Review:
Bird River
by John Davies
From Planet 253
Jim Pratt
reviews
Bird River
by John Davies
Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, £8.50
John Davies makes birds. That is, he carves birds out of timber and sets them aloft on bundles of dried driftwood. But the important point is where the driftwood comes from: the banks of the Clwyd River, near Rhyl. Bird River evinces a love of the local and the particular, and is as much concerned with the connection between creative practice and landscape as it is with the sculptures themselves. This is art that has its origins in keen observation of the natural world and in the careful work of gleaning, and whose finished forms resonate with physical and emotional connections to the environment they emerge from.
Sign in to read moreAbout the author
Jim Pratt, a retired forester, has been a bird-watcher all his life. He is also a photographer who, with the sculptor Sue White-Oakes, wrote a definitive account of her methods of figurative sculpting in copper. He lives in the Scottish Borders.
