Last Saturday, I got together with my friends Fran and Holly to make a site-specific installation in the woods. We had done this several times last year and really enjoyed the results. We called ourselves FEH, for Fran, Evlyn, and Holly. So as FEH, we decided to meet again this past weekend to create our first installation of this year.
We decided we wanted to do a "painting" so we picked a huge rock with a flat top on which to lay our colours down, using found materials.
Then we started to "paint" with bark, stones, pinecones, moss, twigs, broken glass - anything we found that had colour and could add to the shape and design.
It involved a lot of decision-making and precision putting the elements in place, just like any painting does. In this picture, Fran is carefully placing pinecones down in patterns. It was interesting that we each favoured different materials to work with - I mostly used rocks, Holly was really into sticks and twigs, and Fran focussed on pinecones and bark.
After about an hour, it had taken shape. We started to finesse the elements, getting excited when something really "worked". We were also in awe of the colours we managed to find in these natural, found materials - the green moss was gorgeous, the red bark added a pop of colour, and we wanted to make sure that the blue-greys of the rock showed through.
Walking around the rock afterward, we had fun seeing the patterns and colours of the painting from different angles. There was no problem with "up" or "down" on this painting. It was interesting no matter where you stood in relation to the rock.
And of course, like all artists, we signed our work at the end. Then we left, with our eyes opened to all the colours around us in the forest, after this art-installation in the woods.
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