Art, Place and Landscape.

 

Rootedness, Connectedness, sense of place and identity, are titles that invariably set off an instant emotional understanding. But do we stop and think what these words actually mean to each of us. Rootedness, for example, has the effect of transporting you back to childhood place, a place of memories and experiences cocooned in community and home. What connects us to a place? In childhood, the family may be a strong foundation for connectedness, but in later life and far from our birth pace what connections would we make. What is identity and where do we acquire it? Can rootedness occur in more than one place and can this be stronger than childhood rootedness? So are roots important? Or is the experience of and growing into a place, the essence of belonging. I have tried to find the answers to some of these questions in the following pages by using the writings and works of eminent researchers in this field. Martin Heidegger, Yi-Fu Tuan and Gaston Bachelard are philosophers who have written extensively on the subject of place and place awareness. The geographer Edward Relph one of a number of pioneers on place and placelessness gives us his own understanding of how we relate to place. My research is an attempt to understand some of these themes and translate them into my art adding context and essence.         

 

 

Connectedness is a strong emotion within my art, in grounding it to the idea of place. My place began in South Yorkshire, but my connectedness now is in an area of South Wales. A place which is geologically similar to that of South Yorkshire, coal mining and steel manufacturing are features of both areas. E. Relphs 1(2008, p11) phenomenological approach to place reasons that due to extensive travel and mobility alongside electronic interconnections have eroded the barriers of rooted sense of place. He explains that ‘the narrow but deep experience that once was normal, has given way to briefer experiences of many different places’. My own birthplace experiences and childhood memories are still very strong, (although I suspect somewhat romanticised by time). But having lived the vast majority of my life other than in the place I was born and spent my early childhood, I have some confusing emotions. Ian Nairn quoted in Edward Relphs 2 (2008, p30) Place and Placelessness, suggests that some people put down roots in a short space of time. He adds that forty-eight hours is enough in his case and that mobility increases his sense of place. This initial understanding of the theory of place, both lived and experienced, is in its self very subjective.

 

This becomes more perplexing when space encounters place. Perceptual space as Relph 3 (2008, p11) explains, is space experienced through personal encounters or centres of special significance. Cob 4 (2008, p11) relates this to children and their experiences of climbing trees and making dens which become discoveries of the self and in so doing become for the child ‘my place’. This has some resonance with me and my birthplace, in that I dammed its streams, got my feet wet in its rivers and played childhood initiation games by climbing its trees all of which formed as Relph explains, my perceptual space.

 

 An extract from Yi-Fu Tuan's book ‘Space and Place’ 5 (2008, p145) gives a poignant description of intimate experiences of place and how childhood experiences make up place.

 

‘Hometown is an intimate place. It may be plain, lacking in architectural distinction and historical glamour, yet we resent an outsider’s criticism of it. Its ugliness does not matter; it did not matter when we were children, climbed its trees peddled our bikes on its cracked pavements, and swam in its ponds. How did we experience such a small, familiar world, a world inexhaustibly rich in the complication of ordinary life but devoid of features of high imageability’.

 

Tuan enlarges on the foundations of place, by stating that familiar and real experience of life, involves our whole being and senses. A subconscious evaluation of place occurs which is experienced through touch, smells and sounds that are stored and filed away in our memory, instantly recalled at the onset of any one of the sense experiences mentioned. Measham 6 (2006, pp426-434), suggests that early childhood experiences of the natural environment help us with environment choices in adult life. Bixler 7 (2002, pp 795-818) upholds Tuans points in agreeing that play in the natural environment during childhood aids their understanding of place alongside community, culture and family. Derr, 8 (2002, pp125-137) refers this to ‘primal landscape’ where the child develops and bonds with their childhood environments.

 

Gaston Balchelard 9 (1998, p290), draws our attention to our first universe or our first world, the house, where we were born and reared, the first place we experience as ‘intimate values of inside space’. The essence of this space is the ‘degree of intimacy and intensity of our experience there’. The house of our birth is physically inscribed in us.

Place to most people particularly our birthplace gives us an identity, it’s a habitat that we belong to through lived and shared experiences. An extract from a study by Jennifer E. Cross 10 a Sociologist at Colorado University puts forward the view that regardless of being a resident of many years or recently located, the time spent in place produces memories and experiences which form ‘individual and community identity’

 

The philosopher Martin Heidegger 11 (2008, p1) explains place as being ‘a profound and complex aspect of man's experience of the world. Susanne Langer 12 (2008, p29) argues from a different perspective in Edward Ralph’s, Place and Placelessness, that culture defines place and location of place is of minor importance. She defends this argument by suggesting that ships at sea are places in their entirety. Gipsy camps, circus troupes and Indian camps are also examples where location moves but place is maintained by the camp members and their lived experiences.

