top of page
Search
  • Alison Jacobs

Bird Hide Blog


WWT Steart Marshes is a great place to go if you are an artlover, bird watcher or just love the great outdoors. I was lucky enough to spend the weekend of the 8/9th April at the Mendip Hide one of the new hides at Steart. The point of my pop-up exhibition that I put on for only 2 days was to give people a flavour, a little idea, of my experiences living, as I did, in Steart for 10 years.

Whilst I lived in Steart from 2005-2015 the flat landscape was mostly farmland, a patchwork of fields, rhynes and hedgerows, the scene of arable and dairy farming. Then talk in our isolated little community was of massive looming change and after several years of consultation and planning along came the Environment agency and Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and a new nature reserve was created. Overlooking the site I watched and recorded 2 years of construction work and by 2015 the reserve was born. The whys and wherefores are detailed at http://www.wwt.org.uk/wetland-centres/steart-marshes/ and is completely fascinating.

Artistically, I was very productive whilst living at Steart as my series of farm animal and landscape paintings show. I was also an avid sketchbook keeper and I showed images from these in the bird hide alongside a selection of paintings and photographs. The exhibition resembled more of a collage or montage of my time at Steart.

I showed stills from ‘Through the Triangle’ a time-lapse piece which you can see at https://www.instagram.com/p/BSjbYuRB1C5/?taken-by=alispangle This was the culmination of 3 years worth of photographs I took through the largest pylon on the reserve. This perfectly frames the village of Combwich in the distance where I grew up. As the piece plays you can see the rise and fall of the tidal River Parrett subject of ‘Out of the mouth of the Parrett’ by Theatre Melange. You can see the change in plants and hedgerows as the cycle of seasons roll on.

I no longer live at Steart, so was very pleased when some of my old neighbours and friends

came along to the bird hide, its always good fun when an exhibition becomes a nostalgic reunion.

But the story doesn’t end there, the reserve will continue to grow and evolve as will my work. I had forgotten how much I had discovered whilst living on the Peninsula and the quantity of material I had collected. I now have a lifetime of reference material to play with.

Thanks again to the WWT who very kindly allowed me to exhibit work in their hide it will be an experience I will never forget.

32 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All
bottom of page