TEXTure

“What if you were a great teacher, a holder of knowledge and vessel of stories, but had no audible voice with which to speak? What if your listeners presumed you to be mute, save for the passive whispering of your needles? How would you bring your truth into the world? Wouldn’t you dance your story in branch and root? Wouldn’t you write it in the eloquence of cellulose? In the lasting archive of wood?”

— Robin Wall Kimmerer, 2021

How can we de-code the language of trees and rocks? How can we, in Britain, connect with our indigenous thinking, when Britain is seen to have no indigenous peoples?

Artists Lisa Hudson and Kar Rowson, and poet Peter Hughes, are engaged in conversation with trees and rocks in North-West Wales. The journey began with a conversation between Lisa, Kar, and a Sycamore tree in Y Fron, near Caernarfon.

Moss patterns growing on the trunk become pictograms.

The conversation continues. Kar lives with the Sycamore in her garden, and every Monday, Lisa and Kar meet on zoom and draw. A young Ash tree, that lives in Gerlan with Lisa, has joined the conversation.

Another walk and a conversation began in December 2021 on a walk along the railway track at Llyn Padarn, Llanberis. The roots of four Ash trees growing beside the track had become exposed, their message revealed by human activity. The roots became glyphs: Radical glyphs, as they are made at the roots of the trees.

The collaboration has grown through the involvement of Peter Hughes, who has begun to respond to the radical glyphs with poetry. The poems reflect back through words the visual expression of the glyphs, flowing from abstraction into meaning and back again.

As the poems return to their visual glyphs, a sense of communication is emerging.

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See also: Stori Sycamorwydden - Sycamore’s Story

TEXTure @ Draig Beats

TEXTure @ Oriel Brondanw