Wild Art on Wimbledon Common _ Day 2

We arrived with trepidation on Tuesday morning hoping that our animals had survived the night.

To our relief they were still hanging at the edges of our camp, looking even more beautiful as the morning sun shone through the leaves.

It was quite magical setting up for day 2 in the late October morning sunshine.

This mornings activity was to release some tree spirits by familiarising ourselves with the trees surrounding our camp. We began working in pairs to lead each other blindfolded to a chosen tree. We then had to find our way back unaided.

Meanwhile Philippa prepared a gorgeous pile of mud for us to sculpt with.

She showed us how to mould the mud to the correct consistency……how to rub a small amount into the tree bark to prepare a ground… ….then throw the mud at the bark and start to release the spirit of the tree. We could add leaves, stones, berries, moss, sticks, ferns and other found materials to create special effects.

It felt squiggly and sloppy…yuck!

We could make lots of different shapes

It took lots of concentration – the woods were the quietest they had been for the two days.

We all had a special quiet moment with our tree spirit!

Look at all the wonderful effects we came up with.

We then started work creating paths and portals to lead to each spirit, we would line the way with veils and lanterns to create a magical environment to show our parents

We used the knots and lashings learnt yesterday to make pyramid shaped lantern

Our last task was to create a giant spider as a centre piece to the installation. We sketched the outline into the ground to remind ourselves of the parts of a spider.

The ‘stick group’ made the legs by cutting fallen branches to the same size pieces

Once we had 16 lengths the same size we carried them back to base.

We lashed two pieces together to make each leg. We were really working as a team now! The ‘mud group’ set to work on making the thorax and abdomen out of mud.

We then worked in groups to make holes in the ground and hammer the legs into place.

The giant spider began to take shape!

A few giant spider webs began to emerge

Exhausted! Argh! Trapped!We had a final tidy up and added some finishing touches before collecting our parents to see the finished environment.

They entered through the thin veil separating our world from the next! We were delighted to show them what we had made and retell the Samhuin stories of tree spirits, trapped souls and how we had released them. Thank you to everyone who made this fabulous two day adventure such a success.