Day 1.
I got to Penn’s Weare. This place holds me in awe and every time I visit I find something new and extraordinary. I’d got here fairly late and had a good walk around searching in my mind for the next place to work. It was bitterly cold with a harsh north easterly wind that ripped the warmth from the body.
I found a place that was, I thought, sheltered from the wind. The hollow itself had a feeling of protection from the elements, a warming, comforting feeling. I decided to build a low structure that would somehow try to reflect the mother nature of this place. I started to build a low, ovoid structure that had a distinct cavity with perpendicular walls in the centre. This could be seen as either a secret entrance to the otherworld, or an entrance to the womb of nature.
The wind picked up after a while and became bitterly cold. I noticed that the sculpture had an orientation that had been dictated by the direction of the wind. Its longer axis was along the direction of the wind. This wind now tore the warmth away from my body, and although I tried I could no longer stay warm. The frost still lay on the ground and my hands were frozen. After two and a half hours of actual work I had to come to the conclusion that I would give up and return the following day to finish this piece off.
Day 2
Got to the site and started. All went well. I used the same methods as the previous cairn to get the outer surface smooth. I finished the sculpture as the sun was getting low in the sky and took some photographs. Must have worked on this one something like six and a half hours in total. Sculpture is about twelve feet long.
This sculpture is visible form the path that runs nearby, and although you look down on it, it is not obvious from the path that it has the hollow in the middle. You have to approach it quite closely to appreciate this. The contrast between the dark green grass in the centre and the light grey of the rock gives the appearance of depth.