Inspired by Tim Ingold, in his book Correspondences, farOpen artist Carolyn Black has been developing work for the Watermark Exhibition in Worcester dedicated to those around the world who are affected by flooding, rising sea levels and loss of habitat. 
Her displayed work focuses on her research on the river Severn and future flooding due to climate change, by exploring notions of inscription, eruption and erosion.
Using a fascinating range of techniques including drawing, printmaking and video, Carolyn’s work sets out to depict the future landscape of the River Severn. She works with local pigments, graphite putty and powder. Often employing ice as a flooding medium, with Sumi ink (made from soot), the melting process is filmed as the drawings form, resulting in beautiful, subtle images on fine Japanese papers
Follow her on Instagram @severnsideartist
Watermark is an exhibition dedicated to those around the world who are affected by flooding, rising sea levels and loss of habitat. 
From January to June 2023 Meadow Arts, in partnership with five Worcester organisations, will explore water and flooding through a multi-site exhibition across the city. Watermark will reveal how artists have responded to the element of water, how they have picked the urgent concerns of rising levels, flooding, drought, and invite visitors to reflect on their own relationship with the elements.
Artists: Suky Best, Carolyn Black, Emma Critchley, Simon Faithfull, Gabriella Hirst, Hilary Jack, Naiza Khan, Tania Kovats, Sally Payen, Daniel Pryde-Jarman.
Read more on Meadow Arts website.
Carolyn’s  work will be available to visit in The Hive Jan 28, 2023  –  Feb 28, 2023
The Hive, Sawmill Close, The Butts, Worcester WR1 3PD
Getting there Open: Monday – Sunday: 8.30am – 10pm
This will be the first time these works have been exhibited together in this way. What they share in common is the River Severn. Some celebrate the Severn and the power of the bore. Others are more specifically about materiality, mudstone, weathering, the fragility of the earth’s surface in the face of flooding and subsequent erosion. Marginal wild plants will be affected, fields will be under water, hills become islands.
QR codes near some of the works will enable visitors to view some of the films that relate to specific works. Some tell stories, some document the process of making, when ‘significant moments of transformation occur.’
​Much of my thinking was inspired by Tim Ingold, in his book Correspondences. Several of the works are performative in nature, recording close contact with the ground, the cliffs, the water. 
Earth, for example, is rock and soil, but it is also the toil of working with it in the labour of bodies that move and breathe. But if earth is the heaviness of being that keeps us grounded, then air is the lightness in which we dare to dream. We feel the Earth by heaving it, the air by breathing it, the water by drinking it or being soaked in it. Fire is the glowing warmth of the searing heat of flames: we feel the heat of the fire in our bellies and in the malleability of molten metal; we feel the sharp edge of cold metal and it is quenched by water. And it is always at the threshold of the elements where one is about to turn into the other, that significant moments of transformation occur.  Tim Ingold, Correspondences, p125 

For artist Darragh Hewat, it’s been a year of exploration and development in anticipation of the Blue Magpie Contemporary Craft Fair where he’s been awarded a spot this March. On a Sunday 5th March, he’ll be revealing his latest work and collaborative pieces including cyanotype clocks and his copper globe.
" Since joining farOpen last year my creativity and range of ideas has grown enormously. Things kicked off quite quickly for me this year with ideas flowing well, so I was enormously thrilled to be accepted by Blue Magpiefor their March Contemporary Craft Fair. As a newbie I’ve been given a stand for Sunday 5 March (but the event runs on the Saturday also) and so the pressure is on to make good on these new ideas. I’m particularly excited by the copper globe which I literally grew in the plating tank from just silver paint (real silver paint about £1,500 per litre!!) and copper wire. This is intended to become one of the mantles for my Thermomotor, and rotating and gleaming as it does in the light of the turning tealights, is something that really excites me. 
Another more bread and butter exercise has been copper and gold plating various real leaves, mounting and framing them. I like to choose leaves that have meaning to me in their form and also in their function in the natural world. 
I’ll also be taking some collaborative work with me to Blue Magpie in Malvern this March. The hand printed and handmade lamps which are a collaboration between Jane Jones, Sarah Delahoy and myself are a wonderful challenge to make but worth it when complete and turned on. Also coming with me will hopefully be a range of hand made cyanotype clocks, a collaboration between myself and Jane Jones, and looking very nice so far...
However, exciting as these multiple developments are, the expression that keeps running through my mind is “all play and no work makes Darragh a poor boy.” I’m hoping Blue Magpie will go some way to silencing that annoying voice! 
​Catch up with Darragh at the Blue Magpie Contemporary Craft Fair at Elmslea House, Malvern
4 & 5 March 2023
Click for more info