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David Nash, In conversation

Cae’n-y-Coed, May 2017

Artist David Nash has had an attraction to wood from a very early age, and over five
decades he has created a vast collection of sculptures. His work has appeared in
major galleries across the world, including the Metropolitan and Guggenheim in
New York, and the Tate in London, but does not always reside within walls. Nash,
who received the honour of an OBE in 2004 and was elected to the Royal Academy
of Artists in 1999, frequently works in place – either with trees where they have
fallen, or through a partnership with living trees. His Wooden Boulder, created in
1978 from a massive Trunk of an oak tree, has been outdoors ever since, making
its way, via the river, down the Ffestiniog Valley towards the sea. Meanwhile, a
collection of living works in a woodland he has planted in Cae’n-y-Coed (‘field in the
trees’) is continuing to grow and change over time.

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We have both been aware of David Nash’s work for at least twenty years, and were
familiar with his Running Table and Wooden Waterway that he created not far from
us in Grizedale Forest in 1978. But on the occasion of our meeting, neither of us
was prepared for the sensation that would arise when standing in his studio
surrounded by his pieces: wood coaxed, hacked, sculpted and cut into a variety of
shapes, some of the pieces enormous, others small, some charred, and all reflecting
the essence of the trees from which they came. The energy that comes from these
pieces is hard to describe: these irresistibly tactile forms are still evolving, emerging
from a fluid collaboration between man and wood.

After spending time in the studio, we walked with David and Nia, who is curating
his current exhibition at Plas Glyn Y Weddw, into an area of woodland that David
has tended for many years: Cae’n-y-Coed. Our first stop was the Ash Dome, the
winding forms of 22 ash trees planted 40 years ago and now forming a vast dome.
The trees were still wintery, with just one set of pinnate leaves emerging, in the
freshest of greens, from among the highest branches. David showed us around the
wood, taking us through his purposeful plantings in the midst of more wild spaces:
we walked through the Oak Avenue, passed the Leaning Larches, and inspected
piles of logs that will be future domes of moss. Then we were, quite literally,
stopped in our tracks at the sight of 49 white-trunked birches, planted in a square:
seven lines of seven trees, each seven feet apart, rising from a carpet of bluebells
and catching the light of a pale sun on their straight, white trunks.

The conversation that follows offers a snapshot of David’s views about the Ash
Dome, Cae’n-y-Coed, his journey as an artist, and his relationship to wood. He
begins by telling us about his own planting in this woodland:

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If I’m using wood, I should be replacing the trees. The British navy ran out of oak
in the Napoleonic wars so they got the government to encourage people to plant
oak, planning for the fleet, now that’s long term thinking! They were doing the same
thing in northern France: people planting oak so they could fight each other –I’d
also heard that Chinese potters, in ancient times, would use clay that their
grandfathers had laid down for them. It was their obligation to lay down a pit of
clay, for those that come after, preparing for something beyond their own life.

You say wood is your thing. How did this begin?

When I was in a nursery school, aged about 4, it was autumn. Virginia creeper on
the wall of the house where this kindergarten was. In autumn the leaves fall off and
the stalks separate: they’re about fifteen centimetres long, and pink. I picked some
up, and I found an elastic band and I put it round, and I stood up. The teacher
said, ‘Oh, that’s very nice David!’

That is my first memory of making something out of picking stuff up that was
there, and taking the opportunity, finding the way of holding them, making a
bunch. And then as a kid I worked with wood, scraps, branches, swords, bows and
arrows, all that sort of thing. You can just pick wood up - it’s there, you don’t have
to buy it, if you’re in the circumstances I was in, which was partly here in North
Wales - all our holidays were spent here, with my grandfather. That was my
introduction to the natural world, to seasons, and rain, and gales, and sunshine
and rivers.

At art school, I tried everything from plastics and stone carving to resins, fibre glass
and welding metal. That was in the early 60s, and then I found my way to wood,
starting with scrap wood from demolition.

What was it about wood?

My temperament is one of sanguine choleric. I must be moving, I must be doing

something. I’m more like a sprinter than a long distance runner. So carving stone,
that’s like long distance running. You can saw a piece of wood, you can join it
easily with a nail, or bind it. There’s a fluidity. I wanted to be able to have resources
to hand, so I went scavenging, because I wanted to make. There was a big question
about whether this was really ‘sculpture’, or ‘art’, and I thought, well, this will sort
itself out. People do call what I do ‘art’. So I’ll go along with that.

When we were chatting earlier, you were saying that a tree is not really wood until it
is cut down.

Yes, obviously you look at a tree and you think, ‘Well, it’s made of wood’. But the
tree makes that material as a living, breathing, flowing system, a living body; only
when it dies the body becomes wood, which is why working with wood is so special
because it is something that has grown from elemental forces of life. It has a time
element to it, which we instinctively recognise, although not necessarily
consciously. When I char wood sculptures black, it changes their time. You’re not
seeing wood any more, you’re seeing carbon. And carbon exists in a different realm,
a much bigger realm. These trees, though, they’re much closer to our mortality in

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terms of life. If they live to 200 years, that’ quite close to seventy years, really,
compared to tens of thousands of years. Stones are much older. And to wake them
up you need quite a lot of work on them!

