Tag: Environmental Art

Glaciers in the Stove Cafe

Post author By Katie Anderson
Post date December 2, 2019

There are 178,000* glaciers currently around the world. How many of them can you name?

People name things for lots of reasons; to claim ownership, to map, to locate, to commemorate or congratulate, to know or mark a time, or a place or a landscape.

In the naming of things we gain familiarity. It is easier to image a glacier called Foggydog, than one without a name.

If we can’t name them, how will we miss them when they are gone?

At the moment, 10% of land area on Earth is covered with glacial ice, including glaicers, ice camps and ice sheets. Glacial ice store about 69% of the world’s fresh water, if all land ice melted, sea level would rise by approximately. 70 metres worldwide.

Glacial ice often appears blue when it becomes very dense. Years of compression gradually make the ice denser over time, forcing out the tine air pockets between crystals.

Since the early 20th Century, glaciers around the world have been retreating at unprecedented rates. Many are retreating so rapidly that they may vanish within a matter of decades. Glaciers are considered among the most sensitive indicators of climate change as they are so affected by long term climatic change such as precipitation, mean temperature and cloud cover.

In the Stove cafe as part of our Christmas decorations, we have christened over 80 of our festive baubles ceremoniously after some of our favourite glacier names, alongside the co-ordinates so you can look them up yourself. Pop in for a closer look.

Tags Climate, Conversing Building, Environment, Environmental Art, Future Vision, Glacier, Visual, Visual Art

News

Borderlands II – Journeys to the Ice Age

Post author By Katie Anderson
Post date April 29, 2016

Borderlands II was a two day conference, including an amazing peat coring at Kirkconnel Flow, organised by Stove member and environmental artist Kate Foster, with delegates arriving from Northumbria and Cumbria, The Borders and D&G, as well as further afield.

The peat coring, led by Dr Lauren Parry, was a time travelling experience back to the Ice Age through the samples of peat and eventually down to boulder clay, six meters down in the depths of the bog.

The second day was spent in the Stove, including exhibition and talks given by a range of speakers including story teller Malcolm Green, Dave Pritchard on wetlands, and Nadiah Rosli’s focus on Peatlands of South East Asia.

Image: The corer used for the Peat Coring workshop, accompanied by artwork by Kate Foster

Tags Borderlands, Dumfries and Galloway, Environment, Environmental Art, Exhibition, Kirkconnel Flow, Workshop

Musings News

Quest 3 at SUBMERGE

Post author By Katie Anderson
Post date December 8, 2015

“Quest” is an ongoing environmental Quest by artist Jan Hogarth which explores our relationship with environment, land and water. Jan’s working practice grows out of a deep love of the land (in the broadest sense of the word, by land I mean water, trees, animals, mountains etc), an empathy for it and a deep desire to heal it. Jan has been working with Sheila Pollock who is a practitioner in the healing arts for over 30 years. And invites others who love the land to become involved in the environmental Art Quests.

In Celtic tradition healing wells, springs and the sources of rivers were thought to have healing and sacred properties.

“Quest” explores rituals and the truths behind ritual to create and invent new environmental Art rituals that seek to heal the environment. The idea of looking for the source of the Nith came from a local rumour that the Lynors from Dumfries Guid Nychburris took spring water from the source of the Nith and carried it with them when they rode the boundaries of the town. Myself and my friend Sheila who has been working in the healing arts went in search of the source of the Nith which is at Dalmelington in Ayrshire and found an environmental massacre in the form of open cast mines and landfill sites there with no access to the source due to the open cast mine operators. It was shocking how could you heal this river when the source was an example of how we take from the land with no empathy for our own energy consumption? This seemed to be a metaphor for the wider climate change problem. The problem is us and out lack of love for the non human, our lack of reverence for nature, water and the land.

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Sheila has worked with Jan on the Quests project and has been looking at the energy of water and its places and exploring how to lift that energy, how to lift the vibration. Having dowsed there is evidence that the vibration was raised in the water she has worked on in Quest 1 and that improvement has remained. The Nith is a huge challenge because of its source in a open cast mine. Sheila and Jan will be talking about this on Thursday evening at the Stove about our work.

jan install — Jan’s install in preparation for SUBMERGE

Quest is a part of SUBMERGE, an exhibition as part of ArtCOP Dumfries, which runs daily from 10-5pm until Saturday, 12th December.

