‘Understand how much time it takes for a work, or a path, or a life to take shape’ A sculptor’s advice for art & life: David Nash is perhaps best known for his living art piece the Ash Dome - planted in the 70s for the next millennium. He has literally grown a meaningful life. Here is his advice

Well-worn: Husband & Wife Was going about my quiet day alone at home, thirty years married, when the sight of our clothes without us had me stop and fill with feeling. Always-there but never-noticed: his habitual outfit, mine, hanging together on the basement door.

This gave me all the feels, perhaps because I’ve just returned from 2+ weeks in a home my family has lived in for 70+ years. It is still full of people no longer living, and it was lovely to visit with them for a while.

Already a year ago since I went alone back to my childhood coast to deal with the small flat my mother lived her last years in after she left a terrible 40-year marriage. Objects from left-behind lives much on my mind today, so reposting my story of the strange encounter that happened that week...

I posted on here for the first time in many months - a short little piece about being moved by the sight of my and my husband’s work wear hanging on the kichen door - and it’s delighting to have received this soulful text & image threaded response from photographer @johnmacpherson.bsky.social...

Well-worn: Husband & Wife Was going about my quiet day alone at home, thirty years married, when the sight of our clothes without us had me stop and fill with feeling. Always-there but never-noticed: his habitual outfit, mine, hanging together on the basement door.

Sharing some of my writing pieces: 4. The Nonsense of Edward Lear - Cure For Sleep An imprint of inspiration & hope that won't fade - @tanyashadrick.bsky.social community writing project - here lies a memory on my path to words #writing #booksky thecureforsleep.com/november-iss...

I cannot see a chalk path without thinking of @nicolawriting.bsky.social and @tanyashadrick.bsky.social—women who feel the intrinsic histories of chalk paths, and then make histories of their own.

“Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!” In memoriam #VirginiaWoolf #DOTD 28 March 1941 📷 Starlings over the River Ouse at Southease, near Woolf’s last home - Monks House, Rodmell, Sussex

“Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!” In memoriam #VirginiaWoolf #DOTD 28 March 1941 📷 Starlings over the River Ouse at Southease, near Woolf’s last home - Monks House, Rodmell, Sussex

‘She worked on the Harrier, the Concorde. She had a love of speed and freedom. Sports cars. Like the one in which she fled. Flew. From marriage and family. From us.’ Stunning piece by @npitchford.bsky.social for the decade-long collective #BirdsOfFirle project… selkiepress.com/2025/03/18/b...

‘I once had a winter that was wordless’ In 2020 @littletollerbooks.bsky.social published my #BirdsOfFirle: origin story of a decade-long collective project on hope & grief as the things with feathers. I used Twitter to reach people; hope to relaunch here soon www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing...

Deeply moving, beautifully drifting writing from @npitchford.bsky.social for the wonderful, occasional body of threaded stories that is @tanyashadrick.bsky.social’s #BirdsofFirle .. “as if belonging could be as multiple in its objects as love is.”

Honoured to be part of the beautiful, fragile collective work #BirdsOfFirle, created & curated by Tanya. An ongoing project of 100 writers responding with objects & online to a single physical manuscript, circulated by post over the course of a decade. On grief & hope as the things with feathers...

‘She worked on the Harrier, the Concorde. She had a love of speed and freedom. Sports cars. Like the one in which she fled. Flew. From marriage and family. From us.’ Stunning piece by @npitchford.bsky.social for the decade-long collective #BirdsOfFirle project… selkiepress.com/2025/03/18/b...

This silver birch tree is in my back garden & is probably 50+ years old. I aimed to capture it with the remaining few golden leaves clinging on last autumn. Neighbours have always wanted it cut down, but I turn a deaf ear. ‘Heartwood’ Monotype and Drawing 23x29cm

Multiple oaks perhaps from a long-forgotten jay’s cache.

Looking Eastwards is my ongoing artwork where I document the view down the lane from my house. #LandscapePhotograhy www.dirtmeetsthewater.co.uk/looking-east...

[1] A short true story from a rubbish dump… I’m on second week of unexpected bed rest at end of an overfull year. And a writer who has stopped writing since my mother died last year. This is the first time I’ve felt able to tell even a small story such as this. If anyone reads it, thank you…

“The first bird surprised me… Engraved in memory: black leather legs, rictal bristles on the beak, an aluminium eye, and every wing-feather filigreed by white light so I could feel the hooks and barbules holding each one together, a chain mail” #NatureWriting www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing...

