Nicky Gilmour - Open Studios

Sculptor, researcher, farmer & florist, objects from grown material: paper, fibre, fresh & dried plant materials, timber, willow

After a grounding in Fine Art drawing and sculpture and many years of exploring ‘learning through making’ with other researchers, teachers and students; I developed a practice of temporary installations. For my doctoral research I used this practice as a method to explore what humans make and how these accumulations of materials behave in their environments. This and subsequent investigations have been attempted using an inclusive view, that humans are part of the live exchanges of the wider community of plants and animals and are not somehow separate from them.

My sculptural practice and research grapples with how to make things sustainably using an ecological business model. Sculptures have merged with mainly growing and sourcing materials from the land to investigate how much land, energy, time and other inputs it takes to produce and maintain these forms. By default, this investigation examines the nature of a materials’ permanence in the landscape, which highlights their connections to season and location. Each product has it’s own appropriate duration; from a few, fleeting days of vase-life for sweet peas to the potential for centuries of use for wood-based products. The economics of this research are being tested at local markets where products are sold using the business name ‘Vega Rosa’. The current cash crops for the small holding are flower and willow-based products, wood, and skills sharing through workshops on growing and making sustainably.

In the flower processing shed at the field visitors are invited to see the journey materials go on as they change form, from how they grow in the field, and the skills and processes used to shape them into objects, and, at the ‘end’ of a materials life how it is used to feed living systems. The floor of the flower shed can also be seen, which is planked from our own trees. Seasonal produce and work from the small holding will be available for sale.