Elemental Landscapes // Ecologies of Stone
STONE SESSIONS
Emma Rose Gray
Artist Bio // Emma is currently studying towards her Masters of Landscape Architecture. She completed her BSc in Landscape Architecture with Ecology at the University of Sheffield in June 2018 and worked in practice for 11 months at Planit-IE in Manchester prior to returning to university in September. Emma grew up on a farm in the Durham countryside and has a keen interest in art and design. Emma is interested in the process of making and creating, combining a range of media to create explorative artwork.
Order of Booklet // Introduction Week one / Precedent Study Week two / Group work Week three / Field Trip Week four / Reflection & Project progression Week five / Experimental Development Week six / Residency Space Documenting my process Reflection
Introduction// Stone Sessions
“Don’t forget about the stone.”
During this project I have examined and observed elements of stone landscapes. A combination of individual and group work, and a responsive studio group has allowed me to look at stone in an entirely new light. My peers and I have all chosen different themes to explore, and shared and discussed ideas throughout the course of the module - allowing me to develop my impressions of stone through a wide range of topics including age, colour, journey, and anthropology.
week one / precedent study
When I first started thinking about stone, the images of the stone buildings and dry stone walls that form the framework of the North Durham farm and countryside where I grew up came into my head, and I began to realise how these stone structures provide a connective ecological network of habitats. Using Broom House as a precedent study, I began to explore the immediate, purposeful functions of these dry stone walls and buildings, and the incidental functions that have resulted from the patchwork of micro habitats that form due to the combination and craftsmanship of stone in a man made form.
I began exploring the idea of Elemental Landscapes, taking stone as the focus and exploring it as an element of nature and considering the transformative process of turning it into a building material.
Following my initial exploration - I began to put together my lexicon for the ideas that I had been considering - summarising the vocabulary of the place - Broom House Farm.
week one / precedent study
Simplicity Decay Lichens & mosses L E X I C O N
Interlocking Patchwork Habitat Repetition
Accidental Purposeful Delicate Moisture
Following initial explorations, we noticed that I had been exploring similar themes to some of my peers. Alva, Beth and I had all begun to consider the importance of form and how it gives identity.
week two / group work
“substantial form provides each type of stone with innate but limited functions” (Cohen,2015)
“on the hill above the woods is what at first sight I presume to be a man-made dry-stone wall, but as we come near, the scale of the tor shifts. The stones magnify as we move towards them and we become smaller” (Pearson, 2009)
“fractal geometry (where forms and proportions of a ‘macro’ structure are repeated in the ‘micro’ structure of that form)” (Dee, 2001)
So how do we describe form? // We thought about differences in form, from micro to macro, and discussed the progression of form using stone as the subject. With my case study of the farm I started to realise the relationships between these micro forms - the details on the stones and macro forms - how we see the stones in the landscape. When considering micro forms I began to look closely at the varying textures that lichens and mosses bring and how moisture is needed to enable mosses and lichens to survive. I began to read the macro network of stone walls as a patchwork, you don’t see the broken up form of the wall - but the greater connective network creating a vital ecological resource. I produced a short video in continuation of my examination of the theme of form - using audio snippets alongside short video clips I had taken and photographs of my sketches. I drew on cross-media material to diversify my representation methods.
week two / group work
week three / field trip
Image Information: Landscapes – Digital Photography, Iceland, 2012 | Micro-organisms – Digital Microscopy, SVA NATLAB, New York, 2014
Before the field trip I re-examined the theme of micro and macro forms and how forms of vastly differing scales can have a similar form. I compared the lines and shapes of microscopic images of Hopton Wood Stone, the type of limestone found in the area of Derbyshire we would visit on the field trip, with the aerial images of the area - showing the network of quarries and the visible scarring it has had on the landscape. I looked at the work of a graphic designer and artist, Hiba Farran. Farran pairs the narrative of two distinct but contrasting journeys - one at macro scale and one at microscopic scale, visually combining science and art. This led me to explore the idea that despite being vastly different objects, contrasting elements can have remarkable similarities in form.
National Stone Centre // Peter Jones
Our brisk walk round the National Stone Centre with Peter Jones was such a beneficial way to learn more about the 330 million year life of stone in this region, and how the stone can tell us about the ancient environment of a place. He had a lifetime’s worth of knowledge and taught me so much more than a book or a website would have. Very engaging – all round top bloke. I was particularly interested in the lines that have formed in the stone and how they can tell the story of the stone’s past. The process of muddy deposits setting like concrete and forming beds of rock fascinated me; it’s such a crazy concept to imagine occurring all those millions of years ago. It amazed me that the small 10-15 degree eastwards sloping anticline of the bedding plane we could see had its peak somewhere in the middle of the Peak District – such a mammoth scale! During listening to Peter talk and teach us about the horizontal bedding planes, vertical joints, rakes and mineral veins I started to read the stones differently. I began to notice how the forms broke up into lines that weave through one another, and how the folding and fracturing of the stone has formed the landscape features we see today.
week three / field trip
week three / field trip
week three / field trip
I started to look and sketch the main feature lines of the stones, and the points where different forms meet – for example in the Millennial Dry Stone Wall where different stone types sit alongside one another. I also started to think more about how when we draw forms of stone, or take them out of their context their scale can be distorted. This linked with what I was looking at before the trip, comparing similar forms that are in fact of very different scales, microscopic images and large natural forms.
week three / field trip
Black Rock // Johnny Dawes
Johnny Dawes reminded me that “we’re apes” and that we have as humans perhaps become detached from nature. While we were all bashing the stones from the spoil heap he made the interesting comment “Don’t hit the Gritstone though, it doesn’t like that.” Here he’s talking about the stones almost having feelings – how do they feel about their forms? What words would they use in a lexicon?
