, but I've got lots of material to work with now. That's the wonder of 21st century technology .... and big thanks to Trevor for patiently filming my feet from innumerable angles!!

So, I'm thinking wonder, fantasy, spectacle, the aroma of flowers and herbs, summer, the imaginative world, belief in the irrational, the macabre. I hope I can make something coherent of all this!

Meanwhile, I'm aware that the second issue of Kalender (bumper Corpus Christi number) is due out, well, as soon as I can manage it ....

www.world-tree.co.uk/festial

# 25 [26 June 2007]

A few days have passed since Corpus Christi and I spent much of the time at slash07 until we took the exhibition down on Saturday evening. Stewarding provided a great opportunity for rubber-stamping the Rogationtide dates and website address onto 180 copies of Kalender, and also stapling a cellophane packet containing a pressed wild rose petal to the front of each. Doesn't sound THAT time-consuming, does it??! I've sent some individual copies to press and gallery contacts, and the rest are being quietly deposited in small heaps in various locations for people to pick up and take away if they'd like to.

Kalender is also downloadable from the website - but minus the free gift! www.world-tree.co.uk/festial

A bit more about the 'Kalender of Shepherdes' from which Kalender takes its name:

Published in French in 1493, it was first translated into English in 1503 'apparently by a Frenchman who knew only Scots English' according to Eamon Duffy in The Stripping of the Altars. The mind boggles ...! The Kalender of Shepherdes was one third religious instruction and two thirds astrological almanac, filled with calendrical, astrological and medical lore. A major attraction of the book was the fine woodcuts, illustrating both the religious and secular parts.

I'm interested in the way that magic, medicine, astrology, divination, seasonal practices and the Christianity of the day were mixed up into one heady potion. It was an immensely popular book, running to several different translations and editions, and the Church doesn't seem to have had any problem with the seemingly incongruous blend.

# 24 [21 June 2007]

Corpus Christi was yesterday, by the Julian calendar.

I spent a gloriously warm and sunny day at St Andrew's: I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be the only visit where I feel warm enough just in shorts and T shirt all day.

The church was smellier than usual - I think the warm weather had made the bat and bird detritis a little more aromatic, shall we say. I spent time writing on the laptop, taking photographs of the traces of a sunken path leading from the front porch to (nowadays) nowhere, and then it was lunchtime. And I was lucky enough to have the luxury of a lunch invitation.

Kay, a long-standing Wood Dalling resident with her husband David, has been following this blog. Some days ago she made contact via email and not only provided some very interesting new information but offered to lend me a special Wood Dalling book that had been compiled for the millennium. She also made the thoughtful offer of a stop-off for a cup of tea when next visiting the church as "it always strikes very cold in there" - true enough, as a rule! Kay and David both graduated from Norwich School of Art and Design in the mid-seventies, and David is Head of Art at the local high school. I got to meet Kay when she visited slash07 last Saturday, and we arranged that I would go and have lunch with her when doing my Corpus Christi stint. How lovely - she made me very welcome and has lent me lots of interesting things that have joined my growing 'to read as soon as possible' pile. It's a new friendship, made through this project, that I very much hope will continue beyond it.

Back at the church, I took photographs of poppyheads until the batteries in both my cameras went flat, and rubbed all the brasses. There are eleven pre-Reformation ones, but I had to do some of them in two sections to fit them onto my A3 sheets! This was more time-consuming than it sounds: well, the first task was to brush the above-mentioned wildlife evidence off each one. Luckily, I had remembered to bring a brush and dustpan!

Making the rubbings was intended as a practical task, as I hope to ask an expert in reading semi-illegible Latin to decipher them. But I discovered that photographs actually show the writing more clearly, so I'll probably send some of those. The rubbings are rather beautiful in their own right, though, and I'm getting some ideas about using them.

During my tea-break outside in the sunshine, a pied wagtail - one of my favourite birds - started strutting his stuff around the tower, the gravestones and the sunken path. Grabbing my video camera, I followed him (or her; hard to tell!) and shot some footage on impulse. I'm not sure what, if anything, it will lead to - but you never know when a pixilated pied wagtail may come in useful!

This has been a very different experience from Rogationtide. For one thing, I was on my own, with minimal prior planning or expectations. Corpus Christi was a festival of prime importance to medieval people and I knew I should include it, but its ultimate purpose was to celebrate the miracle of transubstantiation - ordinary bread being, at the same time, the real body of Christ although no change appeared to have taken place - and I knew I would have to find a way through this for myself that recognised the wonder felt by the people, and the celebration they shared, but working laterally so that I would be exploring something that meant something to me personally. I had a selection of equipment and materials on hand, but it truly was a case of 'seeing what happened' and where my thoughts/emotions took me. What I came away with was a lot of source material, ideas for a couple of things I would like to go back to do in the next day or two, and mental activity that will take some time to assimilate and start working with.

The afternoon flew and the early evening was even sunnier with a lovely light playing in the big church windows (no stained glass here). It was time to pack everything up, checking the underside of everything to see that I wasn't taking home more than I'd bargained for. And that was Corpus Christi.

www.world-tree.co.uk/festial

festial@world-tree[dot]co[dot]uk

Please visit the website! Newly enlarged and with added Rogationtide features.

