Project Description

Urban Foraging

Image above: Carollyne Yardley, Foraging in an urban forest, 2022.

Often, my process begins by channeling squirrel behaviour and drey making techniques by walking, foraging, and weaving together salvaged remnants composting in the soil around trees inhabited by grey squirrels to stimulate new thought. Intuition, touch, and chance figure into the process during foraging, and again into my studio work through psychometry––the extrasensory perception, or clairvoyance, that comes from using my hands to collaborate with the materials. The material-semiotic entanglements of the artworks are manifest through materials from a shared squirrel-human environment resulting as an artistic hybrid of new bodily forms.

Walking and foraging produces an opportunity for movement of thought and is subject to constant revision. It helps me to “unveil the unconscious zones of the city, those parts that elude planned control …” (Careri 81). Remnants found by chance are collected from the ground around the base of trees inhabited by squirrels, thus interrupting any form of intentional aesthetics. I am interested in what walking, foraging and interlocking an array of found materials can tell us about the supposed boundaries between species systems.

Notes:
Careri, Francesco. Walkscapes: walking as an aesthetic practice. Culicidae Architectural Press, 2017.