First look at designs for new community arts project

AN artist has held an exhibition in Watlington so residents could provide feedback on his designs for proposed sculptures for the town.

Joseph Hillier has been commissioned to make five installations for a trail known as the Watlington Arts Spine project.

He created a series of mock-up sculptures to represent different areas of the town, including large “heads” as well as more abstract designs.

Residents were invited to give their thoughts on the proposed locations and look of the sculptures on Saturday and Sunday at Watlington artsHUB in the Methodist Church in Shirburn Street.

Two local artists will be mentored by Mr Hillier to create a piece each to complement his work and together will form a “spine” through the town. The project is being funded by contributions from developers which are building houses to the west of the town. The total cost is expected to be about £120,000.

Steve Bolingbroke, a member of Watlington Parish Council which commissioned the project, said: “Communities are made up of people, so using the head as a motif for people seemed sensible.

“Each of the heads reflects a different aspect Watlington. One is meant to show the chalk stream which meanders through the countryside. Another has trees that represents the natural landscape, the beech woods on the hill and the yew woods.

“One with a checkerboard pattern shows how different communities overlap and people are members of different communities and so he created something like a Venn diagram.

“Another represents the agricultural landscape which we live in with ploughed fields. Another, called “To Build a Community”, is going to be about how individuals create communities and the pattern reflects the brickwork of Watlington and it will have little bronze figures of residents of Watlington who will be scanned to create the pieces.”

Cllr Bolingbroke said the council and partners had been working on the project for two years and it is hoped the sculptures will link the new housing estates to the centre of the town.

He said: “It is about building the community and creating those links. It is quite a lot of money and some of the money is going to be spent with local artists as well so it is not all going to Joseph.

“We are doing some work on landscaping and how we might present them but the people who own the land haven't agreed for us to do it yet.

“It has been a really fun project and we are almost at the stage of finalising what we are doing. We just need to get some funding in place and then we are going to make a big announcement in about a month about what our final choices are. But we still have to get certain landowner permissions before we can do that.”

Jaine McCormack, from Christmas Common and an artsHUB committee member, said once everything is in place a brief for local artists will be drawn up.

She said: “Nobody locally has the experience in public art to be able to take on a project of this scale. We thought if Joseph does the main work, he has offered to mentor whoever we end up choosing to do the public art pieces from the local community, it is a fantastic opportunity for the local artists.”

Daisy French, 14, in Year 10 at Icknield Community College, also took part in the exhibition and displayed a clay tree stump with vines which she made when Mr Hillier came to her school to hold a workshop. She has previously exhibited at Central Saint Martins and Somerset House.

She said: “We did a workshop for the entire day with Joseph and we worked with clay and we decided it was going to be on the outside world — natural things like shells, trees and mushrooms.

“We learned how to smooth the clay and learned how to paint it and make sure everything is in the right formation. It was fun and I made a tree stump with vines. I put on lots of detail on it with the bark and things like that.”

Meanwhile, the artsHUB “Blue” exhibition will take place from March 14 to 16.