Enmesh The Soil and Life Continues, 2024
Digital print, riso print zine and sound composition
Alison Cooper, Helen Mather and Anna FC Smith

This work encapsulates the collective experience of participants working with the artists to explore and study waxcap mushrooms on the ancient grassland of High Hirst Woodmeadow, Hebden Bridge. A group walked around the meadow with fungi expert Steve Hindle to identify species and discuss the ecological importance of fungi in the area and their unique habitat and forms. Their conversations and descriptive words were digitally recorded. A group then created personal artistic responses to these finds and descriptions in monoprint, tetra pak print, collage and sound sysnthesis.

These activities have directly informed the final works to create a multilayered and multi-perspective piece to communicate these waxcap encounters. Taking inspiration from the groups’ responses Mather combined their visuals into a layered and enmeshed group artwork. Smith worked with writer Joy Smith to turn the transcripts from the walk into a rhythmic poem/lyrics. Cooper has taken the sounds recorded, the visuals and poem as inspiration to create a woven sound composition and song. 

 
Funded by Culturedale with support from IOU Hostel, Hebden Bridge, Steve Hindle, The National Trust, Together We Grow, Hebden Royd Town Council, Joy Smith and St. Augustine's Centre, Halifax.

Alison Cooper, Helen Mather and Anna FC Smith are artists who collaborate on projects exploring the natural landscape, history and our sense of place. Our collective aim is to foster empowerment by bringing history and nature to life in the community's mind. We seek to create space to develop relationships with the natural world and express our feelings towards it creatively and communally.

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