Road for the Future

Road For The Future is a year long collaborative art project initiated by Anna Best around a historic Common and a decommissioned railway, now proposed as a Sustrans Trailway (for bicycles, horses, walkers, wheelchairs, buggies). This will provide access to what some locals call the deep dark heart of Dorset. Artists, architects, educators and conservationists are working concurrently in exploring and articulating our ideas about the countryside, contributing to the debate about its future development and sustainability.

30/06/2011

Group of botanical illustrators eating lunch.

All but one seem to be beyond retirement age – it’s a hobby more than a profession. One with straight hair clipped back. Pastel shades. There’s only one man whose wife Daphne is also doing the course.

Magnifying glasses, hairline paint brushes, trays of ancient moth samples from a purpose built chest of drawers.

We talk about the Art room atmosphere of intense silent concentration arising from studied drawing.

Wilting nettles in a marmalade jar.

Yellow moth painted on velum.

Delicate ink pen drawing of a plant hosting a delicate water-colour painted moth.

Books on British moths and butterflies and related n atural history laid out on a round table under the stairs.

A box of small clamps and clips like jewelers use.

Cloth topped jars of jam next to raku-fired pots on the windowsill.

View onto picnic benches where three women spanning five decades eat homemade sandwiches and talk about the poly-tunnel.

A blonde woman feeds brown lambs in a small enclosure beyond the picnic area.

Lanolin smelling dark brown sheep shearings in two huge sacks in a barn.