Work in Depth

The Earthwaves Art Partnership is now 8 years old. We started with the Anthropocene phase, a time where humans have marked the Earth, and we were concerned about environmental damage. Knowing that this cause is moving forward politically with its own energy, our work since anthropocene has moved forward naturally with that environmental core still underpinning it. Our passion for being in natural landscapes and our deep experiences of spirituality through Tantra have coalesced in a creative investigation which we have labelled Spiritual Landscape. This has taken us on physical journeys, journeys through time, and more personal journeys where we explore human relationship to the landscape, both ancient and modern. So our works are both observational and a creative expression of human experience of the landscape.

Spiritual landscape

The creative investigation has moved through the following areas although not necessarily consecutively and often returned to:

In all of the work we have been investigating, there are common elements; water, earth, what vibration means in the landscape, our connection with nature. We see how humans have marked the landscape and why, of course with the most devastating marking and with terrible disregard for the environment since industrial times. So our interest has taken us through time with fossils and fossil fuel, through Neolithic and Megalithic times to the current day. Our hopes are that humans find their deeper spiritual selves and become more in tune with the landscape they exploit and destroy so readily in their relentless pursuit of wealth and artificial, joyless, ego serving existence. We want to share the sheer joy and peace that can be found when we are in tune with nature, in contrast with the virtual worlds, controlled by corporations and and so-called artificial intelligence, an algorithmic sterile world, increasingly even machines taking over our imagination.

We find working in partnership quite an extraordinary and inspiring process. We both have let go our more rigid identification with mediums like sound and video, or ceramic, and allowing our creative energy just tumble out in whatever media we care to use. So we’re both involved in writing, film making, sound and exploration of all sorts including textile. Lance is based in Wales and has less opportunity to explore ceramics in the Bedfordshire Earthwaves Ceramics Studio and do the physical making that Mike’s skills are particularly suited to. We have inevitable expanded to studio setting up with Lances Wales based Earthwaves Film Studio, costume making, and Lance returning to and rekindling his passion for animation along with everything else.

Spiritual Landscape

Water and waves

We both keep returning to water, having naturally found ourselves there during the Anthropocence investigation, and often like to be by water. It’s not so much a separate area of landscape investigation but an element that weaves through our work. We are also drawn to water because of its movement, and that is both gravity but for us intriguingly it is very expressive of vibration in the form of waves. Its internal energies, unlike solid or gas (in the main as clouds and steam are visually interesting too), are shown in its fluidity. The hydrogen bonds in water helping to provide enough but not too much tension for this phenomenon.

But it is the spiritual qualities of water that are mysterious apparent and ignored only if you want to miss out on the full richness of life. Being by water and touching water, soaking in water, all bring internal energy if you let them in. Peace, joy, energising, relaxing, calm are just a few of the qualities water can bring to us in what are thought to be the positive spiritual emotions, the ones that open up your mind to something much deeper, something much more connected to everything is the most empowering but balanced way.

Mike has struggled with water projects using ceramics, often inspired but often thwarted at the last hurdle in feeling that the pieces have brought those deeper water qualities, at least not until combined with other media. I guess earth is the opposite to water in its qualities. However there has been work done there. Lance has enjoyed the watery Wales on land and sea and had three years living by the Mediterranean Sea in Alicante both places Mike loves visiting. Lance is such a water lover he’s even been inspired by Mike’s massive bath. Lance’s preferred mediums of video and sound lend themselves to art with water as a subject. Watery works include:

Related water blog posts:

Soundscape

We both, but Lance especially, find sound can bring us into a meditative State and Lance completed two sound therapy courses, so has a particular insight into the deeper aspects of what sound can bring. In the early stages of post Anthropocean work we found ourselves experimenting and playing with sound rather than making finished pieces. Sound again weaves right the way through all we do.

