Carolyn Black is making her mark

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