My approach to ecological art follows a range of sensory explorations and ways of experiencing a place, feeling the atmosphere and spirit of a place, opening the body, mind and spirit, listening to time speaking through a place, touching into connections with and between all aspects of ecology of the place or region. This may encompasses the human and non human ecological threads evolving to evoke the atmosphere of a place and the discovery of how these artistic explorations emerge into a form that allows discovery of a new felt meaning sense. I work with local communities and people to connect deeper into the relationship with land to understand aspects of reciprocity and sustainability and to find ways to adapt to the changing nature of our time.
The Breathing of Life 2023 – 2024
A year of Art and Ecology work beginning to weave a web of partnerships and communities through art and awareness of landscape. A series of indoor and outdoor open events will revision Oxfords natural landscape at the heart of community connections in creating inspiring new art work for ‘The Breathing of Life’ Exhibition at the North Wall Arts Centre 2024. All events are free and open to all. Inspired by the saving endangered wetlands plants community growing project GroWet in partnership with Freshwater Habitats Trust, Helen will be building a range of opportunities with The North Wall Arts centre, Cutteslowe Community Association and The Art Society Oxford.
Fen Dance 2022
A performance exploring the botanic diversity, natural history and seasonal patterns of wetland locations and their place in landscape. Choreographed by Helen Edward this new site specific work developed with Cafe Reason was inspired by the Fen Violet, a beautiful and rare wetland plant found in only a few places in the country. The performance delighted audiences at Hinksey Height Nature Reserve and Fen in August 2022.
Rivers of Life, Movement in Evoluation 2011 – 2011
Movement and awareness opportunities, time to earth, decompose, regenerate, evolve.
Participatory Arts Practice – A Sense of Place
Slade and Headington Children’s Centre Oxford, 2007 – 2008
Year long participatory Arts Project with families, building connection through sensory immersion in everyday experience of place, using the arts to process the sensitivity of people’s experience and engage the imagination. Community collage using multi media, group process of sharing and collaging ideas together.
Bird’s Words – multi media collage
Cutteslowe Community Art Club 2008 – present
Exploring identity and community through relationship to place. Ongoing weekly artist in residency
Sense of Place Community Group Show in the Town Hall, Oxford, 2010
Sense of Place – fabric paint on linen
Thames House Artscape Health and Wellbeing Project 2007 – 2009
Participatory Arts Project and Symposium – Littlemore Mental Health Centre, Oxford
Sense of Place – Photography
Meeting Landscape 2005 – present
Tracing breath, wind, water, earth and fire, sensory marks created in landscape referencing memory, dreams and consciousness.
“Take thought, when you are speaking of water, that you first recount your experience and only afterware your reflections” Leonardo da Vinci
My work comes from direct experience, bringing felt meaning and form to the forming relationship between self and nature, nature and self. In bringing form to the authentic relationship, art is created as part of the process of respect, gratitude, appreciation and curiosity, a participatory and deeply observational process.
An art movement in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked. Art is created in nature, using natural materials such as soil, rock, (bed rock, boulders, stones), organic media (logs, branches, leaves), and water with introduced materials such as concrete, metals or mineral pigments. Sculptures are not placed in the landscape, rather, the landscape is the means of their creation. Earth may be moved. The works frequently exist in the open, located well away from civilisation, left to change and erode under natural conditions. Many of the first works, created in the deserts of Nevada, New Mexico, Utah or Arizona were ephemeral in nature and now only exist as video recordings or photographic documents. Site specific sculpture may be designed for a particular outdoor location.
The Land Art Movement is to be understood as an artistic protest against the perceived artificiality, plastic aesthetics and ruthless commercialisation of art at the end of the 1960s in America. Exponents of land art rejected the museum or gallery as the setting of artistic activity and developed monumental landscape projects which were beyond the reach of traditional transportable sculpture and the commercial art market. Land art was inspired by both minimal and conceptual art. also known as landscape architecture, environmental sculpture.