Work includes:

Sound related blogs:

Local Landscape

We both have found beautiful and joyous peace when in nature and the natural landscape. We would both say that this seems to open up a deeper sense of self, beyond ego, beyond that restless anxious self-centred mind, and this we label spiritual. Our experience of Tantra has deepened this further where our energies seem to be experienced in a deeper more personal mystical way. Although at the same time we might also consider those energies to be those that science explores and tries to make sense of, remarkable in its rapidly increasing knowledge of how, but rather short of why.

So with the sudden arrival of the Covid 19 pandemic and lockdown we, like most everyone else, senior Tories excepted, took care to isolate and made the best of indoor cabin fever by walking in our local landscape in nature. Lance had an urban landscape experience where in Wales travel was ridiculously and meaninglessly restricted to an arbitrary 5 miles, so a small town garden, “Beauty in the back garden” and his lovely local park became a sanctuary to escape into and relax. The ‘Empty Seats’ image series took off and became a statement of the political nonsense of requiring people to both exercise for an hour and to shut the only places worth walking in local parks.

Add image of empty chair and link to page on Empty Chair series

Mike luckily lived in rural Bedfordshire and lives very close to some beautiful walks. His ceramic work tailed off during covid and sewing and wearing masks made from recycled shirts became a political act. Unfortunately trying to be a partnership working at distance only served to emphasise the awfulness of lockdown. But local landscapes were documented through the seasons as the epidemic dragged on with uncertainty. Mike found some spiritual moments and wrote “Let go and walk the land” .

After Covid we find ourselves continuing to connect to local landscape. Mike has had some challenging times emotionally and his garden much in need of renovation, practically trying to avoid complete overgrowth of weeds, whilst embracing making the garden friendly to all hte wild creatures around, perhaps with hte exception of rats and mice! The garden already has an underlying design of his, made for his parents, and this gave an opportunity to bring this back to life, whilst making the garden easier to manage and enjoy. Whilst embarking on the renovation we both spent many hours enjoying that outside space. It is in a village setting secluded and it is a great place for contemplation and taking time to be outdoors without facing the world of walkers and dogs. Mike realised it had had a profound impact on him emotionally and spiritually it began to reflect how he was inside as he got through mentally challenging times. It showed the way to more beautiful and serene times, and seems often to have a deeply magical quality. We also found by celebrating the end of the year at Solstice, the true solar beginning of a new year, that the view across the field from Mike’s garden showed beautifully how the sun rise moves through the winter on the horizon up to when it is at standstill on solstice. The garden has inspired creative work that falls under the umbrella term in our partnership “sacred garden”.

Works include:

Related blogs:

Severn Bridge, Aust and other cliffs

And finally, lockdown allows us to get together. Well strictly speaking we bent the rules. Mike first drove down to Wales from Bedfordshire without anything but a wee in a bottle to picnic with Lance in a local park with blankets two metres apart so Mike could show ceramics to Lance. And secondly to do some work on the Severn Bridge, which Lance had escaped to already once before. That way Mike didn’t invade Wales although strictly speaking Lance broke the ridiculous Welsh 5 mile rule. But hey! It wasn’t a drunken non socially distanced party in Downing Street and neither of us had Covid. So that is probably its why we picked the Severn Estuary apart from it is a huge span of water with fantastic landscape views from the bridge and Lance had felt very very welcome peace when he escaped the anxieties lockdown brought for a day.

We also discovered Aust cliffs that support one end of the Severn Bridge. The cliffs are very popular with fossil hunters as they show, as all cliffs do, a layered geological historic timeline, in this case going back to the Triassic Period. This got us into investigating the landscape under the ground. Mike who has using maps in his art practice before ceramics, went off to find Ordnance Survey maps of the estuary as well as maps from the Bristish Geological Society. Given that ceramic, or should we say clay, is just ground down rock and comes from any geology that reaches the surface through any of the geological processes Mike would inevitably want to investigate geology too something that has been part of our investigations going forward. and started work on the idea of a rock bowl which has been much harder to develop than he expected, getting something which he felt worked really well. And our hunt for rock textures began.

