Ancient Landscapes

Ancient Landscapes is a partner project to Exploring with Stories and we thought you might enjoy the delights of a project bringing limestone to life

we've had a busy few days as the second phase of this project begins, or maybe as the tide runs again toward the full. (PIctures from the first phase can be found on my own Creeping Toad blog - I am Gordon MacLellan, is one of the workshop artists and disorganiser of a lot of the Stone and Water projects)

Antler coral

With Ancient Landscapes, we are looking at the limestone of the Peak District where we live and the fossils that rock contains. Then mixing observation, deduction and wild imagination, we work to create the original environments that spawned our limestone as installations in crochet, knitting, clay, beads, felt and anything else that takes our artists fancy!

coral development takes concentration

....concentration, and tea!

The first installation is on display in Leek for the next two weeks as part of the Borderland Voices exhibit in the Emporium Art Exhibition (details to follow)

Meanwhile, a new group has taken up the challenge of extending the ancient landscape and a session at Buxton Museum last week, led on to a workshop at Fairfield Community Centre today. Five more sessions will follow and then we'll see just how our coral garden grows before it unfolds its glories again in the Buxton Art Trail in the summer

Inspiration

Our use of crochet in Ancient Landscapes was inspired by the global Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef Project (http://crochetcoralreef.org/) whose influence we acknowledge even though we couldn't afford to sign into their network as a community group.

The connection between those techniques, other artforms and our Peak District landscapes comes from Stone and Water, a Buxton-based community group dedicated to celebrating the creativity of the people and landscapes of the Peaks.