Knitted coral reef

These three old navigational buoys stand about ten feet tall and decorate the dock wall of Sunderland marina. Today when we passed by we found that someone had knitted a gigantic woolly cosy for one of them, decorated with knitted octopus and tropical reef marine life.

This artwork was made by a brilliant group of knitters and stitchers called Materialistics. You find out more their work on their web site 

The artwork was installed for the recent Tall Ships Race and is due to be removed on Wednesday 8th. August.

The 'Wow' Factor

This stunning chain-saw sculpture of a red kite stops you in your tracks when you round a bend in the Thornley Wood Sculpture Trail near Gateshead. I think everyone who encounters it has only one word to describe it: "wow!"

You can read more about its creator here,and here and see some other enterprises and artworks that have been inspired by the reintroduction of red kites into the Derwent Valley here...........

... and see another example of Tommy's chain-saw work here.

Public Sculpture

Today's Guardian Country Diary described the woven willow sculptures at the Woodland Trust's Low Burnhall farm reserve near Durham. The Coal Miner has been in place for a couple of years now and, judging by the number of people who have their photograph taken next to him, he's captured the affections of many visitors.

Art critics are often rather snooty about public art installations, such as Antony Gormley's Angel of the North, but if one of the tests of meaningful public art is that it provokes a reaction and instils a sense of public ownership,then it (and the Coal Miner) are resoundingly successful. If you drive past the Angel of the North at any time of day you'll almost always see people standing in front of it, adopting its pose and having their photo taken. These willow sculptures at Low Burnhall provoke much the same reaction.

The Coal Miner enjoys a wonderful view over the reserve from his perch on the escapement. Down below him there was once a short-lived colliery, whose traces have almost disappeared.

Recently the Coal Miner has been joined by his wife - again, a willow-woven sculpture, twice life-size - situated under a hedge at the other end of the reserve.........

........... where she's feeding here willow-woven hens.

Both sculptures are the work of Ruth Thompson (of Sylvan Skills) and Anna Turnbull (of Biteabout Arts).

I particularly like the way that the Miner's Wife looks up to the sky, as if sensing a change in the weather.

She was installed last autumn, so stood there throughout the worst of last winters snow and freezing winds. 

Recently when we visited we noticed something new about her and her flock. Some kind soul, perhaps mindful of that long winter, had knitted scarves for her chickens (double-click the image above to enlarge and see these more clearly) .......

....... and woolly hats for the eggs in the basket that she carries over her arm. 

Clearly, someone has great affection for this public art installation too.........

Ceramic Wild Flower Meadows ...

The millennium spawned all sorts of arts projects, many of them grandiose, but these ceramics entitled Field of Flower are amongst my favourites. They are displayed on a wall just off of the marketplace in Alston in Cumbria and are the results of a community tile workshop run by Alston potters Syl Macro and Sue Sharp.

These delightful interpretations of North Pennine meadows are well worth looking out for if you are passing through Alston.

Incidentally, if you are in the town stop by The Moody Baker and try one of their wolf pies - perfect picnic food. I had one for my lunch today. 

Woven Willow Woman

Back in April last year I posted some pictures of the woven willow giant at the Woodland Trust Reserve at Low Burnhall Farm, near Durham city. Now he's got company, in the form of this woven willow woman sited at the other end of the reserve. She's feeding woven willow chickens and even has eggs in the basket she carries over her arm. Wonderful!

Kirkby Stephen Poetry Path

If you are ever in the Cumbrian town of Kirkby Stephen, it's well worth taking time to follow the delightful Poetry Path. You'll find large boulders, set at twelve locations, each representing a month in the farming year, each with an inscribed poem on the flat rock surface. The poems are by Meg Peacocke and the beautifully-carved  stone inscriptions were executed by Pip Hall.

This is July:

Silage tractor incises the first green furrow. 

Skilful geometrician, the driver judges

an arc of weather

August, with the poem inscribed on both flat faces of this rock:

Crab apples tart on the tongue,

hazelnuts milky,

rosehips cool in the hand,

thistledown silky,

squirrel is speaking his mind,

knapweed purples the banks,

for touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing

I give thanks

The December poem is inscribed across each face of these three stones, lying in a pasture:

There sails the heron,drawing behind him, a long wake of solitude


You can read more about the Poetry Path by clicking here and you can listen to a commentary and to the poems read out loud by clicking here

Here be Giants

This wonderful woven willow giant sits on the bank at the northern end of the Woodland Trust's Low Burnhall wood near Durham city.

His natural materials blend in beautifully with the surrounding hedgerows and grassland.....

...... and he's there to greet every walker that arrives at the site...

..... a friendly giant......

.... perched on the skyline, visible from a mile away as you climb up the hill from the south, resting his feet for a while ....

...... and spending his time admiring the view, surrounded by the sound of skylark song and the coconut scent of gorse flowers.

For pictures of the Low Burnhall Farm Wood in summer, click here

When the Boat comes in.......

I like places that celebrate their heritage. This cavorting fish....

..... pursued by a long line of similar-shaped ridge tiles chasing its tail ......

.... and the fish motif on the street lamps..

.... and on the end of the public benches on the quay, where you can sit and eat your fish and chips, mean that you could only be ......

... in North Shields

Cormorants: made from girders

Keith, who blogs here, has just posted some fine photos of cormorants, which put me in mind of this interesting piece of ornithologically-inspired public art called 'Taking Flight' by Craig Knowles, that you can see at the North Dock Marina at Sunderland, near the mouth of the River Wear.

It takes the form of five girders embedded upright in the quayside, on a pier that juts out into the river, that gradually morph from solid steel to a cormorant about to lift-off from its perch.....

.... and pays tribute to Sunderland's shipbuilding industrial heritage and the cormorants that still perch near the end of the quay and fish in the river.

If you visit this website you can play with a 360 degree panorama which shows the whole series of scultures in context

Anybody know of any further pieces of ornithologically-inspired public art?