I’m going over different ideas for an eventual art work or works relating to the Fallow Land project and its themes. I’ve covered a lot of ground (literally), what with the art walks, my own walks and spending time in the field (again literally), looking, listening, thinking, exploring through all the senses, in both the mindful and the mindless modes. The other part is the social dimension which involves growing initiatives in the town and those are going very well. I’ll report on them next.

A few ideas are coming to the fore. Some of these involve recycling ideas and concepts that I've had bubbling away as part of previous investigations into Jedburgh and its hinterland. I had discussed with two of the farmers I know the possibility of making small signs to put on the gates of those fields along the paths where people walk the most, signs illustrating through symbols and/or words what’s going on in the fields. This might still happen and my own preference here is for some kind of ideograms that encapsulate the growing or function that the various fields are undergoing over a given period.

​From my neighbour Alfie Dodds who farms below Hunthill south of Jedburgh I have some wonderful descriptions of the fields in the area I’m investigating. One goes like this: Species-rich meadow used for grazing, cannot be ploughed without permission from Department. Presumably that’ll be the Department of Agriculture. I thought this was all about insects, maybe dragonflies, but what it means is that there are rare grasses in that field and somebody has considered it worthwhile to protect them. As you’d expect other descriptions are very functional, for example Permanent Grass will be left until July and cut for silage or, more detailed, Arable silage field under sown with grass. Will be ploughed out in Spring and re-sown with arable silage mix and grass. To be cut for winter fodder 2025. I especially love this one - Winter stubble scheme to encourage birds, will be ploughed and sown in Spring with Spring Barley, because it's a novelty to me that food growing involves feeding the birds. It all makes sense within a more holistic view of the food environment.

Out of all this I’ll be spending a lot more time in the spring, wallowing in the amazing milky light you get at this latitude. In and around these fields employing cameras, lenses, a bunch of objects and ‘stuff’ to make some short test films and staged photographs, probably in my performance mode as ‘Landowner’. Back to the ideograms I can see a place for those as objects, printed out or as linocuts, brought into the environment.

Sound is tricky and I say that as someone who works with the medium every day. The sounds in those high fields and woodlands can be undifferentiated, nuanced and subtle at the same time, not without interest but difficult to manipulate into an accessible art work. Until I adequately decode the soundscape my way round this problem is to represent the sounds visually or even sculpturally which I find fascinating.

Finally, alongside finding a place for the words and phrases that the farmers themselves use to describe places and processes, I'm considering some activity around sonograms, again linocuts or other prints. If you’re not sure what I mean by sonograms I should make it clear that I'm not doing pregnancy testing for cattle.

​After all that lot I might be able to make some decisions. 

As you might know I'll be hosting Jedburgh's participation in the Fallow Land Project for the next five months. As part of  that  I’d like to invite writers to contribute to the art works around the project by writing one or more haiku. A haiku is a short Japanese poem consisting of three phrases composed of seventeen syllables, in a five-seven-five pattern. Quite often there’s a seasonal reference.

The primary theme is fallow which can be understood literally, usually agriculturally, or metaphorically, for example relating to spiritual growth. Other related themes are land use and ownership, soil, the food environment and sustainability.

The Fallow Land Artwalks are under way on the last Sunday of each month. The themes from February to April are word, light and sound respectively so I'll be encouraging the walkers in February to contribute their own haiku.

You can submit as many as you like on as many relevant topics as you wish. If contributors wish I’ll then figure out a way of presenting everyone’s haiku(s) in small publications using folded card and paper as well as putting them on my website where I'll be updating progress regularly. It would be wonderful if you were able to participate and of course if you want to write something more substantial please do!

Please email me your poems (as word docs preferably):-[email protected]

Provisional deadline: Friday 21 February 

There’s a very good Wikipedia entry if you want to dig deeper:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku

And here’s a link to the Fallow Land project:-https://www.artwalkporty.co.uk/project/fallow-land/ 

As part of the Fallow Land project I've made a good start to the the year with my plans to host a series of four artworks in and around Jedburgh between January and April. I had the idea from the excellent work done by Artwork Porty over the years. The idea is to invite people to walk and reflect upon the environments encountered during the walk. Walks can be medium specific, for example a soundwalk, or more general, for example to make connections between creative people.

The first walk is fully signed up and we'll be doing a four mile circuit along the back roads and woodlands above Jedburgh to the south-east. In preparation for this I'm learning from local farmers, informing myself about what goes on in the fields. This is an important part of the project, investigating the patterns of activity in the managed landscape, from land ownership to land use to food growing, from which some kind of art work will emerge.

My hope is that we'll get talking and learning about not only about the land and landscape but also about how we might make art in and around the topics and themes that arise. This occupies me regularly on my walks and I'm always relish the opportunity to listen to ideas from other artists. 

For the next three walks, at the end of the month from February to April, I want the groups to consider particular art forms, especially sound, lens-based media and  writing though I imagine these will all fuse together over time.

I'm a bit slow in the visual arts department. For a start I don't have the time to do my primary projects and establish a practice in other things that require my full attention. But over the years I've managed to get to grips with some aspects of collage, photography, book folding and linocut.

Recently I went to a printing workshop with the very wonderful Georgie Fay. https://georgiefay.com/ where I met some other  artists involved in printing and bookmaking. Georgie's idea is to establish a club that meets regularly and eventually to set up a proper print workshop in Earlston. For this session we met at the Little Art Hub in Galashiels https://www.littlearthub.org/, a white space paid for by multi-year finding from various bodies. Jedburgh has nothing like this and the way things go in this cold, cold town is unlikely to see such a hub in my lifetime.

Anyway, I've always wanted to print, mainly to generate artwork for albums and posters and maybe zines and folded books so when a dear artist friend Sue Higginson-Bell recommended this workshop I snapped up a place and had the time of my life. I'd do this at home but you really need a large space to set out all the different clean, dirty and wet areas and of course you need a press. A good one is expensive and takes up yet more space. I won't go into the details but what I love about printing is the uncertainty. It's like wet darkroom developing when the print emerges from the tank like a fish you've just dragged up from the depths of the ocean. You're never sure what you're going to get. Then there's the repeat processes where your original print is modified and reprinted in different ways. It's similar in spirit to some of the recording techniques I use in building up a musical composition. Not to forget the amazing power of colour, nuanced by all the subtle textures that find themselves on to the print. I'm hooked. Here are some of my efforts with all the usual beginner's mistakes - thumbprints, smudges, light bands where I didn't pull the print evenly through the press, letters back to front and everything the wrong way round (some of these were happy accidents in the end).