A Change of Heart

Accepted as the Mentee Artist at the Leicester Botanical Gardens, I have been assisting in workshops with disabled children during the day and working as an Artist in Residence in the evenings. 

The Gardens are stunning; they have such character, impressive autumn colour and interesting plant structures, everywhere you look there is something new to be discovered.

The pond area has 'The Listening Bell' making a delicate trickling sound you have to really listen hard for amongst the fierce splashing of thee fountains. In the background there is the mirrored surface of 'Endymion II' by Susan Forsyth.

The Workshops

Inspired by the Sculpture Exhibition 'A Change of Heart' located throughout the Gardens a series of workshops were planned for classes throughout Leicestershire. The Schools picked from the list of workshops and decided upon drawing, painting, casting in clay and plaster. The workshops had to be suitable for the age and abilities of the children with the facilities prepared for wheelchair access and safety requirements.

During the workshops the class draws from the sculptures and plants they enjoy in the gardens. These pictures are then transferred to clay to make a cast in plaster, which is then painted.

Drawing in Clay and the Plaster Cast.

The Painted Cast.

Research and Experiments

After the workshops the artists have the time to progress in our own artistic research, with the view to producing artworks for the exhibition. I have been looking at the shapes and colours of the plants and leaves in the gardens. Exploring the hidden areas and even looking through the scraps in the compost bins!

Having brought the found objects I have been working on in the City to the Gardens, I am puzzling a way to combine the two. My objects are very mechanical and usually worked in plastics and metal, but are combined of whatever I can find at that time so are hard to join together and even harder to combine with organic material that will decompose.

I am looking to bring the found and insignificant objects of the city into the Gardens and vice versa. Weeds of the garden I have spray painted to become the graffiti of the flowerbed, this has caused quite a stir with the gardeners!

The cuttings of plants I have used to make sculptures from that will stand and decompose over time. Though I like the re-purposing of the garden scraps, The green on green does not stand out very well so if I produce such a sculpture for the gardens I would have to locate it well or spray it with another colour, this would tie it in with the found man made objects I use in the city sculptures.

As well as the Change of Heart Workshops a group of 11-18 year olds have been working with Soft Touch Arts and created amazing sculptures from wood that are now installed at the south end of the Botanic Garden. Their website is: http://www.soft-touch.org.uk/

The barcode next to each piece links the viewer to the webpage where the descriptions of the artist and artworks is for on the spot research.


More information about the Gardens and the events held there can be found on the website: http://www2.le.ac.uk/institution/botanic-garden