Ivan Daggett - fine artist
The Turning Tree
The Turning Tree serves as a series of workshops at the seasonal change times of the year in correspondence to a story which illustrates the fertility of the earth - the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone.
Like many forms of life a tree responds to the seasonal turning of the earth, from seeming lifelessness to renewed growth. Many of the life sustaining indigenous cultures and spiritual traditions throughout history associated the times of year with the seasons of human nature - its birth, growth, decline and death.
Time is spent alone in nature and art making in the studio as a way of exploring a relationship between nature, myth, creativity and the images of our imagination. Persephone’s disappearance coincides with autumn, winter with her Mother’s loss, spring with her return and summer with her fullness of life.
Along with drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, journaling and discussion, the workshops explore a noticing awareness and active imagination as a way of sensing a connection between the internal and external places in ourselves and the world around us.
Workshops are in rural countryside close to Ware, Hertfordshire and at Parndon Mill in Harlow, Essex. Each of the seasons has two workshops - one for a time alone in nature and one for art making in the studio.
Left: Terracotta group of two seated women, (gossiping) perhaps Demeter and Persephone. Myrina, Greece c.100 BC. British Museum, London.
Please see the pdf below for the new cycle of worshops:
The gallery of images below includes work from a participatory event from an exhibition called The Turning Point at The Courtyard Arts Centre in Herford in 2013.
From the Turning Tree event - as part of the Turning Point exhibition at Courtyard Arts in Hertford 2013. A wish or prayer for the earth was written on a piece of paper and then moulded round with a clay seed and later buried beneath an oak tree in a meadow near Wareside in Hertfordshire.
Detail of Wishing Seeds
Fired terracotta marked with a nail found on a walkabout in surrounding farmland - May 2014 by student attending Mythic Imagination workshop at Parndon Mill.
From the Turning Tree event - as part of the Turning Point exhibition at Courtyard Arts in Hertford 2013. A wish or prayer for the earth was written on a piece of paper and then moulded round with a clay seed and later buried beneath an oak tree in a meadow near Wareside in Hertfordshire.