I am kind of enjoying Covid 19. In fact I feel better than I usually do. Crisis? Excellent - I know exactly how to behave in one of those. No choice? Excellent - I know exactly what to do without a choice. Official sanction for doing nothing has removed my normally intense anxiety about not having enough to do while feeling I really should be doing something which, combined, render me incapable of doing anything anyway!
So this period has given me pressure and anxiety free time in which I am getting things done. Creative things. I am particularly pleased to have two new additions to the Crowhurst Art Garden. This garden is a project created on a small piece of land adjacent to my house. It was started in 2017 with 'Bonehinge' which was a pillar of stone, topped with a bone and a rusty hinge, all of which we found when we were digging over the space. These finds and the fun of putting them together gave us the initial idea for the garden.
A call went out to friends and we then received the generous donations of Mantis by Martin Adams and Julie by Esther Neslen. Mantis began as golden plywood in 2017 but underwent a metamorphosis to forest green in 2019.
So this period has given me pressure and anxiety free time in which I am getting things done. Creative things. I am particularly pleased to have two new additions to the Crowhurst Art Garden. This garden is a project created on a small piece of land adjacent to my house. It was started in 2017 with 'Bonehinge' which was a pillar of stone, topped with a bone and a rusty hinge, all of which we found when we were digging over the space. These finds and the fun of putting them together gave us the initial idea for the garden.
A call went out to friends and we then received the generous donations of Mantis by Martin Adams and Julie by Esther Neslen. Mantis began as golden plywood in 2017 but underwent a metamorphosis to forest green in 2019.
Beautiful Julie is weathering wonderfully, displaying various mottled shades of moss and algae in the winter and then returning, more or less, to her original colour in the summer. 
The next addition was in 2018. Three cast iron radiators removed from the house during a new boiler installation were given an entirely new life as Sheepish. 
In March 2019 we received Jolyon Dupuy's Duchamp's Step- Ladder. Not only does the wheel spin but it also has its own original music video put together by Jolyon and Peter Schofield. Thanks to Tim Vine for photos of this.
Now here we are in April 2020 and I happy to present 'Flying Fish' and 'Still Life'. In the course of doing the 2019 Crowhenge project, I met 92 year old master carver Ian Gordon. As well as contributing the carved title piece to the Crowhenge Project, he also gave me this piece of found wood which has now become 'Flying Fish'. The shape is just as he found it so all I did was sand and oil it and give it some eyes.
'Still Life' consists of an empty picture frame suspended between two trees on thin wire. This gives the illusion that the frame is floating in space. What you see through the frame changes as you walk around the garden and will also change throughout the seasons. I found the frame dumped in the street in Hastings several years ago so am delighted to have finally transformed it into a less random public artwork.
(Lucky photo taken just as sun started filtering through trees).
(Guest Photo from Laura Cecil)
I guess it's ironic that in this weird, pandemic period I have been busier than usual and it's not just the garden. I was also part of a team that set up a Coronavirus Support Group to match volunteers with people needing help. The community response here has been great, so I’m very happy that the time I’ve had to work on the garden means it can now be open to visitors. I am leaving the gate permanently open so no one will have to touch it and am sure visitor numbers in a village make it unlikely I will need social distancing queue markers! I may put a note on the gate asking people not to fall over, break their legs and sue me though because I don’t have public liability insurance.
Despite my normal moaning about how much I miss London (I still do), I know it is a privilege to be living in a place like this at a time like this We can go for walks without seeing anyone else and should the tanks eventually roll onto the lanes of Crowhurst we can jog round our garden and subsist on dandelion leaves and wild garlic. We also have a veg patch. It is also beautiful to see nature in its eternal cycle, regardless as always, of human affairs. The weather is wonderful, the birds are singing, trees are coming into blossom and leaf and there is a riotous abundance of spring flowers and colours. I am very grateful that this didn’t all kick off in November. So... thanks for that universe!
Despite my normal moaning about how much I miss London (I still do), I know it is a privilege to be living in a place like this at a time like this We can go for walks without seeing anyone else and should the tanks eventually roll onto the lanes of Crowhurst we can jog round our garden and subsist on dandelion leaves and wild garlic. We also have a veg patch. It is also beautiful to see nature in its eternal cycle, regardless as always, of human affairs. The weather is wonderful, the birds are singing, trees are coming into blossom and leaf and there is a riotous abundance of spring flowers and colours. I am very grateful that this didn’t all kick off in November. So... thanks for that universe!