But to return to our water theme the Severn Estuary form the bridge is simply awesome. On a sunny day the river is uplifting and the scale from that height almost mind blowing. We spent many hours there and the peace of the water seemed to seap into you. We found ourselves filming the flows of the water under the bridge, endlessly fascinating in its moving patterns. The flow by the bridge pillars particularly intriguing visually. This is documented in our blog of that day, Earth and Waves.

It was also that day when looking across the border that the river makes between England and Wales we found ourselves expanding our Earthwaves practice to include how social landscapes also emerge from a landscape exploration, and we were very aware of the need to investigate borders and barriers, human constructs to how humans can use the landscape and how it is shaped. It represented the physical divide in our partnership created by the Covid 19 pandemic, the horrendous experience of which really created more by the UK politics. The Welsh Government, sensible, careful and consistent, if not the most talented approach to some aspects of public health policy. This contrasted with a chaotic Brexit fueled cowboy government in Westminster, the politicians of which seemed to have no intention conceding to the democratic devolved powers with intelligent communication and cooperation> Neither did they seem in reality to listen to expert opinion, although frequently pretended to abrogate responsibility to expert panels. However it was Tory decided and delayed public health measures which resulted in far more deaths than needed, when intelligent comparison with other countries is made. Vaccination was swiftly procured along with other contracts serving commercial and Tory interests frequently, but roll out was hampered by the lack of trust people had in a leadership which seemed to disregard its own guidance. This did little to help the all important vaccine take up. Wow how can a river landscape conjure up such a way of seeing it. Well at that time the river really emphasised boundaries and borders that were very actively affecting our day to day experiences and actions.

This phase of the investigation was though a strong influence of the work that follows in how we look at landscape, shaping the concerns and interests we have.

Works include:

Related Severn Estuary and Aust Cliff blogs:

The Sirhowy Valley and Twmbarlwm

It was shortly after our day on and around the Severn Bridge that Lance moved to his new home in the Sirhowy Valley. Neither of us knew that part of the world well, it is in the South Wales coalfield and Sirhowy is one of the coal mining valleys. Turns out something which we thought might be rather industrial, or scarred by it is remarkably recovered and beautiful. Well towns are nothing special generally, but the landscape is extraordinary. And Twmbarlwm is the first high point Lance took Mike to where you can see the Brecon Beacons at the head of “the valleys”, and also across the Severn Estuary and Bristol Channel, even just seeing the Severn Bridge. So another awesome doorstep, this time a project located in the land of one of our homes and studios.

Spiritual connection with river

By Lance’s home he discovered a lane in what seemed to be fairly built up area. Slightly incongruous it was country lane like between houses, and as you walked down it houses disappeared and trees emerged and then you found yourself right by the wooded Sirhowy River, one of the mining valley rivers. It was a beautiful surprise, and we found that it linked up to a cycleway by the river that Lance had walked many times. Much of this river could be walked and explored and for an urban areas it was like descending into a rural water idyll. We walked the river path exploring but one day something magic happened. Being creatively spiritual Lance and Mike started to meditate to Lances new meditation sound piece and in due course that was followed by some oracle work. A question asked and answered and, almost as a response to Lance, Mike had a very clear third eye vision of pool, back in ancient times, bathed in a golden yellow glow, an ancient place of peace. Mike had this nagging feeling it was linked to the river in some way. This afternoon was more light hearted than serious but it had been a beautiful peaceful spiritual time.

The next day the riverside walk started as normal but as we walked into a slightly more remote wooded part by a bank of rocks and old trees, and Mike stopped and said something like “Wow” and looked at Lance who was beaming and looking slightly bemused. We had both felt it, like going through into another dimension, the same place we had walked before, but felt so different, a sort of special beauty. We phrase entering the realm seemed very apt. It felt like we had connected with an ancient time perhaps. The walk continued and we both felt ecstatic and joyous. Now we have taken quite intense spiritual courses in the past the on one level this was not unfamiliar. But for it to be so specifically linked to place and a particular local landscape in ordinary life was not. Later on down the river we took a walk through the wood by it off the main path. Mike gasped, I think this is it, the place I saw yesterday though my third eye. The river opened up like a pool in this secluded wooded area with a beach. We named it “The Pagan Pool” and it has been such a source of inspiration it has been central to our work in the Sirhowy Valley and informing where our work now takes us. We’ve returned to “The Pagan Pool” many times and the intensity of the experience is not always there. At times it just feels like anything else.

