The Forest Keeps Growing - weeks of inspiration from #virtualforest2020

I'm loving being involved with Forest of Imagination's first ever Virtual Forest this year. Each week features a different artist, with an invitation to take part and get things growing. Here are my contributions to the virtual plantation. You can see all the amazing creations on the Forest of Imagination Instagram.

week 3 of #virtualforest2020
Clare Day is a ceramic artist. She is making The Gifted Forest – stitching together unwanted, abandoned and trial artworks all gifted to be reused, stitched together, to create a new piece of work. A provocation about what forests mean to people – all those individual artworks joined together. I used pieces from my demo film for the Haiku workshop, and drew / collaged my favourite copper beech on top.

week 4 of #virtualforest2020
Sculptor and artist Matthew Leece created virtual vines. He took over  Instagram with his vines, inviting contributors to 'see' vines everywhere and photograph, print, collage, paint or draw them. My vine is a play on the idea of a 'literal' vine - it looks like the obvious idea of a vine, the leaves are 'shaded' with words that stand for what vines symbolise.

week 5 of #virtualforest2020 
Helen Lawrence - artist and chef - at Demuths vegan cookery school plans to create an edible Forest, using medicinal herbs, seasonal, plant-based natural cooking, she will experiment with zoom classes and working with local farm, Castle Farm, to forage for edibles and inspire with her creative cooking.
Helen's creation of a 'green man' inspired me to get out in my garden and forage for leaves and flowers to create my own 'green goddess'.
Some fascinating info on the motif of the green man - ancient and modern - here, including a green man maze, a bloodsucker head, and a very tall green man in the Custard Factory, Birmingham...