“The gritstone was sort of cute and sweet” (Dawes, 2019)
week three / field trip
Reflection time //
After Johnny’s activities I wandered up Black Rocks to take in more of the view of the quarry and did a quick sketch up there I noticed the contrast between man made and natural stone formations and the effect of both on the landscape. The colours viewed from up here were spectacular in their autumn blaze; colours within the stone, moss and lichens were reflected in the woodland and quarry beyond. There were a few blades of grass shooting up from edge of the rock – when looking in situ the blades are clearly tiny – but when I photographed them, zooming in and blurring the background, the heads of grass begin to look like birch trees on the horizon in the distance, sitting on the top of a rocky outcrop of stone.
week three / field trip
week three / field trip
Post trip I flicked through my photographs, notes and sketches and began to see more cases of this interesting relationship between micro and macro scales and how this can be distorted.
Deconstructing & Reconfiguring // Distortion of Scale
act of drawing as an exploratory tool. I used fluid line drawings to stitch together images with similar forms, but differing scales, thinking about how when you remove the stone from its context the scale of the stone can be distorted. By stitching together photography of dry stone wall coping stones with images of The Black Rock - I was able to use pictorial and textural methods to pick out their similar forms.
week four / reflection & project progression
Birch trees on the horizon in winter, or blades of grass sitting on the edge of a cliff in autumn?
week four / reflection & project progression
week four / reflection & project progression
Experimental Development // Preparation for Stone Sessions Residency
I began to collate together photographs that the class had taken on the field trip - and explore how structures with a similar form, but of a different scale can be combined and distorted to develop a process of recording.
week five / experimental development
week five / experimental development
// Exploring the forms with a continuous line
week five / experimental development
week five / experimental development
week five / experimental development
week five / experimental development
// Exploring the form through lines
week five / experimental development
// Exploring the form through shapes and colours
week five / experimental development
week five / experimental development
Combining colour and lines of three separate photographs // reconstructing the form
week five / experimental development
Combining colour with linework from an entirely different composition // reconstructing the form
Distortion of the view// altering the scale of the stone
week five / experimental development
week five / experimental development
week five / experimental development
week five / experimental development
Exploring the detailed form //
week five / experimental development
Extracting the lines, shapes & dots //
week five / experimental development
I continued to use the same media and similar techniques as I had been in the previous three studies - extracting the colour from the form for this next piece. This time however I used a macro form photograph. I began to work over the paint with pen, loosely following the line form of the photograph, but distorting the scale. I photographed the piece, and as I was doing so I accidentally put my phone into invert negative screen mode - resulting in blue and turquoise tones. This colour palette resulted in the image suddenly feeling like it had shifted to a micro scale, the bright colours of the image reminding me of the microscopic images used in the work of Hiba Farran I had looked at before the field trip.
week five / experimental development
Microscopic Images // Trip to Firth Court to use the Stereo Microscope
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week five / experimental development
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Exploring the micro form with fluid lines
week five / experimental development
Combining two different forms directly// Returning to my early exploration work
In the days leading up to my residency I wanted to return to the simple theme of form distortion that I had been exploring in week 4, whilst also incorporating new methods of exploration I have developed over week 5. I decided to combine the textural forms of two images from the National Stone Centre and incorporate some of the fluid line patterns I had extracted whilst studying my microscopic stone images.
week five / experimental development
Exhibition Set Up Stone Sessions: 03/11 Prior to beginning my week in DINA Gallery I prepared my studio area, giving the walls a preparatory coat of paint and pinning up all the explorative work that I had carried out over the past fortnight.
Stone Sessions is a residency space documenting the process of exploring stone through deconstructing, reconfiguring and distorting scale. I have been using the act of drawing as an exploratory tool, working with a mixed media approach. Stone Sessions is a process, not a finished piece, and will continue to evolve and remain an experimental work station.
week six / residency space
Opening Night: 04/11 I decided to have an interactive activity for visitors to take part in during the opening night of the exhibition. I called the activity “feeling the form.” The participant would choose a coloured pen, I would blindfold them and then hand them a stone. The participant would then have to draw what they thought the form of the stone to be, by feeling the form rather than looking at it. Isolating the sense of touch in this way helps to get to know the stone, and forces the participant to physically respond to the experience of feeling the stone.