Mike had also on that meditation afternoon had a vision of a low hanging tree and something about pagan wands, of staff, rather like movie prop that Gandalf uses. It certainly seemed like a fund art project to make one. Checking how pagan wands work, Mike set about finding wood on his walks that spoke to him. Needless to say nothing did for quite a while. And then on a local walk, and by a brook, something just drew Mike to a fallen branch, mouldy, sodden, missing some bark, muddy and not easy to drag home. It was a forked branch. He decided to approach this in quite a spiritual shamanic way allowing intuition to guide him. And low and behold one cut and a staff and wand appeared. Scrubbed up lovely and dried out well. The areas without back smooth to allow hand holding. And points along the perfect to hold crystals. He already had crystals one or two with particular spiritual stories. He could place crystals to correspond to the body’s energy centres.

Well the staff and wand are lovely pieces, but extraordinarily they do seem to channel energy and have been used by Mike and Lance in some of their spiritual explorations, and embodies in the later writing about Lan and Deek. We appreciate that although millions watch endless fantasy and films involving magic, not least of which Harry Potter and all, and Lord of the Rings, it is more escapism where the audience probably in the main goes home and puts the experience of watching firmly back in the locked box of scepticism and bring these things out only when they need to play. But some of us find we can be open to a much deeper experience of the world without it compromising logic, science and sanity. and the staff and wand have definitely contributed to that for us. One particular time, when it felt like we needed to use them to channel some kind of positive healing energy into the Pagan Pool landscape we blogged about it see link below and later we write about using it at the top of Twmbarlwm.

Works include:

  • Pagan staff and wand, found objects, natural wood, crystals and copper wire, Mike Paul, date
  • Meditation, sound, Lance Eggleton, ? DVD shop Date
  • Snowflake light, bone china, Mike Paul, date

Linked blogs:

Mapping land time

The core of our investigation into the landscape revolved around mapping. Mapping gives a very interesting perspective on the world around of us, and in the past Mike has used map making in is his art practice to explore journey in many ways and even biography. Maps are an approach to observation and analysis, although Ordnance maps which we used follow a fascinating convention about how to navigate the physical world.

Lance saw the maps and the source of the SIrhowy in the Brecon Beacons. He decided to paint to take the exploration forward. The work takes the river out of context with the painted colour blocks and line and it becomes an abstract work, which intrigues by its shape, gives a very different perspective and adds some mystery about the subject.

Works related to our mapping include:

Related blogs:

Magic on mountains

Wales is blessed with some amazing terrain. Having discovered a magic river a minute down the lane from Lance, we ventured up a small road almost opposite. This went up and soon we were up a hill in fields and trees. It was difficult to imagine we were so near an urban area it was so quiet and tranquil. Then we ventured further afield and realised not only how easy it was to get up the hills, that make the Welsh mining valleys, but what fantastic views they offered over the terrain. It was from this that Mike was inspired to do work from 3D maps of clay.

It was a while before we got round to it, but we had long since been driving past one of the highest hills in the valleys called Twmbarlwm, it was only 10 mins away by car from where Lance lives. It was a place Lance knew well already. He had previously lived not that far away, in the era of his film course in Newport, and had often found a haven up there. It was the site of an old coal mine, both modern mining now gone and actually ancient mining as coals seams have run to the surface in its folded topography. But now fully restored to nature a forest drive and beautiful walks take you up Twmbarlwm. so now well visited and enjoyed by all. We knew this peak had a hillfort and an ancient history like all of Britain. Mike found out that that this had been used by the druids as a sort of court of justice for the area. Little did we know then that this would spark a whole raft of creative endeavour an interest in ancient times and how its related to the challenges of our modern world. But for this visit Mike was in a playful mood and was determined to take the staff and wand up to see if the energy you feel through it was any different that high up.

