Art Break

We took an art break this morning to finish off the portraits of Matjiesfontein residents for the Slangarendfees on Saturday. Erica had taken the photos, PC did sketchings on canvas from the photos, and we all painted - very therapeutic!

 

katty, Anni & Cha on the verandah at the Rietfontein Cottage

PC project managing














Cha working on her portrait

The finished portraits!

We also 'framed' the children's art work for display - found some scrap metal that worked perfectly.

Mirella Bandini - enjoyed the adventure, rebellion, act of love ...

Mirella Bandini at the Laird's Arms in Matjiesfontein

Mirella Bandini studied Landscape Architecture at the University of Pretoria and graduated with a Masters degree in 2008.  It was this background and way of thinking that encouraged her to begin dabbling in sculpture. She works predominantly in ceramics, and feels that landscape architecture and the three dimensional malleability of clay complement one another well.  She is also fascinated by public art and the catalytic opportunity it provides to encourage dialogue, create memories, and enhance the magic of everyday life. Mirella is very much an intuitive maker of things and so enjoys the creation of land art out in the natural environment.  Mirella tells us about her experience of the Snake Eagle Thinking Path.

"I assisted in making the white dots and relocating vegetation in preparation for the new dots. I also spent some wonderful hours exploring the Karoo veld and creating small pieces of land art. It was a very meditative, reflective, freeing experience. It was all about my conversation with the land; with my own mind - it was wonderful!

"I also found it an amazing opportunity for me to grow as an artist, to learn new things, meet wonderful new people and to learn a bit about myself in the process.  I was also very privileged and pleased to be able to contribute in some small way to the anti-fracking movement.  The Snake Eagle Thinking Path, for me, conjures up amazing memories… I am very proud to be able to say that I was a part of this adventure / community / artwork / rebellion / act of love… "

Erynne Ewart-Phipps - our youngest land artist

At 26, Erynne Ewart-Phipps, is one of the youngest members of the Site_Specific collective, which she joined in 2013.  When she is not involved with Site_Specific projects, she creates land art of her own under the guidance and support of artist Emma Willemse, a visual arts lecturer at UNISA.  She participated both as volunteer and artist during the creation of the Snake Eagle Thinking Path. What drew Erynne to the project?

“Having seen pictures of giant images lain into the earth all around the world, I was both excited and intrigued by the Karoo geoglyphs project. The project involves geological and botanical insight - a personal interest of mine - as well as the opportunity to engage around the issue of hydraulic fracturing as a threat to one of our country’s most unique and harshly beautiful landscapes.

“But my greatest motivation for getting involved in the Snake Eagle Thinking Path project was simply to walk within that site; to engage in the landscape of such a desolate yet secretly thriving world of tortoises, beetles, weird plants and balancing rocks, of snakes and eagles.”

As a volunteer, Erynne worked hard walking the grid, digging, sweeping, applying the lime dots and replanting indigenous flora. But each volunteer was also encouraged to set aside time for themselves as artists, and she created braided grass wreaths, in a tribute to the circular lime dots that form the stepping stones of the path.
 

 

Photo Credits: Janet Botes 

 

Janet Botes - talented and versatile visual artist

Janet Botes is a visual artist who expresses herself through land art, drawing, mixed media, painting, photography, digital art and assemblage. She has participated in numerous workshops, exhibitions and initiatives, including the HumanEarth exhibition series, the former GYA (Green Your Art) initiative, the Green Art exhibition at the Green Expo, and performing her piece SAND(SPOOR] at the Arts Lounge during the National Arts Festival 2012. In 2013 she was one of the invited artists for the Site_Specific Land Art Biennale held in Plettenberg Bay, and she has completed an artwork for one of Cape Town's MyCiti BRT bus stations.

In June 2014 Janet had her debut solo exhibition entitled WILD & STILL: expressions of the landscape in Cape Town. She has donated artworks to auctions and initiatives aimed at raising funds for environmental conservation. Currently Janet is working on a body of work entitled ‘ORGANISM'. She is involved in monthly land art gatherings in and around Cape Town and is working on a future publication 'Veldboek'.  What brought such a busy artist to the Snake Eagle Thinking Path project?

“I have several reasons for volunteering on this project. First and foremost is my love for the Karoo and my belief that art can unite us as people, and with the land and environment that sustains us. Art is also an ideal way to raise awareness and express our stance as citizens against processes like hydraulic fracturing, which I consider to pose too many risks to the environment and the people dependant thereon - especially in such an ecologically sensitive and water-scarce area.

“I think the geoglyph is also a wonderful celebration of the endangered Snake Eagle, and I believe that every person who walks the path will further strengthen the imperceptible energy forces that will help to protect this beautiful bird of prey.”

 Janet in the ‘mymertent’

Cally Henderson - finding endangered species

Because It Connects The Dots!

Cally Henderson is an environmentalist who has travelled extensively in Africa. Site_Specific stimulated her interest in land art and she participated in the Plettenberg Bay Land Art Biennale, Jozi Land Art,  Aardklop in Potchefstroom, and then, of course, the Snake Eagle Thinking Path in Matjiesfontein. What does this latest Site_Specific project mean to Cally?

