Natural Creation

Whilst on my adventures in Australia & New Zealand I discovered a number of new obsessions. Its been a long time since I posted anything on this blog so I decided its about time to document a few of my weird and wonderful creations and to hopefully continue with this whilst embarking on my next big adventure. 

I have developed and nurtured a love for creating things from natural and found materials. There is something incredibly primitive and magical about working from and with nature that delights me more then anything else, as it amalgamates my two greatest loves in life; Nature & Creating.

So here are a couple of natural creations woven from banana palm fibre, while in Australia and staying at the magnificent Cooroora Arts Institute.

The baskets below are made from Cats Claw - a nasty Australian tree strangling vine. I think I have put it to good use!

The next selection of images all created from a variety of materials and all half finished and experimentational.

The hat I'm wearing in the image above I made from Coconut Palm- the same material I'm weaving from in the image.

Another Total Obsession...

Food Dye Experiments - I dripped food dye into a tub of water and photographed it as it dispersed. I think they came out beautifully.

Ecosystems and Food Webs

One lesson that nature teaches is that everything in the world is connected to other things.

As John Muir famously wrote: 'When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe'.

My current work is fundamentally based on John Muir's quote as I strongly agree, and feel that a lot of people dont seem to have a clear enough understanding of the importance of issues such as biodiversity and ecosystems.

Iv decided to focus my attention on the oceans as, covering more than 75 percent of the Earth's surface — many people once thought of the ocean as a resource that was unlimited and vast. They believed that oceans could provide never-ending supplies of fish and other foods, and absorb infinite quantities of sewage and other pollution. We now know that this is not the case.

Initially my research started with food webs(a food web shows how several food chains are related) as this relates to the theory that all living things are connected; if one animal or plant is affected, all others in the food web eventually will be affected as well.

I then developed this idea to looking at humans dominance on the planets resources as it is evident that human activities are causing dramatic changes to the ocean due to overfishing, pollution and climate change.