I’ve just created a Slow Art starter pack. Alongside that, sharing this link to a @bbcsounds.bsky.social show I took part in alongside my mentor #DavidNash. Also includes work of sculptor #JamesTurrell & musician #JemFiner… www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Receding, up on the wilds of Teesdale 2011, Canon EOS 60D #photography #BlackAndWhite #Landscape

A #SlowArt starter pack… go.bsky.app/V6j8hdS A meeting place for all interested in artists of any discipline - photography, fine art, sound, writing, illustration, more - who make work with a long-running, repetitive, ongoing, cumulative or time-defined nature. Glad of shares & suggestions

"The days are getting shorter and colder, but I ask you to remember: even as the Winter comes in, there is Hope and there is Light." ~ Seamus Heaney Towards Another Summer.

I’ve just created a Slow Art starter pack. Alongside that, sharing this link to a @bbcsounds.bsky.social show I took part in alongside my mentor #DavidNash. Also includes work of sculptor #JamesTurrell & musician #JemFiner… www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Like my mentor #DavidNash, I make work with long timespans: It’s also the art I’m most drawn to… If that speaks to you too, here’s a starter pack of others engaged in serious noticing - through repetition, return, time series & other forms of slow art… go.bsky.app/V6j8hdS

“The ability to start out upon your own impulse is fundamental to the gift of keeping going upon your own terms. . . . Getting started, keeping going, getting started again in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm." - Seamus Heaney

This Rook reminded me of the Mountain Gorilla that David Attenborough famously encountered in Rwanda. They both share the same intelligence in the eye. @tanyashadrick.bsky.social #ukbirding

The Corvid flypast at the cottage just now, on their way to the roost in the nearby copse. This contingent was pretty much pure Jackdaw - the Rooks had sorted themselves out separately, choosing not to have a 'joint enterprise' display. #ukbirding #wildlife #naturalhistory

This is what I get up to sometimes: nicktankard.co.uk Pondering some ideas of my own at the mo but also very much open to book illustration commissions. Cheers 😊👍🏻

Colours and textures collected on the path from #VirginiaWoolf house at Rodmell to the river at Southease Part of the durational #ConcentratesOfPlace project by @tanyashadrick.bsky.social - which invites others to make and share them using the hashtag www.ernestjournal.co.uk/blog/2022/1/...

‘This was just a crow. / That never fit in anywhere in its life, / or did anything worth mentioning. / It sat there on the branch for a few minutes. / Then picked up and flew beautifully / out of my life.’ - #RayCarver 📷 from #BirdsOfFirle series by @tanyashadrick.bsky.social

Storm-shook rook #BirdsOfFirle

The older I get, the more I find value in the gaps, the negative space (known as ma in Japanese) that makes sense of the things around it. With this week's cold weather and now strong winds on the way, the trees will soon be bare and there will lots more gaps to absorb and balance us.

One of the most generous online souls I’ve ever encountered… @theunhurriedreader.bsky.social’s book reviews - which began on her exquisite instagram - are now in beautiful new long form on Substack. Love this one of @annelouiseavery.bsky.social’s Reynard the Fox open.substack.com/pub/theunhur...

“…the gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit’s one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound…Go up into the gaps.” — #AnnieDillard Image from #BirdsOfFirle by Tanya Shadrick

‘I only know that a rook / Ordering its black feathers can so shine / As to seize my senses, haul /My eyelids up, and grant /A brief respite from fear’ — Black Rook in Rainy Weather, #SylviaPlath 📷 from #BirdsOfFirle series by @tanyashadrick.bsky.social

a winter's tale

'Field Ploughed Through' Charcoal & Varnish Private Collection

Hello + welcome to another flurry of new followers! Radio Lento is a podcast of quiet places. Subscribe for weekly episodes. Or listen to the ones we prescribe each day. Everything is recorded by us. Listen ad-free, plus no talking or music. Here's one of our most popular episodes > bit.ly/LenSkY

“As a child in farming country, I’d learnt long ago the parts of animals ­­but only as things dead or diagrammed… I’d been incurious to them as living creatures in relation to one another… Now I couldn’t stop looking.” #BirdsOfFirle www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing...

Le brouillard breton. Novembre.

“I recorded the rooks for hours, months. At first light and last. In sun and storm. Following them on days when my chronic pain lifted just enough for me to track them from Beacon to Bottom; most days using the car as hide.” #BirdsOfFirle www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing...

"The days are getting shorter and colder, but I ask you to remember: even as the Winter comes in, there is Hope and there is Light." ~ Seamus Heaney Towards Another Summer.

& november light smokes in cold burnless dwindling anticyclonic greysky weight informs aching in & out each end of day corvids are soot caught in it commuter traffic on the main drag dots out ellipsis at throb of dark

‘Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.’ — #SylviaPlath

“…the gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit’s one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound…Go up into the gaps.” — #AnnieDillard Image from #BirdsOfFirle by Tanya Shadrick

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