Wild Material – The Alchemy of Making

Wild Material – The Alchemy of Making

With Nick Kary, Jessie Watson Brown and Elizabeth Crawford

Join our ‘material’ team to talk about the alchemy of making, using wild materials from the land.

How do we access the wild and re-establish our connection to place, through the things we make and the materials we make them from. Join our team of wild makers, delving deep into the plant layer, from fallen wood, to bounty from the lake – they will look at how to make objects that we use from the places that we live.

Nick Kary

For nearly four decades Nick has worked to commission making fine, distinctive furniture and cabinets from wood, most of it sourced near his home, in the counties of South West England. During this time, he has been both a teacher and a student; one who is fascinated with the philosophy and practice of craft work of all kinds. Over the last 10 years he has split his time between making, teaching and writing. He is a visiting lecturer at the Schumacher College in Devon and an associate lecturer at Plymouth University. He also runs furniture making workshops at The Brake creative centre in South Devon that he runs with his wife Dolly. They have both been involved with Embercombe since its inception over 20 year ago. His book MATERIAL- Making and the Art of Transformation is his first published work and expresses his love and interest in the relationship between humans and the natural world through our inclination to make.

thebrake.net

Jessie Watson Brown

Jessie is on a path of rewilding, reconnecting, reskilling and remembering. Weaving together a love of making and crafting using natural materials, with immersing herself in the natural world and learning what it might mean to live as a human on this earth. She works running camps, facilitates on various nature-based programmes and in the winter plants thousands of trees. She currently lives in a land-based community on Dartmoor, and feels most at home among the granite and moss.

oakandsmoketannery.co.uk

Elizabeth Crawford

Elizabeth’s work revolves around plants and our essential human relationships with them. She is a basket maker, working primarily in mixed, locally harvested materials, and has been teaching about and practicing herbal medicine for 7 years. A keen forager and grower, Elizabeth is interested in what the plants have to teach us as well as in their myriad uses as materials, foods and medicines. Through creative, sensory experiences in nature she hopes to inspire others to find belonging on the land and in their bodies within a wild and changing world. She lives in a land based co-operative in South Devon.

Photo Credit: Ruth Davey