# 23 [19 June 2007]

A heavy couple of days, but I now have a cardboard box containing 180 copies (well, I haven't actually counted!) of Kalender. There is slight disappointment in that the printers have reduced my A5 pages for some reason, which leaves an unplanned-for margin around each sheet and pictures that are smaller than I would have liked. But it wasn't their fault that I needed the job done in such a rush and that I couldn't check that all was well before they printed the whole lot. Having spent Sunday evening until midnight hammering out the page layouts with Trevor, and working on it on Monday morning right up to the minute when we just HAD to leave the house for our slash07 invigilation stint, it seems a miracle to have it at all.

Even collecting the finished publication was stressful, as we raced from the exhibition venue at 5.30pm when the show closed to get to the copy bureau before it closed - at 5.30pm. We had to stop en route at a cash machine - with a queue, of course! - meanwhile, I failed to locate the mobile phone as it rang reproachfully, the print staff understandably keen to know whether we were actually going to turn up so they could get off home.

But it's here now, and all that's left to do is to stuff a pressed wild rose petal into each of 180 small cellophane bags (don't ask!!) staple them onto 180 covers and rubber-stamp each front and back. Simple! And it's Corpus Christi tomorrow, and I haven't yet made any sort of plan for the day. So what am I doing about it? Cleaning the bathroom and washing the floors, that's what!! I've even given the porch a rare washing-down.

# 22 [15 June 2007]

Jo's visit was very helpful, the private view went well and now my life is divided between invigilating the exhibition and preparing images and text for the first issue of my free monthly fanzine-style magazine Kalender.

Kalender takes its name from the Kalender of Shepherdes, a medieval bestseller contemporary with Festial. It was a popular almanac of Christian feast dates, religious advice and woodcuts, laced with generous helpings of astrology and seasonal offerings that had little to do with Christianity. A bizarre mix, apparently.

The style I'm adopting for Kalender veers between a parish magazine and Never Mind the Bollocks. 

We're invigilating all day tomorrow and I'm planning to deliver the file to the printer on Monday for same-day transformation into 180 cheap-and-cheerful mags, so Sunday will no doubt be given over to the madness that seems to have become a way of life at present.

# 21 [13 June 2007]

Two weeks ago today I was out on my bike under threatening skies casting my circle sunwise around Wood Dalling. There's not been time to pause and update this blog since! And no time today, either, as it's the slash07 private view this evening and before that my mentor Jo from the Babylon Gallery in Ely is coming over for a mentoring session. She's coming along to Wood Dalling church with me and then on to the pv. There'll be lots to talk about and I'm looking forward to it.

The work I have in slash07 has all arisen from Rogationtide, and has all been made within the last two weeks!! And the last three days of that have been occupied with hanging the exhibition ... some sleep will be nice.

 Meanwhile, I'm posting a few pics of what I've been up to since my last blog entry and looking forward to being able to update 'at leisure' (?) tomorrow!

festial@world-tree[dot]co[dot]uk

# 20 [3 June 2007]

I'm really in the thick of it now, with a giveaway publication to cobble together asap and all the work for our slash07 exhibition (www.world-tree.co.uk/slash) to put together before the set-up a week today. Is this a crazy thing to be involved with? To add to the madness, my head of department has asked me to teach four mornings next week when I'd banked on having every day - apart from Friday when I teach anyway - to make work from the Rogationtide performance/installation. Aaaghhhh! Not to mention the small matter of being interviewed on Radio Norfolk tomorrow afternoon.

Wednesday and Thursday went well, at least. Miserable weather on Wednesday, so we ended up working in drizzly rain for much of the day, but at least it started off dry so I could get into a rhythm.

Basically, wherever we could access the point where a road or track crossed Wood Dalling's parish boundary, we parked up the bikes a short distance away. I wandered around for a while to get a feel for the place, writing down any words that came to mind, and then took a few photos. Meanwhile, Trevor was taking photographs too - including documentary ones of me doing my thing. Then, I dug up some earth (or collected water at the two river crossings) and took it to the next point on the boundary where I tipped it out, finishing back at the first crossing point. At each point, too, I collected a flint or piece of pottery that caught my eye, and a stick from the nearest tree. Finally, I struck my singing bowl with the stick and Trevor videoed the action. We visited eight places on Wednesday and six on Thursday, and finished by sharing a can of abbot ale on the verge in the (by now) glorious late-afternoon sunshine. Well, I did mention that in the index of 'The Stripping of the Altars' the entry drinkings leads you directly to the reference to Rogationtide!!

 So this is the material I have to work with.

The next day I took the laptop to the church and sat in a pew and just wrote whatever came into my head - the first of  twelve 'despatches' from St Andrew's. An interesting experience.

I'm thinking a lot about the urge I have to make rurally-based art that's as urgently relevant as any socially-motivated urban practice. The past is where we all come from, and our ancestors lived in the country.