Hello… tired eyes on the longest day… back to the landscape designed Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown in the morning after a long day away… the longest day today. The rhythms of the sun and moon and the summer stars offering us some meter and support, assuredness and familiarity amonsgt the bustling exponential rise of culture and a changing climate.

Pictures by Jo Hallington

This week at Compton Verney has been nourishing… …much good solid work… …I was joined by JJ on monday, we daubed and sang work songs, temple building songs, and patted the walls with rhythm and spirit… …reminding me of a documentary I once saw from the 1980’s, ‘Inagina: the last house of iron’, about ageing Dogon Blacksmiths smelting iron to teach their teenagers the old ways… all the work done with song and rhythm… ritual and ancestral meaning… oral history. This house speaks of a time before the written word… when poets and priests trained sometimes for nineteen years memorising the stories and songs of their people, their cerebral hard-drive holding tradition.. conveyed to the young aspirants. This round hermitage speaks of retreat, a sustainable retreat from technologies that bind us to an abusive relationship with the planet… this house is a prayer… a humble tempe to nature…. atoning for our misuse of power… celebrating our search for freedom and simplicity… blessing our future…

This house speaks of simplicity… the simplicity of process… simplicity of material… wood and mud and grasses and water from the lake… willow for cordage…. a thatched golden cone pointing skywards to the midsumer sun.
Lifestyle within dwellings as this one sink our bodies deep into materia… no plumbing…but the luxury of fetching water… an open fire, smoke rising and preserving wood, straw, foods and furs… fresh airs…. this miniure unearthing of natural art and arcitecture… child sized… young mind inspirer and enchanter… fantatic yet realistic… but such courage it would demand for us to retreat into a prehistoric technology? The materials, when sized up create a grand space… the possibilities of lifestyles we place within them are full of potential, way beyond this hermittted practice. It has been a great joy and honour to serve here.

It has been inspiring to meet other artists, volunteers, workshop leaders, school groups, gallery visitors and staff and enthuse about natural housing… moments of contemplating how to make glass for windows from sand and pot-ash with Francis. Moments of transformation with the cautious, clean t-shirted groups who then couldn’t pull themselves away from daubing the interior… moments of discussion about the chemical age, 200 years since the birth of Rachel Carson (author of Silent Spring)…. moments of hot sun and cooling rain… Horse manure gathering… natural domestic tool making- brushes and besoms from birch twigs and goose feathers… sun rise awakenings and twilight water gathering.

To work next to the CBT workshops has added a creative community feel, much laughter, tea and cake and conversation. A myriad of muses are dancing through this whole project…

This natural vessel is almost ready… traditional charms set into the walls… the floor will be danced and trodden in opefully this friday. Some sleep upon this shortest night before the year begins to gently wane.

Fare well for now

Chris