 

 The fascinating extract from Mircea Eliades ‘ Consecration of Place’ 13 gives an account of the Australian Aboriginals belonging to the Achilpa tribe who carry with them a sacred pole (Kauwa-auwa) which is implanted into each new campment. The pole defines their place acting as a cosmic axis or axis mundi (world centre expressing a point of contact between sky and earth). This act makes territory habitable. So the idea of place manifests its self in many forms as well as being a static habitat and one in which people have lived in for many years. The essence of place according to Relph 14 (2008, p 3) is a multifaceted phenomenon of experiences which cannot be defined simply through location and occur at different levels of identity such as community, landscape, people and country which he states, of places,  ‘never conform to tidy hierarchies of classification’.

 

On a personal level, place for me must have landscape at its core. Visual properties of landscape according to Martin Heidegger 15 (2008, p31) have a considerable emphasis when determining place. Mitchell 16 (2002, p14) draws our attention to the idea of landscape as being a ‘physical and multisensory medium (earth, stone, sound and light) in which cultural meanings and values are encoded’. The return to place, having left for any length of time, stimulates our emotions on seeing a familiar landscape or a horizon and gives us a sense of comfort and a feeling of well being.

 

My landscape certainly is a multisensory physical entity and one which has evolved my artwork over some time, stimulating an interest in how processes and visual language can be used to evoke that which makes place.

The creative processes involved underpins my work which is integral in understanding my response to the land around me. The physical engagement in walking the hills, experiencing the smells and sounds that emanate from it, the feel of icy north westerly’s, the texture underfoot, and the history ingrained in the crust of the land provokes a desire to translate this understanding and experience into a visual expression. The tactile quality of my art is to a large part, the result of process and the gathering of information which is then translated onto moulded paper. The initial moulds were achieved by first taking clay pressings (a negative) of selected stones and rocks which are then cast in plaster (a positive) and then a final more robust mould is made (a negative) for the final paper cast. More recently I have cast the work straight from the clay pressings, which brings the work closer to the landscape with more authenticity. The selection of stones and rocks is as intimate as being in the studio trying to translate these experiences into art. The feel of the rock's surface creates meditative moments and a desire to unlock the embedded history beneath one's hand. If only we could perform a Spock like grip and cause spilling of stories within the structures of the land, would these stories hold us in contempt or just accept that this is another passage of time of one species that has come and gone. The land is a tenacious creature and was here long before our arrival and it will be here long after we’re gone.

 

The resultant process achieves a layering of paper once pressed into the moulds, which has an inherent quality that imparts a sense of ageing, where time has lapsed over many millennia. The layered paper mimics sedimentation, coal, slate and the layered generations of people, continually forming the landscape, by living and working in it. Paper, like pigment, charcoal, and canvas are the basic stuff of art. I find it an able material to work and experiment with. It is tolerant of a combination of mixed media when applied, in helping it to conform to the fine textures during the moulding process. The sometimes delicate layered edges and fragility of the paper, sit in contrast to the dense weather-beaten rock forms rooted in the landscape. It is a perfect support that allows the pigmented washes to be soaked up and when dried creates a surface that readily accepts the handmade pastels in the final stages of the work. The use of a fragile material such as paper, sits well with the robust nature and the geological source within the artwork, which explores issues of permanence as a means of expressing place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My intention is not to represent the landscape as a mere scenic backdrop, but to articulate the land through an art form which bears witness to its history which resonates with my own life experiences.

 

 A high level of endeavour, through hours of roaming the hills looking for inspiring natural forms, corresponds to an insideness of, and embeddedness in place, my place. The landscape can be a significant factor in shaping one's sense of place and identity. The Yorkshire Dales, the limestone grit outcrops on Stanage Edge in Derbyshire and walks over Kinder scout with my father, were an early introduction to the landscape as an eight-year-old. The Snowdonian mountain range is synonymous with North Wales and to the south the Brecon Beacons and the Black Mountains.

     

Shelagh Hourane 17 (1999 p53) is concerned with a nation's sense of place in her passionate chapter, ‘The Layered Landscape’ in Iwan Bala’s ‘Certain Welsh Artists’ which she refers to Wales having a symbolic landscape particularly mountain landscape that gives a romantic idea of Welshness in the tradition of landscape painting. She argues that this distinctive inherent tradition of landscape painting has in some part been ‘appropriated by colonising cultures’. To expand on this, in attempting to rediscover Welshness, roots and identity within a national context Hourane explores the idea of a new iconography with approaches and interpretations of the Welsh landscape. she adopts the idea of a cultural landscape which is ‘dynamic, layered and constantly evolving through history in which successive imprints of humans can be seen interacting with nature’.

 

The history deep inside our land calls into questions our past, where we are now, our future and on times our unwitting disassociation with nature. These feelings are most strongly felt when looking out from the ‘Blorenge’ (Blorens) trig point situated at Torfaen’s northern border in South Wales. Flanked either side by round Bronze Age burial cairns constructed from limestone, mark a place in history where we can only assume ancient elders were once buried along with valued artefacts. One cannot help but visualise long-ago settlements nestled some distance below going about their daily lives. Where did they migrate from, were they happy, what happened to them are questions you quietly ask yourself.