Well the views when we got there were breath taking. This was a magic place indeed. You could see the Severn including the bridges and the Bristol channel and also right across the valleys to the Brecon Beacons. We could see the wonder of the Welsh Valley’s topography and Mike found himself working the through the shapes and thinking about whether this valley or that might make a good bowl.

And if that wasn’t enough our tongue in cheek investigation of the potential spiritual energy did not disappoint us. The energy at the top was almost addictive, peace flowing through, but gentle easily missed. But when Mike brought out his staff he was surprised and almost overcome by the sense of energy channelling through it. And when pointed at other hills there was an added intensity like bridge or flow across space. Of course these are all lovely sensations to experience, and quite what it might means, and it is whether this is any use or not, is not at all clear. But we could see now that Druids might feel an energy that connected them with the landscape which shaped their culture. It was to become something we would explore in our creative writing later. We haven’t made specific work about Twmbarlwm but it has been an important stepping stone to other work and a jewel in our spiritual landscape investigation. This trip has inspired us to investigate landscape further afield visiting Ogmore, on the rugged Welsh coast, the Brecon Beacons, the Black mountains, and a trip to the Lizard in Cornwall, where the oldest geology is evident. Weve taken texture samples, photo references and just felt the magic energy in these places. Lance has also been visiting Northern Ireland to see his friend regularly and making trips into the wonderful landscape there.

Related blogs:

At the coalface: water flowing through time

In the Welsh Valleys there is now an almost hidden world, you cannot go far without finding yourself near a coal mine. Neither of us knew much about Welsh industrial history and hidden or not it is a huge part of the Sirhowy landscape we were exploring. Mike was determined to visit the coal mining archives in Glamorgan in Cardiff. We found out about the extensive network of railways, now gone leaving a pretty piss poor passenger railway system in Wales. The geology of the coalfield was fascinating, and Mike was investigating how the seams layered to see what visual interest that might bring to ceramic work. We found that from Lances house within easy walking distance, indeed walks we had often done, there had been major collieries, one now a school, one an Asda, one allowed to go back to the wild having been flattened and capped off and one a short drive away that had left a fascinating round concrete structure a coal washing facility. Even Lances home had been built on a bra factory site. Desperately needed new road infrastruture has been built across old industrial sites where railways were once in place.

The Sirhowy has old coal mines draining into it, which a major issue still with pollution the brown rusty water very evident. However, not a patch on pollution in industrial times. We found out that the river by Lance used to run black with coal washing pollution. The “Pagan Pool” as we called it, and you can see from the blogs, has a fascinating modern water fall which is the drain from the old Oakdale mine. And somewhere deep underground there is the rich coal seams that were mined and even a railway and underground station which was like a cathedral inside.

So we decided to create a work, which explored the idea of a river flowing through time, changing through time, from natural pre-industry, through coal mining, to the present day. The ceramic element a water feature of three pools each representing one of those three eras with water cascading from pool to pool. The river water pours into a giant glass with an oversized straw representing the impact of water pollution in the landscape, echoing current politics of Toriy majority in Parliament allowing commercial water companies to continue to pump sewage freely into our rivers and sea near beaches. It is accompanied by a sound piece which uses mining industrial sounds and miners talking about their experiences.

Works include:

  • Time flow, water, ceramic and sound installation

Relevant blogs:

The rock map – A pagan story

The Sirhowy project took a twist when Mike heard the news about a Bronze age rock map found in France. Wonderfully central to the ideas in our Sirhowy Project, Mike created, using the contours of the Sirhowy work, see the SIrhowy Project I video blog, to make an imaginary rock map of a pagan community living around the landscape centred by the pagan pool on the Sirhowy river. A story coalesced around that and two characters were born Lan and Deek. These characters now feature in a much larger story we are writing exploring cultures and their relationship to landscape, reflecting issues we are concerned about in the modern world, and the reasons why stone circles were built and used in Britain for 3,000 years and Ireland right up to the invasion of the Romans. It imagines why the phenomenal monument Stonehenge was built.