So what is it that drives you to keep making?

Will forces it’s called. Habit. A creative gene, and a therapeutic need – I get very
frustrated when I can’t do something, but I’ve got a very good working relationship
now with other people who can do a lot of the carving.

I read that when you planted the Ash Dome you said that you were creating it for the
21st Century, at that time people were saying the human race is going to kill itself off
and the year 2000 seemed like an impossible thing to go beyond. But perhaps the
emphasis has shifted with concerns about what we are doing to the natural world.
How does that come in to your current thinking?

The Ash Dome is a token of working with nature, it’s a collaboration, and I think
that’s what people recognise. I needed to prune it, I needed to fletch it, to control it,
and to keep the animals off it. I wanted to make a land work which needed me, not
just at the beginning, but would only happen if I looked after it.

The potter thinks of the volume of nothing and he brings the clay up around the
invisible shape. This idea of bringing material up over a space impressed me. I
wanted to grow a space, a simple space. And a dome is a very simple space. And it
hasn’t got a defined entrance to it. If you have an entrance, it’s aligned.

I was also looking for a way to have a sculpture outside that was genuinely of
where it was – a tree grows with the energy, the nutrients, the light, and all the
natural circumstances that it needs, of that particular place. The dome also came
from the dome shape of the foothills around, geographical formations of slate and
granite which are mined. When I was very young my grandfather would point at
these hills and tell me that they’re hollowed out, so this big dome space lived in my
imagination whenever I looked at these mountains, the mountains you can see
from the Ash Dome.

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There’s a simple spiritual geometry of the circle and of the dome, and of the inside-
outside. I have to go with the way the trees will allow this to happen, and I chose
ash because they are the most resilient to being pruned: they will come back, their
will force is very strong. But ash isn’t just one tree - it’s all of the trees, just as you
could say the spirit of oak is inherent in each oak. Rudolph Steiner made this
image of the spiritual world where you can actually meet the spirit of the oak, as an
identifiable experience.

Where do you stand on that? What’s your spirituality?

I love all that but I’m not an overt-preacher. It does help you see a more global
picture but I think what lies behind everything, particularly in nature but also
manmade and creature-made, are spirit forces. We have an instinctive grasp on
that, but everything is a threshold into something beyond, into a parallel universe.
It’s very connected.

But I love the concept of an idea: when you have an idea, it hasn’t got any
molecules until you’ve incarnated it in some way by making a sketch, or making a
note to materially recognise the impulse. If you don’t do anything with it, the idea
evaporates! It goes: you had your chance, it winked at you - you need to respond!
This is why carrying a notebook, particularly for students, is very important.

And when you’ve got a piece of wood, from what I understand you like particular
shapes and forms, but how does the piece of wood determine what you choose to
make with it, and how does this combine with your vision?

Some people bring me an odd shaped branch and I say well thank you very much
but I can’t really do anything with it because it already is something. They’ve
chosen it because they’ve seen something special. But the basic tree trunk grows

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annually, its rings get thicker and thicker, and then the branches lengthen and
they get thicker at the back. The whole economy of the tree is to create enough leaf
area to photosynthesise, to get enough income to fulfil its commitment of covering
itself with a new layer of wood every year. That’s its obligation. If it can’t do that,
limbs die to reduce its output. That’s from Oliver Rackham, his concept of the
economy of the tree. I read that in his Ancient Woodland book, and it’s just magic
to me – I get it! It has lead me to have a much more spirit-based idea about
economy and human will and human impetuousness.

There’s reflection on your idea, feeling and thinking, and their dialogue with each
other. So I have an idea for something, like a show I’ve been asked to participate in,
and I have to put it through a series of questions – if it gets through, or gets
through enough, then I will get on to it. But I might have to begin making it before
those questions start.

Or before you know what the questions are maybe?

Yes, yes, but they’re questions built up from experience. The Ash Dome was one. Is
this going to work? How is this going to be read? How many trees? To begin with it
was a conceptual work, an idea that could be described, an intention to form a
dome.

Why twenty-two?

Non mystic. Twelve would have been the apostles and all the other associations.
And it needed 22, to be that size.

Were they spaced specifically?

Yes, they’re equally spaced. The size is dictated by the idea and the flat area of that
particular bit of ground. It was in amongst other trees then, that I have had to thin
out to get more light in.

It is a long term, living piece. How does this fit in with the rest of your work?

