How it all began

Well it was one year ago today that I decided to venture into a park near my house and attempt to create a sculpture out of only materials found on the surrounding forest floor. I was inspired to do this by a recent trip to the Okanagan in which a friend owns an Eco Lodge. At this beautiful property there is a lake littered with tiny islands. My friend and I started chatting about ways to encourage people to visit these islands and the idea of creating a large art piece on each one was born. The catch was that these islands were on crown land, and therefore couldn't have anything "permanent". This was a challenge I needed to tackle, but then I started to consider the idea of using only materials found on the islands. Once I returned home I packed my backpack with twine, a drill and 5 screws. I wandered around the beautiful park and found a spot near a tiny creek. I started by screwing two large, chunky, fallen branches together in a "T" shape. Then I pulled up a large chunk of English Ivy and started pulling the leaves off. This proved very unpleasant.( I had no idea that little gnats enjoy ivy so much!) Nevertheless, I persisted in my attempt to tie the ivy into a ball to form the shape of a head. It only took about 10 minutes for me to realize that this tactic wasn't going to work. So I searched the forest floor to find something that would bend. I tried many, many...many sticks, until I finally found one that would bend into a complete circle. I tied the ends to keep it in a circle and the tied the circle to my base structure,(chunky broken branches) I then tried to use more of these bendy sticks to create another circle but they just wouldn't cooperate. After trying for a while I decided to try a new tactic. I instead tried wedging the end of the stick in between my big chunky sticks and used pressure to keep them in place. This worked wonderfully, and though I didn't know it at the time, it was a huge discovery into how to make 3 demensional sculptures with sticks. I would love to say that I left the park with a excitement and enthusiasm but honestly it was a disaster. And thus I present to you my first sculpture created on August 6th 2020.....