The story references wassailing, originally the pagan drinking of cider and singing around apple trees to celebrate and welcome in fertility. It has since morphed into carol singing it is believed. The use of resonance sound vessels is also made in the story. But we believe that resonance and sound will have been very important in pagan communities, given the emotionally healing spiritual energetic qualities they bring which Lance has studied in his Sound Therapy training. We know drums are traditionally used in native American culture and other traditional cultures around the world. We think it would be odd not to use the banging of ceramic pots in neolithic times to create sound at community gatherings. Mike made an imaginary pagan sound vessel and wassail mugs perhaps at some point to use in Wassailing performance art. Feasting we know from archaeology is an important part of megalithic culture. Ritual is also used the world over when people gather and to deepen and open spiritual experience. Mike has also studied old, double and many handed wassail and drinking cups in ceramic collections in museums in England and Wales.

Works include:

  • Rock Map, ceramic stoneware, Mike Paul, 2020
  • The Legend of Black Rock, creative writing, Lance Eggleton and Mike Paul, 2020
  • Wassail cup buff/red, ceramic stoneware, Mike Paul, 2021
  • Wassail cup buff/blue, ceramic stoneware, Mike Paul, 2021
  • Wassail cup black/red, ceramic stoneware, Mike Paul, 2021
  • Wassail cup black/blue, ceramic stoneware, Mike Paul, 2021

Related Blog:

Stone Circles

We have been researching and visiting landscapes associated with stone circles and developing a Stonehenge pre story to capture the richness of what we have found and imagined. This is the main focus for our current work. We include some linked blogs and will post work in due course when finished.

The work which is now stretching over a number of years has included the exploration of Neolithic lives. Perhaps once we thought of how Neolithic lives were portrayed at school, but realise that although stone-age conjures up ideas of odd looking people limited by stone tools, this couldn’t be further from hte truth. It is very clear it is a rich and sophisticated time, and humans then were probably much more similar to us now than we think, providing you don’t limit too much how you define sophistication. Arguably modern development has gained in technology but lost a lot too. Clearly Neolithic humans were very connected to the intricacies of the landscape and skyscape, and stone, bone and wood tools provided a great deal of convenient function. Each individual probabaly carried a set skills that enabled them to be very able to live in that landscape too resiliently. Take electricity from us and we would proabaly be rather lost.

Archaeology has certainly moved on considerably since our school text books were written and there are some great thinkers able to logically weave together seemingly unrelated bits of evidence, but en-masse gives a very interesting picture. It inspired us to come up with lifestyle items like pots and clothes and enjoy the making of art work inspired by real bits of evidence if more arty than slavish experimental archaeology. We have gather our Neolithic creativity together in a spoof fun museum section on this website “The Museum of Pagan Arty-facts”.

Moving on to Stonehenge and then other stone circles we have been inspired by the making something differnt to celebrate the Winter Solstice we create what will be the first of our collaborative installation pieces, ceramic, visual projection and sound.

Works include

Linked blogs

Anthropocene

This is where it all started combining our creative energies to exhibit installations highlighting issues with the environment working towards the first Anthropocene exhibition.

Plastic Pisces I and II, Conche Cry 2018

Three multimedia works emerged ceramic, sound and light, from some really exciting partnership energy.

Close up of Plastic Pisces 1.light through porcelain

Touring exhibition Anthropocene: of our own making by Precious Earth Art Collective at Octavia Hill’s Birthplace House Museum, Wisbech May – October 2019

Anthropocene: of our own making by the Precious Earth Art Collective PEAC at the Panacea Museum, Bedford 6 Sept 2018 – 7 Oct 2018.

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Projections onto moving porcelain fish tied in plastic