Three important books, the power of language and the greatest marketing campaign in history.

I have three books on my desk or on my bedside table, depending on what time of the day it is!  I haven't finished either of them, but dip in and out.  They are "How to enjoy your weeds" by Audrey Wynne Hatfield (1969).  "A Sting in the Tale" by Dave Goulson (2013) and "Braiding Sweetgrass" by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013).  

If you haven't read "Braiding Sweetgrass" I think you should.  It's about the relationship we have with the earth, its ecology, the relationship the indigenous peoples of North America have with the living world and how plants and animals are our oldest teachers.  She is a botanist and a poet.  The writing is beautiful. 

We are all so mindful of the fragility of the earth now; that we seem to have ruined it and it's not looking good.  One of the chapters in this book is called "Learning the grammar of animacy".  Language is interesting isn't it?  In fact it is powerful.  It can be used to lift up and to degrade.  We should be aware of how making someone less, dehumanising them by calling them names (vermin, rats etc) leads to genocide.  Stephen Fry sums it up in this clip, which  might seem to be off point, but the same applies to our attitude to the world.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohrtFuxUzZE

I quote from Robin Wall Kimmerer: "English doesn't give us meany tools for incorporating respect for animacy.  In English you are either a human or a thing. .... Where are our words for the simple existence of another living being?"  So does this gives us the permission to disrespect nature and therefore just get rid of it when it gets in the way?  Of course it does.  We have put a barrier between us and the living world, "absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation. Saying it makes a living land into 'natural resources'.  If a maple is an it, we can take up the chain saw. If the maple is a her, we think twice". 

(Lewisham Council recently chopped down 70 trees in Deptford.  Two days later they declared their war on climate change. Oh the irony, oh the cynicism). 

Another book to recommend is "The Hidden Life of Trees. How they feel. How they communicate. Discoveries from a hidden world." by Peter Wohlenben.  Trees are not 'it"  they are somebody.  Somebody who cleverly communicates with the next somebody to protect themselves from disease and predators. 

If you have been following my blog recently, you will know that I have been enjoying watching the solitary bees as they fly in and out of their holes in the bee tower at Roots and Shoots.  I have made collographs of these bee hotels and they feature in my work, a lot.  Not being a scientist, I don't know that much about evolution but was really excited about how bees and plants have evolved together to help each other out and continue to do so.  From "A Sting in the Tale":

"So began the longest marketing campaign in history, with the early water lilies and magnolias the first plants to evolve petals, conspicuously white against the forests of green. The first pollinators may have been beetles, which many water lilies still rely on to this day. With this new reliable means of pollination, insect-pollinated plants became enormously successful and diversified. Different plants now began vying with one another for insect attention, evolving bright colors, patterns and elaborate shapes, and the land became clothed in flowers. In this battle to attract pollinators, some flowers evolved an additional weapon — they began producing sugar-rich nectar as an extra reward. As these plants proliferated, so the opportunities for insects to specialize grew, and butterflies and some flies evolved long, tubular mouthparts with which to suck up nectar. The most specialized and successful group to emerge were the bees, the masters of gathering nectar and pollen to this day."

I am working towards open studios now and I have an exhibition coming up in October.  I will write more of this at a later date, meanwhile I have been trying to gather my thoughts.

I have plans for these many prints and am hoping to include writing.  I have a new typewriter, maybe I can use it?