New project at Burnham

I've started working on a new project at Burnham Village in South Bucks, where we plan to bring the trees from the ancient local forest at Burnham Beeches into the village for the annual Festival of Light on Friday 3 December. I was asked to make some work for this event because of my interest in colour/light and light installations.

Local children are helping me create several pieces for display in and around the village and the Flux Gallery. We aim to make several large-scale projections on to the buildings in the High Street which will be supported by an exhibition to be shown at Flux Gallery from 3 December for several weeks.

We are making several excursions into Burnham Beeches - one of them a night hike - to view the 'characters' who live there. The children will draw and photograph the trees, then manipulate them digitally to create a shifting forest of light.

More details to follow as we get going with the project, but here are a couple of my photographs to give you the idea...

Launch of 'Hide!' at College Lake

Please join us at ‘Hide!’ at College Lake Nature Reserve, HP23 5QG, from Tuesday 16 November onwards. Open from 9.30 - 4pm, last entry 3pm.

Four artists and two hundred children have transformed the interiors of four bird hides into works of art that reflect and enhance their setting and purpose. This is functioning environmental art re-imagined for the 2010s.

James Aldridge brings together found objects, historical data, vintage luggage and manipulated maps to explore bird migration and industrial heritage.

Martin Prothero creates new work by enabling the plants and animals of the reserve to draw directly in the soil and represent themselves as art.

Lynda Cornwell illuminates the ultraviolet markings of local birds and insects with shifting rainbows of white light diffracted from the sun.

Stu McLellan plays with the format of the graphic novel to portray his hide as a portal to a surreal and surprising universe.

Children from Ashmead School and Bierton School in Aylesbury Vale have worked with James and Martin as part of the creative process. Whenever you visit please come prepared for bad weather and mud, just in case. You’ll be able to wander around the lake, visit the bird hide installations and meet the artists.

College Lake is managed for wildlife and people by the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust: http://www.bbowt.org.uk/content.asp?did=23523

Here’s a map to help you find us: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&tab=wl This project was made possible by a grant from the Aylesbury Vale Community Chest.

Back at the Hide

At the hide again today for just an hour in the late afternoon - captured some sun - and some visitors!

Almost done there now - need to clean the windows and finish applying the film this week. Response from those I met has been good - it helps when they know the reasoning behind it - ultraviolet spectrum and bird's superior vision - see earlier posts....

Finishing the Drawings...

After many days in Tump Hide I am almost finished with the drawings. There hasn't been much sun recently when I've been there, so I haven't any new photos of the prisms.

The drawings are in white so that when the sun shines through the prismatic film they will take on the hue of the rainbow.

It is known that feathers of all colours have a biologically significant UV reflectance but that the least likely to fluoresce are black, brown and possibly red. In birds thought to have similar plumage for male/female we now know they are different - the difference shows up in the ultraviolet spectrum - this different colours of the sexes is known as dichromatism.

Because there has not been conclusive research done I have chosen to highlight those that I imagine fluoresce in ultraviolet light, and those whose feathers are iridescent, such as kingfishers.

I have used the species that are commonly found at College Lake amongst them lapwing, plover, red admiral and comma butterflies, and many kinds of dragon and damselflies.

Starting to draw on the walls

So the sun finally shone at College Lake and this is how beautiful it looked yesterday...

There's something fantastic about drawing on walls - it's a freedom of sorts, and a thumbed nose to those who tell you as a child not to draw on the walls - I've washed pencil drawings off the walls when my children were little too - but I think how they must have enjoyed the act...

I've started adding the drawings to the inside of Tump Hide now - it's slow work because some of them are quite intricate and I want to cover the side and back walls - luckily it's not huge!

And when the sun shone I could see a rainbow!