ANF PROJECTS

Harriet Mead PSWLA

Original Wildlife Sculptures

Back to Exhibitions, Events & News  

Artist for Nature Foundation - The Great Fen Project

For the ANF Great Fen Project I  made the most of the derelict farm buildings and created a number of "found object" pieces from old traditional fenland agricultural tools which I salvaged from one of the old farms within the heart of the Great Fen site.  I used these to produce a number of sculptures of creatures that are found in the area. The collage of old tools and scrap metal allow the sprit of the fenland farm to live on within my sculptures, following the ethos of the Great Fen project in creating natural history from agricultural history.

To find out more about the Great Fen Project and The Artists for Nature Foundation (ANF) please visit their web sites (www.greatfen.org.uk) (www.artistsfornature.com).

Bittern

Great Crested Newt

Dragonfly

Frog

Dragonfly Nymph

                                                        Stalking Bittern                                                                                                                              Perch

Artists for Nature Foundation - Hula Valley, Israel

In March 2009 I travelled to the Hula Valley in Israel to take part in the ANF project there. The political situation demanded a lot of soul searching on my part before I decided to accept the invitation. Rather than stay in the UK I felt that this was an opportunity that I should be involved with, however ambivalent I felt about the politics of that part of the world. After all nature knows no borders and the trip was set up to highlight the wetlands of the Hula Valley that it such an important oasis for migrating birds.  The experience was unforgettable.  Thousands of over wintering cranes and the beginning of the migration into Europe of storks, cranes and raptors was fantastic. The site, in the shadow of the Golan heights could not shrug off its violent history and remnants of that history were never too far away.  With access to a workshop I made two sculptures whilst in Israel.  A crane and a coypu or nutria. Both pieces were made in found objects and like the Great Fen Project I scavenged in the surrounding area.  Inevitably I came across not only pieces with an agricultural history but objects from the military history of the area.  A local farm worker gave me a shattered helmet from the Golan conflict in the sixties and after much thought I felt that it was justifiable to make use of it in my work.  Somehow by making use of the helmet I felt it echoed the way that nature continues despite human conflict-battlefields become flower meadows and rusting tanks nest sites... Back in my UK studio I made a Fork Fronted Stork and a Padlock Crab for the project. (See Recent Work)

Drill Tailed Nutria

Fork Fronted Stork

Drill Tailed Nutria (detail)

Fork Fronted Stork