Monday, December 29, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
River Cairn
After completely screwing my wrist building this thing last weekend it has put paid to any new land art for a while so I went back to try and get some better pictures. Had to wait around in the cold for 3 hours waiting for the light to improve and managed to get three useable shots. Still could be better though!
Sunday, December 14, 2008
River Stone Cairn
Tried to build this yesterday but it collapsed 8 times which is why I ended up making the snow sculpture. Went back today and the river level had dropped a lot . Yesterday it was in full spate so the choice of rocks was very limited which made it very difficult to build. Today many more rocks were available and it was slightly easier to construct. The rounded river stones were much harder to work with than the gritstone slabs the other ciarn is made of and it meant I couldn't give it much shape. But I have learnt a lot about working with misshapen rounded stones and the next one I build will hopefully have more curves.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Snow Ice Cairn
I went back up to the place I made the other snow and ice sculptures in the afternoon and started to make the base of a cairn with ice. I didn't take a torch with me and I had to give up when it was too dark to see. I chopped some more ice before going home ready for the morning. I hoped that the base would freeze and be strong. I returned before dawn to finish it off but now the ice had frozen solid and I couldn't now dig any more out. How am I going to finish it now?! So instead I used frozen snow to build up the top which still lay on the grass around the ice. I didn't intend to build a cone cairn exactly like Andy Goldsworthy's but it just seemed to grow in that way. I can see why AG builds cones as it is a shape that just appears when you make it strong, a natural form that is inherent in the material. If you don't know what I mean you'll just have to build one!
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Friday, December 05, 2008
Snowballs
Although a thaw was in full swing there was still some snow up on the tops. There is no refinement to these as I had very little time after work and before it got dark to build them. So I rushed to get them done without being as pernickerty as I would normally be. So there are lots of annoying mis-shapen parts! I was distracted by the amazing sunset behind too. See the other pictures to see what was going on behind me.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
My Arch is Still There
It's been standing more than a month now, I really expected it to have fallen down by now. There is a spot where this, the egg cairn and the balance cairn are all visible. This morning the dawn sun lit them all up against the bank of fog across the hills. It looked quite spectacular.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Millstone Grit Cairn
I've always wanted to build a big cairn like Goldsworthy's stone cones. Obviously the design is based on his but I went for a slightly different look, I wanted the curve to be symmetrical for both the bottom and top sections. I think I have achieved that to some degree. The first two attempts collapsed early on but the third worked. I had to pay more attention to making sure that long, large and heavy stones are placed often enough, to anchor the small stones on the outside. These long stones are positioned like spokes all the way through the cairn. When it was nearly done there was a loud crack as a stone snapped in the middle. My heart was in my mouth as it shifted and settled but it held. I could only spend a few hours each day building the cairn so it wasn't until the third day that I completed it. THis was a couple of hours into a big storm that dropped 2 inches of rainfall and brought 80mph winds. This meant that I couldn't film or photograph the finished cairn. Instead I had to leave in a hurry thoroughly drenched, hoping that it would stay up to be documented on a calmer day. Fortunately it has and I managed to get some pictures and film the day after I finished it.
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