top of page

Fieldfaring Projects - ongoing

The fieldfare is a large colorful thrush that stands upright and has a purposeful hop. They are known as nomadic and social birds, wandering wherever there is an abundance of berries and insects often in woodland areas spending their winters in large flocks. They travel from northern Europe to the British Isles. The English common name “fieldfare” dates back to at least the eleventh century, and perhaps meant “traveler through the fields”.

Since 2005, I have been involved in creating collaborative, participatory urban based projects. Most of these works were generated under the rubric of Fieldfaring Projects with my creative partner and late husband Ted Purves (d. 2017). We were interested in the overlay of urban and rural systems upon the lives of specific communities. Asking questions about the nature of people and place as seen through social economy, history and local ecology, we were exploring how symbols and customs that are stereotypically “rural” migrate to an urban setting. Similarly, how do systems of art and cultural production influence and amplify local experience and traditions. Though we lived in cities for most of our adult lives, we both have rural roots that influenced how we framed our projects, recognizing the persistence of the rural and the natural world in contemporary urban life.

This “idea of the country”, is a tangible part of our contemporary urban culture, especially in our experience of living in the Bay Area for 30 years. This idea was also nurtured by witnessing the growing number of farmers’ markets, the rise and advance of the Slow Food movement, home gardening and the re-emergence of the community garden movement as well as by the ever-present critical dialogue around ecology, the environment and climate change, which is not part of the ethos of northern California lifestyle and scholarship. It is possible to see this complex, socially shared conception of the “rural” as a part of a larger social imaginary, one that collects a set of symbols, histories and values together in such a way that common expressions and practices emerge in its wake, often in what might seem to be surprising contexts.

Our projects were aligned with the emerging field of art and social practice in the early 2000’s

 

    bottom of page