The Gathering Project, 2003 - 2015

In 2003 I found myself deeply concerned about the climate crisis and needing to find a way to respond to that in my work.  After attending an intensive course at the Schumacher College in Devon a new body of work emerged that I subsequently came to call The Gathering Project.  For about eight years each Autumn saw me scrabbling around under trees collecting intensively – acorn cups, twigs, beechnut casings and oak galls. I was in awe of nature’s immeasurable creative power: so many tiny objects, each one the same, yet each one different.  Just like us humans.  And of course, the similarity is no accident.  We are a produce of nature as much as an acorn cup is.  In this humility, I found peace and as I worked my thoughts ran like poetry as sculptures emerged that attempted to capture the rare moments when one is in nature and feels completely at harmony with it.

Whilst wandering round the countryside a second strand of work emerged as I began to collect discarded man-made objects of both rust and shaped wood.  These two additional bodies of work are dealt with in separate sections but are intimately part of The Gathering Project.