INTRODUCTION TO THE ART IN NATURE BLOG

Working with nature: elemental artworks

by Juliet Batten

I am creating this thread in order to document and honour the artworks I created in nature from the late 1970s onward. At the time, much of this work remained hidden as there was no place to share it without turning it into a commodity – i.e. a series of photos that could be sold and placed on a wall.

Because the works were ephemeral, and their meaning lay in the unfolding process, freezing them as static artworks seemed contrary to their essence and intention. Occasionally I shared the colour slides as part of a talk, where I could describe the process behind the images, but this was all.

Now as an elder artist and writer looking back, I can see how much this early work informed the flowering of my ritual work and writing that came later, as well as subsequent artworks.

It is a great pleasure to be embarking on this project of unearthing the colour slides and scanning them as digital images, along with the written documentation from my artist’s notebooks.

Back in the 1980’s I dreamed of a way of bringing images and words together. Digital technology, a good slide scanner, an assistant and my website blog page now make this possible, and it’s time to share the work.

I plan to add new posts regularly. To view subsequent posts, go to the main blog page and select the ‘Art in nature’ category on the right-hand sidebar.

I welcome your responses and questions through the comments boxes.