Below dark grey skies the Cuthbert
Bank Artswalk left the Upperthorpe Library, midmorning on November
2nd 2013. The walk began through Philadelphia Greenspace.
In view of Parkwood Springs, artist Emilie Taylor led a visual
reflection on the landscape using monoprint. Everyone had a go,
placing their sheet of paper on the inked-up glass sheet, producing
work in response to what they could see, and old photographs and
maps. Some pieces were visual, some written, some hybrid.
The next stop was Cuthbert Bank,
which we accessed off Penistone Road. The sky was still dark grey,
but thankfully it hadn’t yet begun to rain. We spent twenty to
thirty minutes in the trees below some of the old pigeon lofts. Here
we invoked the people who used to fly from the lofts, and talked
about how the landscape has changed over the years. There was a lot
of note taking and sketching going on within the group, and some
interesting discussion. All the while the noise of the cars rose up
through the trees.
Our next stop was Cuthbert Bank Road,
where you can look down onto Cuthbert Bank from above. Looking over
the wall, we saw a fox disappear into the undergrowth. There was a
sense of peace, perhaps something of what the site used to be like
before the houses were demolished, and the road encroached much
closer. Parkwood Springs was in full view across the valley, and the
traffic noise was dampened by the trees. Years ago we would have been
looking out over the roofs of terrace houses, the valley full of
industry, noise and smoke. Flying the pigeons from the bank was a way
for the landlocked to reach for the sky.
As the rain finally began to fall we
neared the Pavilion, and were thankful for our luck with the weather.
Once inside, Emilie led a wax relief exercise with the group. With
this technique, the marks made on the paper are invisible at first.
We all gathered round, with ten or so invisible pictures. Then, one
at a time, we inked the pictures up and the images revealed
themselves, and one by one we told our stories.
You can watch a video summary of the day below:
Fox
a gloss on lines by Medbh
McGuckian
The Whole Gist of His Life
Down among the dumped mattresses, discarded paint cans, an
old tea pot yellow as Autumn, among brambles, fruits tightening like
freeze-dried moons, below the red brick wall of Cuthbert Bank Road, where
people dump what’s left of their lives after nightfall: spent tissues,
magazines sticky with rain, take-away cartons half full of sodden chips, a
fridge on its side like a white coffin. Elders hang on to their last few
leaves, Jew’s Ears forming at the angles of their branches, fleshy and
incongruous as the cloned ear on the back of a mouse. Amongst this debris, the
whole gist of his life.
The Burning Velvet of Encounters
This piece of land takes names and swallows them whole.
Photographs are boarded up. People move on. Look at the valley in 1948, a tract
of land wearing its own smudged smile, the slag heap where they picked coal
during the war. The city built up in layers, bombed, starts over again. Ink the
mirror, settle the paper, trace the horizon as it is today, peel off this smoky
image, not rooftops, not the dry ski slope running like pumice down the
hillside, not the bough of crab apples or the green metal bench, but his
brindle coat touting his age, the way we glimpsed him, muzzle tallowed with
chip grease and wanting more, so much greed in his guts he’d eat your children
if you left the door open. He slips our glimpse, into the undergrowth, leaves
us scavenging the space with our eyes, feeling the burning velvet of
encounters.
A Little Blood-Like Drop into The Sea of Tomorrow
My Aunt lived here, moved out, went to the Kelvin. I’m a
woman with time round my neck. They moved whole streets in together. It was
somewhere that could be kept clean. Those flats took the land and used it up.
You couldn’t stand in their shadow in case someone launched a TV. It’s what
people do, live their lives, throw them away. Draw this story with a stub of
wax, a household candle, the sort everyone kept under the kitchen sink in ’74.
Press on hard. You won’t see the image, but it’ll be there, waiting for a
sluice of watered down ink to wash and reveal: a girl in long white socks in
the rain, the slink of a fox, coat fading towards winter, everything going to
earth, a little blood-like drop into the sea of tomorrow.
Julie Mellor