“For me it felt like Brexit” (Johnny Dawes, 2019)
week six / residency space
Residency Space Day Two 05/11
I spoke to Johnny during the opening night, he spent some time describing his climbing routes to me. He began to map them out on my photographs of the Black Rock - each one with it’s own quirky name. I decided to do a piece exploring the form of one of Johnny’s climbing routes, and how he seeks the comfortable form, enabling him to climb the rockface. I selected and deconstructed his Black Rock routes - piecing them together in a way that the original configuration of the Black Rock cannot be seen. However, if Johnny were to look at this piece of work I think that he would be able to tell which routes were which, because he is so familiar with the routes and has such a personal connection to this particular gritstone form. In this way I used dotted drawing to describe an emotional connection between a man and a rock.
week six / residency space
‘Stoneatomy’ Beth Keel
Residency Space Day Three 06/11
week six / residency space
Next I used Beth’s ‘Stoneatomy’ postcard series to explore the humanistic features of stone, using photographs she had taken of the Black Rock to reveal anatomical attributes within. I took a section of each postcard to construct a figure - the process gave the stone a narrative. I repeated this process several times, until I had built up a series - I called this ‘The Form Family’ a series of figures, open to interpretation regarding their form.
week six / residency space
I explored Jingnan Yu’s ‘Dance with Me’ video through a series of quick sketches and line drawings. Here the differentiation between stone and human forms are blurred. When taken out of context, or given no context the series of line sketches showing the movement of Adam and Johnny across the stone could be interpreted as a different form.
Residency Space Day Four 07/11
Charlotte explored the traces of the age and history captured in stone, always evolving in a continuous process of aging. I used her simple ink and watercolor technique and explored the ‘Traces’ within a series of my own photographs. For me the piece has elements of human form within it, it echoes the form of a human silhouette.
week six / residency space
week six / residency space
Lucy’s poster series ‘Follow the Stone’ allowed me to continue a similar approach to the one I had taken with Jingnan’s work.
Residency Space Day Five and Six 08-09/11
week six / residency space
Stina’s ‘Stone Brains’ piece emulates ancient body forms, made with a combination of stones and modelling clay. Over the past few days I have found myself considering the similarities between stone and human forms, both consisting of micro and macro elements. I decided to experiment with my own body as the form for a stone exploration piece. I lay down on a long roll of paper, and asked Alva to draw my rough outline. The resulting continuous line reminded me of the panoramic shots taken at the top of Black Rock.
week six / residency space
I began with my feet, taking a collage approach marking the stone with a bluish tone, coming from the blue toe of my sock. The toe tip formed the edge of the stony cliff, before a drop of an unknown distance!
week six / residency space
I then moved onto looking at my lower leg and jeans. I used images of the quarry and dry stone walls from the National Stone Center for inspiration for this section - representing my dry, hairy legs! For the jeans section I used a combination of pastels and charcoal, looking closely at the key patterns that could be seen within the jeans. The form of the folds within the jeans again had similar form to that of a dry stone wall or large bouldered cliff top.
week six / residency space
After this I looked at the hand, using a combination of watercolour and ink. This section of my body has a more wrinkly form, I tried to illustrate this by focusing on the lines of my hands.
week six / residency space
I then moved on to my face, choosing to illustrate the form with loose lines over a Black Rock image. For my brain I used a detailed image of lichen for inspiration - the form of the image is similar to how I imagine an abstracted form of my brain might appear‌. a little bit cloudy, full of colour, with random thoughts dashing around. Finally I explored my arm - using the colour of my jumper and the lines and crinkles of the form to layer up the upper limit of my stone form.
week six / residency space
week six / residency space
This piece feels unending, as there are so many more strands to the theme of distorting, reconfiguring and deconstructing the form of stone.
“I, the sculptor, am the landscape. I am the form and I am the hollow, the thrust and the contour.� Barbara Hepworth, 1961 (Quote, Hepworth Gallery, Wakefield)
Documenting my process // Throughout the course of this six week module I have documented my journey on my Landscape Instagram account - ‘_flerg.’ The use of Instagram “stories” has been a successful immediate medium for me to continually record this journey of exploration. Instagram was also useful during my residency, as I was able to tell people about the account, so that they could look back at the journey and understand how I had arrived at the point I got to during the week of the exhibition.
Reflection //post review with Rachael Kidd Our end of exhibition review with Rachael Kidd gave me a great opportunity to reflect and digest what I had produced over the last six weeks. The residency space has become my little studio over the past week, I have been able to put to paper (and the walls) my network of ideas and thoughts. Working within the same space as the exhibition allowed me the immediacy to begin to explore sudden realisations that this linked to that and so on - instantly recording the thoughts I was having, and being open to accidental happenings and having a play with these moments!
Rachael began to talk about true wilderness, and how exploring stone through the micro and macro scales, rather than the everyday human bounds we are able to begin to explore true wilderness. The true wilderness may exist in my brain - or another galaxy, a place where humans have not yet explored! This project and residency has allowed me to take the leap - allow my imagination to be free and really enjoy the process of stone exploration.
References // Cohen, J., (2015) Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman. University of Minnesota Press. Dee, C., (2001). Form and Fabric in Landscape Architecture: A Visual Introduction: An Introduction. Spon Press.
End of Session...to be continued
Pearson, D., (2009) Spirit: Garden Inspiration. Â FUEL Publishing.