Last month I spent a creatively energising week on a residency with Full Grown (Gavin and Alice Munro, and Doris the dog) in their Derbyshire chair orchard.
We made charcoal with the prunings from their chair trees and drew together in the rain with a still smouldering stick. I discovered a new way of drawing by scratching marks into paper, then smooshing powdered charcoal into the grooves like a drypoint plate. I also discovered that using homemade charcoal powder this way will swiftly polish off your fingerprints. Reader, there were blisters.
But there was also a blissful focus on drawing to understand, working in one place and one moment with the simplest of materials, surrounded by birdsong, hoverflies and the susurrations of leaves. There’s nowhere on earth like it.
As I drew, the striking shapes of the growing furniture mingled in my mind with Gavin’s words on the origins and inspirations around his ideas. I plan to revisit these first drawings this summer to develop in the studio as monoprints or larger scale works in time for my next trip to the Full Grown field in September.
I’m so grateful to Gavin and Alice for their warmth and generosity and for inviting me to work in such an inspiring place, I can’t wait to get back.
Find out much more about Full Grown and their new Patreon offer to join their community of chair farmers here.