Catching the Wind September

In late September I led my final walk in Aylestone Meadows.

As autumn sneaked up on me, I began to become more aware of the wind.  The Invisibility Walks also drew my attention to the wind, in the way it sounds, moves and its visual effects.

As part of the Walks I asked the group to sit in a field with blindfolds on.  One day it was very windy, and in this wide open space surrounded by trees, you could really hear the wind whirling around your head and sculpting the space in 360 degrees with its sound.  We all made drawings of swirling, spiraling shapes that day.

Another time, it was a still, bright day with a clear sky and a gentle breeze.  As the group settled into their blindfold listening, I gazed over the field to a line of willow trees.  As the breeze brushed against them, they sparkled their silvery leaves like sequins.

Since then I have been trying to catch the wind in my work.  On a sunny day I run down to the Meadows with a bowl and cyanotype paper and try to "print" the movement of the wind. Sometimes this doesn't work at all, but other times I have managed to catch movement and ghostly shapes in the prints.

Ash Keys, cyanotype, 2018

Willow and ash are both particularly good at responding to the wind. The elegance of ash keys, their weight drawing down the branches like clusters of chandeliers, become brushes as they move in the breeze. As I walk along the far western edge of the Meadows, there are ash trees that creak in the wind quite loudly, as if calling to you to notice them.

Willows are so flexible that their movement in the wind is marvelous, especially with that pale colour of the leaves that reflect light on a bright day and make them shimmer. The willows overhanging the river in the Meadows seem to dance with the light on the water, both moving with the wind together in a glittery waltz.

This week I have a meeting at the University of Leicester about an exhibition in the new year, when I hope to show some of my wind-catching experiments.