Park Traces Residency - Jenna Naylor

Having never applied to a Residency before, I was initially nervous about what it might entail, although hearing I had a place quickly turned that into excitement. Having an opportunity to work alongside artists with so many different ideas and techniques has really inspired me to think about the future of my own work.

While the first day involved a lot of walking in the rain, it was brilliant to see the park in a completely different way. I don't live locally, however I travel past this park everyday and have also done a previous intervention in the park, but I have never explored it in so much detail before. Having done previous research into Land Art, particularly the British artist Andy Goldsworthy, I noticed that quite often he kept a diary about the areas he created his work. When we were asked to the our own '10 Photo Walk', I decided to write as well as taking the photographs. Here is an excerpt from part of my explorations:

"Gorgeous flowering plants, rhododendrons, slight floral smell amongst damp rain and soil. Flowers strewn across ground, newly fallen and wilting. Translucent petals in the puddles. Underneath one plant I can hear buzzing, possibly a bee or wasp. Rain hitting leaves above, but I'm sheltered. Warm damp."

While we were walking near to the Boathouse, there was a large fallen tree or log sitting on the grass verge, which nobody seemed to even notice as we walked past. I found it's textures and shapes really interesting. Anna also mentioned later on that it was actually a 'bug sanctuary' deliberately placed there.

I knew that for with my work, I wanted to bring attention to features in the park that may go unnoticed or initially unappreciated. While talking with Phil about ideas I had, we came to the log and by chance the sun had been out for a while, and the grass nearby was completely covered in daisies. I'd never seen so many in one area, so I knew I had to use this somehow in my work.

Everything in the park seemed circular in some way, so I decided to pick a circle out of the daisies, and place the flowers into a circle onto the log, as a positive and negative, and bringing subtle attention to both.

 

To fix the flowers onto the log, in the end I used golden syrup, as it is naturally sticky, and would also make the bugs living in the log very happy!

Now that I've created the work, I am pleased but there are also things I would have done differently. A larger circle in the daises perhaps would've been more noticeable, as halfway through the day people were sat right next to the circles I'd picked and never noticed them. However I also like their subtlety, as you could only see them clearly from certain angles, or only if you were looking closely.

While talking to people in the park, (which was quite difficult for me, as I'm quite shy) very similar things kept coming up, such as the Boathouse being a cafe once and how it'd be nice to have one again. I hope through this project the park can be restored to it's former glory, but at the same time the communities requests to be heard as it's them who use the park, and will hopefully continue to do so in the future.