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Autumn Leaf Washing Line

By Miles Row

Part of Friends Around the Table

Enjoy our simple step by step Create guides devised by professional artists and foragers for Friends Around the Table. Absolutely no experience is necessary, these activities are accessible for most people and can be undertaken in your own time.

Each guide welcomes you to explore food and nature in new and exciting ways to bring some relaxing and creative activity to your day. Once you have had a go, why not share the skills you have learned with a neighbor, friend or family member!

When artist Caitlin Howells pegs out her washing, she likes to peg similar colours together; then she steps back and looks at the line as if it were a palette of different shades and tones—it certainly makes hanging out the washing more pleasurable.

There are many artists creating land art, using natural materials that are beautiful in their simplicity and mind-expanding when considered in finer detail.

If you have access to the internet, search for artists like Walter Mason, and Andy Goldsworthy; both make exquisite land art using leaves, branches, earth and even ice.

Activity

• Take a walk to some of your favourite places around your village, visit some special trees that you know
• Collect a bagful of fallen leaves that you are drawn to, large and small
• Before you start, close your eyes and take a deep sniff of your bag of autumnness
• Take a good look at the variety of colours, and feel the different textures and shapes

Now it’s time to start your design. Ask yourself what draws you to arrange, order and peg them up. Is it by …

  • Colour?
  • Size?
  • Mathematical patterns?
  • Species?
  • Randomly?
  • Or something else?

Start to peg them along the washing line in the way you are drawn to.
Enjoy the process and the feeling of creating with nature, out in nature, as part of nature.

Perhaps you will further develop this idea into other sorts of leaf installations, on the ground or elsewhere?

Please photograph your leaf washing line installation and any other leaf art you create and send it to us.

You will need

  • A bag full of fallen leaves, assorted sizes and colours
  • Pegs
  • A washing line or whirligig—or create your own line with a piece of string.

Download activity guide

Download the PDF version of this activity.

If you’ve enjoyed this DIY activity and would like to make a donation to Suffolk Artlink please visit our CAF Donate page here https://cafdonate.cafonline.org/9780#!/DonationDetails. Every penny will help.

Download pdf (115.19 KB)

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