Moving forward with The Seagrass Walk
You’ve probably noticed this newsletter is a day later than usual. I spent yesterday in Plymouth thinking about seagrass and didn’t have time to sit down and write until now. Yesterday was my second visit to Plymouth in less than a week. Last week I met with the team at the aquarium to share my ideas and get the green light on moving forward, yesterday I walked the city sea front and went to look at dwarf seagrass under the scanning electron microscope.
For an artist used to working alone, with what equipment I can afford or somehow gain access to, the sheer amount of support and amazing tools at my disposal is a dream. The input and ideas of others, the opportunities floated, the questions asked are wonderful. Science works best in community, scientists working together, sharing information, offering aid. Art is no different, being part of community is essential to an individual’s success. After all, nothing can be made in a vacuum. Working in the space between art and science this is true twice over, and I have twice the community to draw from.
I was nervous taking my ideas to the team at the aquarium. They are the result of months of research and thinking. If they hadn’t liked them, or if they didn’t think they would fit the health and safety needs of the building and visitors, I was unsure what I was going to do. I don’t have a second idea waiting in the wings.
On the train to Plymouth I transferred my rough sketches from my notebook to larger paper. I wrote a few refined notes helping to explain my thinking. I double checked the measurement of the space. Then, in a meeting room on the top floor of the aquarium, I shared it all.
Wonderfully, thankfully, brilliantly, they liked them. They really liked them. Perhaps most wonderfully they also helped refine my ideas, following half formed thoughts to fully formed ideas or discarding aspects I wasn’t sure of. There were questions, how could there not be. Concerns about regulations and budget but I expect that, and they are far easier to overcome than if they hadn’t liked the idea itself.
This is what working as part of a team should be like. I am lucky beyond measure.
So, what is the idea I hear you ask?
It is a multidisciplinary light and sound installation which will include a wall of video and photography, and several sculptural pieces inspired by the shapes of seagrass under the microscope.
Seagrass sequesters carbon and helps produce oxygen. The ocean itself sequesters and filters carbon. We as a species, like so many on this planet, are carbon based. We are carbon, and so we are ocean. Interconnected and locked together, our fates dependent on each other. It is my hope that by creating a space that fills visitors with a sense of being within the ocean, that fills the space with the sights and sounds of a seagrass bed, I can create an emotional and permanent connection between those who visit The Seagrass Walk, and the seagrass itself.
Looking at it under the electron microscope yesterday I was left in awe of its beauty, inspired beyond measure. Walking along the Plymouth seafront knowing this incredible plant is out there, I kept finding myself stopping and imagining it hidden below the water. I am looking forward to the next few months as I gather what I need, footage and photos, the help and expertise of others, so that I can share these feelings with the public.