Well in the general story of my work, Wooden Boulder is long term and it’s entirely
dependent on its engagement with the elements: the tide, the wind, the rainfall all
contribute to where it gets placed. Or it is out of sight, as it is at the moment.
These were in my strategy of my work as a whole: influences that are very quick
but also long term. The Ash Dome is going to grow and I’ll just see how it works. I’m
its custodian but I’m not there all the time watching it. Some carved sculptures are
realised all in one stream of action, others hesitate. I’m unsure so I leave them in
sight but focus on something else until it reveals how it can move forward. I’m
surrounded by quite a lot of those.

In the sculpture work at the time, Caro and his metal acolytes were very dominant
in the art world. They had a dogma which I just couldn’t agree with: the idea that a
piece had to be completely self-contained, self-expressed, it didn’t matter really
where it was. The Wooden Boulder is the absolute opposite of that, it’s entirely of
where it is.

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In the ’70s, ’80s, most of my income was coming from teaching, and I’d work in the
sculpture department as a visitor. Every school had some Caro followers in it, and
a group of students who were doing proper sculpture, and then there were the
others. I related to the others: they were much more interesting because they
actually had different things to say.

On that subject of having things to say, how important are the words you choose to
describe something or to talk about your work?

I am a great believer in word of mouth. I knew that people would only see the Ash
Dome if they came here so it would be a small number. It’s not in a public place.
There are no arrows pointing to it. It’s sort of known about. One of the things that
impresses people is someone taking a long term commitment to make something.

Am I answering your question? A lot of these things look after themselves. I’m a
great follower of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, who would say: don’t push yourself out
there. He’d say, Wait. So I waited. I got invited to show in a York festival, in 1972,
which was mainly a music festival. That was the right moment, and I had the right
work: the cracking balls, rough tables, willows split and rammed into each other. It
was the right space. Somebody saw it and talked to somebody else and that
eventually led to a significant solo show at the Arnolfini in Bristol in 1976.

I wonder about ash dieback, and if you’re concerned for the Ash Dome in case it gets
infected?

I was very worried about it. I began talking to people and finding out what I can put
in to strengthen them, but really I’m working with natural forces. I’m trying to work
with what can happen. So this is something that is happening - the fungus is a
natural force. I have to accept it. And at the same time, now, the Wooden Boulder is
not present. I never thought the Wooden Boulder would get to sea in my life time, or

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even into the estuary. But it did. And then the Ash Dome, I didn’t know whether it
would get to the 21st century. I took a photograph of it on the last afternoon of 1999
and another photograph of it, from the same space, the next morning. These are its
graduation photographs, and they are exactly the same! It doesn’t care, does it?

Do you think your work has simplified over time?

Oh yes. Now it’s usually made of one piece of wood, rather than several. Except the
dome form, where you can make a huge object with lots of little bits. It’s the wood
that has always led me. I wanted a material which would inform the work or be a
partner in it. When I was first working I was dominating the material – a piece of
ply wood cut to shape, I’d paint it, and then another shape added and different
microcosms within the whole thing. But there was always: ‘have I got the right
colour?’ Then there was the sanding, then the painting. I thought, ‘Why don’t you
just look at the wood, where it’s coming from?’ And then I did. The wood is a
partner, and it leads me, it still leads me.

This Ash Dome is a very special place. Rob and I call our collaborative practice
somewhere nowhere, and are interested in the way that the more you get to know a
place the deeper your understanding and connection with it becomes. Where is your
one special place, if there is one?

Well we’re sitting in it! I do come here quite a bit. When I was first working here I
used to get terribly tired, quickly, until I made a hut. And then it was like being
able to go into somewhere, like a cave, with protection from the wind and the rain.

People often say about the traffic noise – there are two big roads either side of us –
but it doesn’t bother me really. You can imagine the Ash Dome is in a wilderness

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situation but it’s not. And the Wooden Boulder – that has made social interactions,
like when it got stuck under a bridge. The farmer was very anxious. I got it out
because it was going to build up more wood around it and might take the bridge
out, or the stream would flow into his field. We took it out and moved it beyond the
bridge and back into the stream. Then the local authority came to take it away,
because they are obliged to clean out under bridges. The same farmer came down
and said, “You can’t move that boys! Apparently it’s art.” So for six months it was
on the side of the stream and I was waiting for somebody to push it in. And it
happened. I had a group of students and they said, “Isn’t it supposed to be in the
river?” I was hoping someone would push it in, because I’m not to touch it unless
it’s a danger. That was my rule.

The flip side of this being your somewhere, is there a nowhere where you would like
to go and get to know better?

Oh, there are lots of places. You know I travel a lot but I’d like to go to India, and
I’d like to have walked in the Himalayas, but I’m alright not to have done that. I can
imagine those places.

I’ve been to Japan and Korea and China, and lots of places in Europe, mainly to
work. And by working, that’s my way into knowing a place because I’m working
with a tree that has grown for decades in that place and has fallen. There are
echoes of place in the wood.

More on David Nash at: www.royalacademy.org.uk/artist/david-nash-ra

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