“The Snake Eagle Thinking Path connects the dots of beauty, emotion and scientific understanding. It creates beauty that enhances the environment and does not countermand it. If there is any region that is unique to South Africa, it is the Karoo: there is no place quite like it anywhere else on the planet. This project presents poetically a far more powerful plea for preserving the Karoo than any number of consultant’s reports.

“While I was in Matjiesfontein I took lots of photos, strung a few survey lines, found interesting plants and identified one rare and endangered species near the eye of the Eagle - which of course we were very careful not to harm. I also drank a lot of wine and sang with the pianist in the bar….”

Cally enjoying the Matjiesfontein London red bus!

Chris Hartnady and Rowena Hay - Umvoto

Dr Chris Hartnady has achieved international renown in geotectonics and geodynamics, making fundamental contributions to the computer-based modelling of past and ongoing motions of the African plates, and discovering a major new plate (‘Lwandle’) in the global tectonic system. His work in the areas of integrated water resource development, monitoring and management, in addition to hydro- and geo-hazard analysis, geo-risk assessment and mitigation is widely acknowledged. He is currently Research and Technical Director at Umvoto. He and Umvoto Managing Director, Rowena Hay, generously volunteered their time and expertise on the Snake Eagle Thinking Path project. Chris tells us how they became involved.

“On 21st May 2012 I received from Anni Snyman what she described as an ‘unsolicited mail’ (we were introduced some time earlier by Eugenie Grobler), asking me for ‘…  advice on an artwork that I am planning to do in the Karoo to protect some part of it against the fracking, and also to provide a symbolic focus for the people that want to protect her from such destruction’. Thus began an email conversation that started with the Karoo Siren, fracture patterns in rocks, dolerite dykes in the Karoo, some lessons on hydrogeological terminology, and led –after a few days – to the subject of the ‘euxinic Whitehill shale’, that is to say, the black, carbonaceous shales that are the main target for shale-gas exploration in the Karoo.  I had observed, you see, that Anni’s Karoo Siren was located quite close to surface exposures of the Whitehill Formation in the Tanqua Karoo.

“We discussed the reason for its name (it contains a lot of pyrite or iron sulphide, which - when it weathers and oxidizes - gives rise to surface crusts of calcium sulphate or gypsum) and I told her that the ‘stratotype’ locality of the formation is Whitehill railway siding near Matjiesfontein. So on 25th May 2012 I sent her a Google Earth image, showing ‘ … where the N1 crosses the Whitehill outcrops around the hinge zone of the Laingsburg syncline’. And I asked ‘ … Is there also a land art opportunity here?’

“On 8th August 2014, Anni Snyman sent me a Google Earth JPEG image on which the Snake Eagle had been sketched. A few days later a Google Earth KMZ file arrived with the first layout of the geoglyph. Rowena Hay and I arrived in Matjiesfontein on 30 August, in advance of the main geoglyph party, equipped with hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, the KMZ sketch and a basic geoglyph grid plan that I had laid out. In the course of that first week’s work (31 August-5 September), we very soon discovered that locating and orienting the grid was not that easy, but in the learning process, the eastern wing of the Snake Eagle appeared on the ground, with just a few (easily remedied) glitches.

 Rowena Hay and Chris Hartnady hard at work on the Snake Eagle Thinking Path site.

 "For the next work session (2-7 November 2014), we roped in our Umvoto colleague Richard Wonnacott, trained in land surveying and one of the country’s most experienced geodesists, brought precision-geodetic GPS instruments, a theodolite and long surveyor’s tape, and laid out the framework for the body and western wing of the Snake Eagle, with the complete grid-plan then in place for the path ‘sweeping’ to begin.”

“And here we are today at the Snake Eagle Thinking Path…”

Ingrid Schöfmann & Heather Greig - organisers extraordinaire

Ingrid Schöfmann is a self-employed, self-driven problem solver, Project Manager and overall magician. She co-owns CNC RoutDesign, providing services to the exhibitions, signage and marketing industries. Her company kindly sponsored and manufactured directional signage for the Snake Eagle Thinking Path. A no-nonsense person, she gets things done rather than talking about it - which why this bio is so short!

“I got involved in this project out of a deep love of the Karoo and to create awareness against the intention to frack the fragile environment of the Karoo. As labourer, motivator, sweeper and provider of moral support, this project has left me with a great sense of personal achievement.”

Heather at the Johannesburg launch 

of the Snake Eagle Thinking Path in early 2015

Heather Greig is a gallerist, event designer, entrepreneur and overall powerhouse who assisted in fundraising, organising events and marketing for the Snake Eagle Thinking Path project. A great networker, Heather has, unfortunately for Site_Specific, now moved to England. We really miss her unique talents and flair.

"I am passionate about the Karoo environment and I believe it’s essential to draw attention to the threat fracking poses to this unique habitat. I also feel strongly about giving voice to ‘forgotten’ communities - our projects need also to be their projects. The Matjiesfontein community are the custodians of the Snake Eagle Thinking Path.”