Featherdown Farm

In the heart of Dolphinholme, a small village just outside Lancaster situates Featherdown farm. Here they have the wooden yurts we stayed in for our residential trip. On arrival, there was a strong smell of GOAT! I was apprehensive as too how being on a goat farm in the middle of know where with zero signal and miserable weather surrounding us if it was even possible for us to get creative… but despite my worries it turned out quite the opposite!

Too begin with the activities, we had a wander around the grounds. We where surrounded by natural beauty that we could take for inspiration. As I came from a textile background, I joined Jo and Claire with making collages pieces for a tile piece. I collected different elements from the farm such as leaves, blackberries, fern and so on to use as tools.

Along the way I took photographs of visually interesting things around the farm. I like these inter-winging twigs as they give a geometric aspect, it reminded me of the garment we made in the recycling workshop.

This is a selection of what we collected around the farm. I mainly went for shape and colour.

The collaged outcomes I made from the natural materials I collected from around the farm. I incorporated the colour of the blackberries with metallic such as copper and silver. I discovered a new technique which used glue and sweet wrappers to peel the colour from them onto another material. It was a really successful idea and added flashes of colour.

We had about an hour experimenting with the collages when Jamie had a task for us. It was to create a backdrop for one of the yurts when a singer named Karima Francis came to perform for us. We had a discussion about what type of artist she was so that what we were to create set the mood. As a team collaboratively we set about making the backdrop, we had a lot of ideas between us and remarkably we all agreed on what to do. We started by working on strips of fabrics and using black ink/dye. Karima’s music is quite dark and depressive – In the best way possible – so we thought black wouldn’t be to harsh. To break the black up, by dribbling bleach in areas we got a faded red effect.

The next step was to add some flashes of colour. I wanted to use the technique with the sweet wrapper as I thought this would be a really effective addition when the backdrop is up in the yurt, it would have the light reflecting off it in those areas. We did so using silver, and then added strips of the copper.

To incorporate our surroundings, we collaged on some of the natural elements that we collected around the farm. We used the burnt red weed like plant and flaked the leaves of it onto the strips in clusters. This added texture and colour. We had a colour theme and it was coming together really nicely. We all worked so well as a team and together created something that we should be proud of in the little time we had.   

Putting the strips together on a white background meant that we would block out the cold wooden surroundings of the yurt. The strips where detailed and we stuck with a colour theme throughout which consisted of black, copper, orange/red and silver.