A heart of haws and thorns, the Treasuring Trees exhibition

 

Treasuring Trees

Celebrating Derbyshire’s Trees
Buxton Museum and Art Gallery
Saturday 19^th February – Wednesday 8^th June 2022

 

A heart of haws and thorns

With pool-deep, peat-dark eyes.

He walks in from the woods,

He is the wood, walking.

Crataegus, G MacLellan*

 

Glowing, a tree of changing leaves invites the visitor in from across the hallway. Inside the work of three artists welcomes you into a wonder of trees. From ancient, twisted hawthorns to clustered birches and the spreading forms of old oaks, the trees of the Peak District are celebrated with photography, poetry, painting and puppets

 

Sarah Parkin, Valerie Dalling and myself all responded to trees in our own ways, creating an exhibition that moves from wide landscapes to fine detail, from tight observation to the unpredictability of folklore. There are also community contributions with some 30 pieces spread through the exhibition by residents of the area. Work from “my” teams includes material from members of the Lightwood Natural History Group, from Borderland Voices and from participants on Stronger Roots workshops organised by the Buxton Civic Association. These community contributions kept coming with more leaves on that tree than we could display so the “extras” have been assembled into a slideshow offering a chance for visitors to pause, rest on a chair and sink into the changing colours of more than 50 other images.

 

postcards

I tend to respond to most challenges as a storyteller and poet – and puppeteer - so my contributions here include poems about Alder and Willow trees, and the ancient Hawthorns of Wardlow Hay Cop (all three of us worked around these trees). The hawthorns reappear in a pair of postcards from my work available in the museum shop (and soon to be available on-line). The shop also features other postcards and greetings cards of some of Sarah’s work while exhibition pieces are also for sale.

 

Watching the proceedings are two large puppets that grew out of Stone and Water workshops in 2020. Drawing together thoughts, images and words from visitors to the woods of Buxton, these tall characters embody people’s feelings about those woods, especially through the tight 2020 lockdown. Now, hooked motionless onto a wall, they have danced their way through Grinlow Woods. Film of that can be seen in the video below ….if you want to skip the interview bits, puppets start at minute 3:45

And then there are the boggarts. Small, troublesome, almost certainly up to mischief, the Birch Tree Boggarts and their Spellbook have been trapped in a glass case (at least for now) while at the other end of the Gallery the beautiful Bilberry Bumblebee Travelling Display will introduce visitors to this rare peak district gem of an insect. (The Display (c/o Bumblebee Conservation Trust’s Pollinating the Peak project) is in the museum until the end of March when it will move on to Bakewell Tourist Information Centre). Between Boggarts and Bilberries are cases with some of Sarah and Valerie’s sketchbooks and extra images)

 

If you are in Buxton, please drop by. Step into our woodland gallery and immerse yourself in a celebration of trees

 

Events: 

Meet the Artists: 26^th March 2022, 1 – 4pm, at the Museum

 

Sales: through the Museum shop: postcards, greetings cards and some exhibition pieces

* Quote from my poem Crataegus inspired by the Wardlow Hay Cop hawthorns

A dream from the seed's wings

 

Treasuring Trees: celebrating Derbyshire's Trees

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery•

19th february - 8th june 2022 

 

Birch tree,

Will you gift me a dream,

From the seed’s wings,

...From the mere’s mirror?

Three of us have worked together to gather this exhibition. While Sarah and Valerie are visual artist creating paintings, drawings and photographs, I’m a storyteller, a puppeteer and a poet as much as anything else so inspiration for me shapes itself into characters and words 

 

Birch Boggarts waiting for hair...

I like birch trees: their dusty elegance, their endurance, the simple moonlit beauty of their bark all intrigue me. There are stories bound up with birch trees.In the Highlands of Scotland, birch woods are haunted by “The One With the White Hand” who drifts through the trees like mist. If she (?possibly? people don’t usually enter close conversation to get a real sense of gender!) sees you, she may pursue you….If she catches you, a touch from one of her long slender fingers on your forehead will inspire you, make a bard of you. If that finger taps your heart….you will die

 

Birch trees for me went in a lumpier direction and I found birch boggarts waiting to speak… A set of birch tree boggart puppets are taking shape for Treasuring Trees. With them came words, a set of late night, just before sleep, snippets whispered into my drowsy mind by the boggarts that live among the birch roots. These are pages from the Birch Boggarts’ Spellbook. 

 

A time ago, a while ago, the life of a birch ago, a birch wood was being felled and the boggarts of that wood knew they would die with their trees, so they gifted their Spellbook to a human, giving him permission to share its pages.

 

In the Birch Box at Treasuring Trees some of those pages will accompany “my” Birch Root Boggarts….I have been enjoying these lines: they hold mix of danger and beauty that marks most encounters with the peoples of Faerie:  

Birch is the breath

Of inspiration through the wood 

(from: “To be sung when brewing birch-bud tea”)

 
And then:

Our curse lies in a cold wind

And a shadow behind the door.

At some point during the exhibition, all the available pages of the Spellbook will be posted on this blog as a booklet to download for anyone who needs a bit of Birch Leaf Wine in words

 

 

 

*19^th February – 8^th June 2022 at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery. Entrance is free so please feel inspired to buy some postcards or a print in the shop!

 

 

Treasuring Trees: celebrating Derbyshire's trees 

find out more: Treasuring Trees