During the first Covid-19 period of Spring – Summer 2020, I collected feathers on my daily walks. This collection has grown into a mixed media project called Clipp’d Wings.
The severe travel limitations imposed by the governments around the world affected many of us from March 2020 onwards, and I had received a number of foreign invitations to lead and co-create projects on death and life. Although I had booked a flight to Athens, I planned to return home overland: walking and meeting with people in seven countries including Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary. Later, my events in France and Portugal would have involved journeying across Spain by foot, bus and train. None of these have yet taken place, maybe they never will.
I usually live in Scotland, by the sea, where flocks of gulls and oyster catchers wheel and glide over the harbour, crying and peeping as they settle and paddle on the shore. By contrast, the part of my home county of Kent where I was living that Spring, is landlocked, and I was only able to visit the beach once in five months.
Many of the feathers I picked up were from pigeons. The Persians, Romans and Greeks all used these birds to convey messages. These post pigeons were taken abroad overland in cages to where the sender lived, had a message attached to their legs, and were then released to fly home – something they did naturally.
I was surrounded by birds in Kent. White doves flew above the garden in great circles, repeatedly returning to their attics nearby. When I walked in the early evenings, the air was full of the cacophony of rooks, congregating and preparing for bed. Pheasants ran in and out of copses as I explored the public footpaths, and swans sailed along the River Medway, elegantly oblivious to my admiration.
I have built a dovecote out of cardboard and painted it with white emulsion. In each of the cubby holes stands a feather. I invited people to complete this message and send it back to me via Twitter:
If I had wings, I would…..
Though the Coronavirus situation provided a perfect opportunity to explore the immediate places in which we live, to enquire into why we travel, and to challenge ourselves to ‘stay put’, we nevertheless dreamed of flying. We shut our eyes and dreamt of a place we could go, restrictions or no restrictions, we were transported somewhere, even though for a moment. The world wide network carried contributors’ messages to me and I wrote them on tiny pieces of paper. I folded them, rolled them up and made them into scrolls which now encircle the shaft of the collected feathers, symbols of flight.
Through the ages and in divers cultures, feathers have symbolised spirituality, prayers, wisdom and truth. They were, and are, worn as part of ceremonial headdresses. Feathers have been used to flee reality, as transport to other realms, and to weigh against the human heart to see if it was ‘as light as a feather’ and therefore full only of goodness.
While walking around the lanes of Kent, I came across a number of dovecotes. These avian homes have always inspired me, from the circular Corstorphine dovecote[1] in Edinburgh which gave its name to the tapestry workshop and gallery[2] in Infirmary Street, to the beehive structured Dunure doocot[3] in South Ayrshire. Pigeon and dove families would each have their own wee cubby or pigeon-hole to nest in. Mine is made of found materials, a sort of display case of static agents of freedom ready to launch when the rules allow. The messages are gathered together in response to the frustration of lockdown in a flight of collective fancy.
In that brief let-up of limitations last summer (2020) I walked the first four days of The Pilgrim’s Way from Winchester towards Canterbury and as if to mirror my new-found freedom I found more feathers than I could possibly collect.
This wing was one of many I came across, and it minded me of the poem Barnacle Wing by Roseanne Watt ‘…..So where do we go from here? Untethered as we are We’ll follow the wind no doubt:….’[1]
At the time of writing, travel restrictions have eased within the UK and, although excited by the prospect of once more feeling the wind in my hair, I can also feel a nervousness about moving beyond my well-walked boundary. How about you?
[1] Corstorphine Dovecot https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/corstorphine-dovecot/
[2] Dovecot Studios https://dovecotstudios.com/
[3] Dunure Doocot https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1312897
[4] Watt, R (2019) Moder Dy, Polygon
If I had wings I would lay eggs of seeds reforesting barren areas …fire….the madness of axes
Thank you so much Irene, yes, that is something which must be done and doing it from the air would be super-effective!