Tuesday 8 April 2014

Things we love to do...

...when we are out, enjoying a walk in the lovely Vienna Woods: creating "land art".

Especially when my son was a bit younger - five or six years old - he loved to lead the way, leaving arrows on the narrow paths when they branched so we could follow and find him. Sometimes he just used large branches to form a gigantic arrow, at other times he left little land art "treasures" like the one I want to share with you today:




What makes land art so special is that you create just for the joy of creating, knowing that wind, rain or other travellers on this path will soon destroy your creation. The colours of leaves, stones, moss or bark are a neverending source of inspiration and there are some land artists who really create the most wonderful projects. Using flowers pollen to "paint with", arranging moss or rocks so they form special patterns....which brings us back to "mark making". Remember when I talked about mark making in this post?

What makes land art so special is the fact that we use what's to be found in nature but create something artificial with it... a pattern or shape or installation that indicates that we were there. Humans....who are able to give objects new meaning and/or order (well, some animals do too ;). Leaving traces for others to detect... not only children love to do this. ;)

A gorgeous post over at Manu's blog today reminded me to try create some land art as soon as the weather and time will allow me to do so. And it also reminded me of this land art project my son did some years ago. I hope you like it and maybe will create some land art too some time. We invest such a lot of time imitating textures and/or colours that are inspired by nature...how could our projects look like that were done with what nature provides us with - done in nature? I would love to learn!

Thanks for stopping by! Claudia x