Jan and Sheila will be talking about Quest as part of A Question of Scale, on Thursday 10th December from 6pm.

Tags ArtCOP, Dumfries, Environment, Environmental Art, Environmental Art Festival Scotland, Public Art, River Nith, SUBMERGE

Musings News

For the Love of… Sphagnum

Post author By Katie Anderson
Post date December 8, 2015

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An extract from SUBMERGE artist Kate Foster’s most recent blog post. To read the post in full visit her blog here

Kate joined in our recent craftivism workshops, wearing Sphagnum on her sleeves (more on that here), inspiring a love of moss blog post.

‘Living with water is important around the Solway, and I’m learning that Sphagnum is a kind of aqueous super-hero. An individual Sphagnum moss is a strand of water-holding cells that can collectively create raised bogs many metres deep, over thousands of years.

Complete raised bogs are now rare. Dogden Moss in the Eastern Borders and Kirkconnel Flow west of Dumfries give hints of what the landscape in Southern Scotland was like before bogs were drained and dug. Beginning a tour of mosses, I have discovered the equivalent of mountain-top removal has been inflicted on them. My eye is getting tuned to tawny strips on the low horizon.’

‘This human-made drainage ditch has been dammed, a recent reversal of policy. Peatland Action is a restoration programme co-ordinated by Scottish Natural Heritage: the reasons to conserve peatbogs are beautifully laid out in the National Peatland Plan. Importantly, peatbogs sequester carbon and are sinks for atmospheric carbon. This process is starting in the blocked ditch at Kirkconnel, as Sphagnum strands start a slow and steady occupation.’

Kate has been working with Nadiah Rosli on her recent work Peatland Actions, which is part of our SUBMERGE exhibition. SUBMERGE runs daily from 10-5pm until Saturday evening, 12th December.

Kate and Nadiah will be speaking as part of our Question of Scale event on Thursday, 10th December from 6pm.

Tags ArtCOP, Craftivism, Dumfries and Galloway, Environment, Environmental Art, Kirkconnel Flow, Sphagnum

News Project Updates

The Lands of EAFS

Environmental Art Festival Scotland (EAFS) is an international biennial of contemporary art practice in the landscape.

The Lands of EAFS reached out from the main festival village site at Morton Castle out into the Lowther Hills (South West Scotland), and were mapped by Andrew McAvoy for the festival. Artworks, installations, and guided walks and expeditions took visitors out into the landscape to make new discoveries and follow new routes. One of the festivals themes, on journeys and migrations encouraged alternative means of transport, from horse, to kayak and foot travel, and EAFS visitors were ferried about on our shuttle buses to various points encouraging new ways of experiencing our Lands.

This is what they found.

EAFS 15 was created and co-produced by The Stove Network and Wide Open working with the amazing Robbie Coleman and the EAFS recharge team, with additional support from Spring Fling.

Tags Dumfries and Galloway, Environment, Environmental Art, Environmental Art Festival Scotland, Land, Morton Castle

News Project Updates

EAFS – People

Post author By Katie Anderson
Post date September 21, 2015

The Environmental Art Festival Scotland 2015 – an international biennial of contemporary art practice in the landscape – went offgrid into the wilds of the Lowther Hills (South West Scotland), a two day festival based at Morton Castle near Thornhill. EAFS 2015 explored themes of generosity and hospitality, journeys and migrations, and foolishness and playfulness as a means of understanding the world – through a weekend of art installations and experiments, walks, talks, performances and campfire discussions.

EAFS was a point of gathering, meeting and discussion in the open air, with walks and adventures out into the landscape, in the evenings visitors returned to the festival site to exchange new discoveries made during the days explorations, and to gather around the EAFS campfires to discuss everything from navigating new futures to death and the unknown, tracing local water courses to challenging new ways to tackle global climate change.

EAFS 15 was created and co-produced by The Stove Network and Wide Open working with the amazing Robbie Coleman and the EAFS recharge team, with additional support from Spring Fling.

Tags Community, Dumfries and Galloway, Environment, Environmental Art, Environmental Art Festival Scotland, Morton Castle

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