 

 Yi-Fu Tuan 18 (2008 p1) in his book ‘Space and Place’ states that space and place are basic components of the lived world; we take them for granted. These basic components are the every day, the route taken to the shops the same skyline and the same journey to and from home. Given the visual experiences of the Blorenge, it is hard to take any of them for granted. A short distance away, outcrops of totem-like limestone stand motionless, assuming a custodian role, bear witness to the changing land over thousands of years. These ancient sites rooted in the open and on times, hostile space, act as connecting rods that bind these places

together. I hope my work captures some of the aspects of place, memory, identity and history, both personal, through a working life in the steel industry and a love of the place in which I have lived most of my life.

 

Gayton 19  (1996) concludes with his view that childhood landscapes develops our adult identity and the places we inhabit later in life. As we move from place to place we rely on these early fundamental experiences of childhood in the choice of place we live. This in part answers my first question, are roots important. Our roots are an important factor in determining our identity and aiding the process of grounding who we are. Early childhood exploration of place as Bixler and Tuan suggest, gives us the building blocks through play in discovering our habitat. I have no childhood experience of where I live now, my roots were formed long ago in another place, but this can happen many times, later in one’s own life. As Robert Coles 20 (1991, pp 120-121) suggests it is in our nature to need roots and to strive for roots in order to achieve a sense of belonging. He expands on this by recognising that roots ‘reflect man's humanity’ and his longing for someplace we call as mine, as yours, as ours. Relphs 21 (2008. P8) understanding of this is that, to have roots in a place is to have a secure point from which to look out on the world and one’s own position in the order of things.   

 

 

May I leave you with one more quote from Romulus, My Father on Belonging, a biographical memoir published in 1998 by Raimond Gaita an Australian philosopher. "Belonging as a fundamental need we strive for in our search to create a concrete identity".   

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Stephen Ward.  23. 08. 2015. 

 

Images: Title image, Blaenafon mist.

               Limestone outcrop on the Blorenge. 02/11/2015. 

 

 

 

References.

 

1.Relph.E, (2008)’ Place and Placelessness’ ,preface, pion. preface, P4.

2. Relph.E, (2008)’ Place and Placelessness’, pion. p30.

3. Relph.E, (2008) ‘ Place and Placelessness’ ,preface, 2008, pion, p11

4. Cobb E, (1970) 'The ecology of imagination in childhood' in The Subversive Science Eds P Shepard, D Mckinley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin)  in Relph.E. (2008) ‘Place and Placelessness’ ,preface, 2008, pion, p11

5. Tuan, Y. (2008)’ Space and Place’, University of Minniesota, p145.

6. Measham TG (2006) Learning about environments: The significance of primal landscapes, Environmental

    Management 38(3), pp. 426–434

 

7. Bixler, R. D., M. F. Floyd, and W. E. Hammitt. (2002). Environmental socialization: Quantitative tests of the

    childhood play hypothesis, Environment and Behavior 34(6) pp. 795–818

 

8. Derr, V. (2002). Children’s sense of place in northern New Mexico. Journal of Environmental Psychology

    22(1–2):125–137

9.  Balchelard. G. ‘The Poetics of Spce’, in Cassey. S. The Fate of Place, 1998, p290, University of California Press.

10. Cross J.E, (2001) ,Department of Sociology,Colorado State University,Prepared for the 12th Headwaters Conference,Western State College,. http://western.edu/sites/default/files/documents/cross_headwatersXII.pdf

 

11. Heidegger. M. (1958).’An ontological consideration of place’, in Relph.E (2008), ‘Place and Placelessness’, Pion, p1.   

12.  Langer.S. (195),’ Feeling and Form’ (New York: Charles Scribner and Sons) in, Relph.E (2008), ‘Place and Placelessness’, pion. p29.

13. Mircea Eliade's (1957), "Consecration of a Place:Repetition of the Cosmos" The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harper &   Row, pp. 32-33.

14. Relph.E. (2008) ‘Place and Placelessness’, pion, p29

15. Heidegger. M. (1958).’An ontological consideration of place’, in Relph.E (2008), ‘Place and Placelessness’, Pion, p31.   

16. Mitchell.W.J.T. (2002)Landscape and Power, University of Chicago Press, p14.

17. Hourahane. S. (1999)’ The Layers of a Landscape’, in Bala, I. Certain Welsh Artist. Seren, Poetry Wales Press Ltd, p53.

18.  Tuan, Y. (2008) Space and Place, University of Minniesota, p1.

19. Gayton (1996) Landscapes of the Interior: Re-explorations of Nature and the Human Spirit. Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers.

20. Coles.R. (1970) Uprooted Children, New York: Harper and Row. pp.120-121

21. Relph.E. (2008) ‘Place and Placelessness’, pion, p29