Cultivating Creativity Calendar

Niki de Saint Phalle was a French-American artist who used papier-mâché throughout her career.  She was well-known for her colourful monumental papier-mâché sculptures of women, which she called “Nanas”, meaning ‘women’ in French slang.

Her work was deemed ‘Outsider Art’ because she had no formal art training but she was a visionary who successfully collaborated with famous artists across the world.

All the Eternal Love I have for the Pumpkins is a light installation by renowned Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama. Here, the viewer experiences Kusama’s artwork as a field of glowing pumpkins, representative of her childhood memories of growing up around plants in her parent’s nursery garden.

The pumpkin is a motif that Kusama has used throughout her practice, as it represents comfort and joy.

Andy Goldsworthy is a British artist and one of the world’s leading Land Artists.

He makes site-specific artwork in natural and urban environments, which are often ephemeral, using his own body rather than tools or machines.

Due to the temporary nature of his work, Goldsworthy relies of photography to convey his art and any process it goes through (like decay) to his audience.

This website holds the archive of his life’s work.

They were the Rorschach of the winter months,
the folding of sky-shadows,
of air-shoals pirouetting into the January nip,
swarms riding the frosted winds,
silently testing the sky with their ink-magic.

Not ready for the tentacled gathering
that rose from the east
the heat of spring starlings
cloaked in oil slicks
needle beaked
and strong of claw.

The clash of murmurs
was whispered
in a rain of birds
as flightless feathers fell
in the war of winds.

Winter flew into spring,
black storms colliding with hot nights.
The murmurations twisted through one another
winter desperate to stay,
spring determined to arrive.

The people watch as feathers cloak them
farmers clutching hopeful seeds
children gazing with eager fingers
on buttoned jackets.
Which swarm will win this war?

But the birds that come with the sun
are always victorious – the winter flock is tired
their wings have beaten cold into existence
it is time for them to leave.

Beaten and flight-sore the winter murmuration
rides its ribbon away
as spring’s flock swoops into longer days
and brighter skies,
as farmers test the warmth of soil
and children release that first coat button.

By Joseph Coelho

Watch Joseph Coehlo read his poem in the video below.

Move to spring…