Jon Foreman: Art that goes out with the tide

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0:30fascinating chat about a different subject from world history. And in this new series, we're beginning with an epic voyage through the story of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. And that's with Kyle Smith-Bino joining us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott. So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye.

1:13This is the sound of land art being created.

1:23And this is the sound of it being washed away.

1:36Hello and welcome to the documentary In the Studio from the BBC World Service, the programme that goes inside the world's most creative minds as they make new work and share it with the world. I'm Doolta Hare and in this episode we're not in the studio, but on the beach, examining the world of land art where nature itself becomes a canvas for creativity. I'm John Foreman and I'm a land artist and I create work in natural spaces with natural materials like stones, leaves, driftwood or sand. With these simple yet profound elements he weaves intricate patterns and designs directly onto the landscape.

2:23These earthworks feature hypnotic compositions that organise stone and sand with an all-encompassing sense of structure, balance and beauty. My work is very short-lived and will eventually be reclaimed by the elements, whether that's the wind or the tide. John's work may last as little as ten minutes before the sea washes it away, but his philosophy is to appreciate an artwork's beauty during its brief existence. Beyond visual aesthetics, John's art is a tactile and sensory experience. These images evoke a sense of wonder and resonate in the imagination long after you've seen them. The landscape is a huge source of inspiration for my work because I can respond to it.

3:18And nature makes me feel free, and my studio is the beach. I'd like to think that people realise that I'm working alongside nature, which is a message in itself. We should be looking after the planet rather than just using it for what we supposedly need.

3:41John's work is also a therapy for him, an escape from the stresses of everyday life. Each work begins with a ritualistic walk to the beach, an integral part of the creative process. I've arranged to meet John on the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path, a winding trail that offers breathtaking views of the Welsh coastline. In this episode of In The Studio, we'll accompany John as he makes a new piece of work surrounded by the tranquil sounds of this remote beach. But beware, as I was soon to learn, the journey down there is not straightforward.

4:28So, John, what's the name of the beach we're going to? Linzway Bay. Linzway Bay. And this is one of your favourite spots to make work, is that right? Yeah, this is actually my favourite. It's a lot quieter than a lot of the other beaches because there's a bit of a walk down and the steps are a bit lethal. So, yeah, a lot of people avoid it. Well, you mentioned lethal. You didn't tell me that when we were talking last night. Yeah, well, you're on your way now. It's too late. Too late to turn back. The journey down is always just pleasant, and that's quite a nice thing about this as well, although the steps are a bit lethal.

5:04This part where you're looking down the cliffs... Oh, wow. I always stop and have a quick look over the edge just to see where the tide is at. This is extraordinary. So we've just left the park, even though you can hear the tractor in the background, and it is absolutely stunning. So is this Linsway Bay or...? We walk along. OK. The closer we get to Linsway Bay, the more spectacular the scenery becomes. I can smell and taste the sea air now. I can hear the seagulls gliding effortlessly overhead, and the coastline is dotted with dramatic cliffs full of jagged edges and it contrasts sharply with the smooth curves of the sandy beaches below.

5:48I can see a few boats dotted on the horizon and the sea bends and swerves out to deeper water. My first impression is what an incredible location to make work. This beach is perfect for me for everything. It's got a massive beech fall drawing on. The stone colours are really nice. There's really large stones, so if I want to work with scale, like just scale and not colour, then I can work there. Yeah, it just offers so much. It's your own private piece of paradise, isn't it, really? That's what it feels like, especially this time in the morning. So it's the ultimate playground for a land artist, really?

6:29Yeah, it's just getting down there and getting back up.

6:36We're now at the top of the cliff, and there's a warning sign here telling us that there's steep steps with sheer unprotected drops. So I think this is the lethal part. And I probably should have mentioned this, John, but I've got a fear of heights. Oh, no. I had no idea. So I think I can manage this. I was going to say if I close my eyes, that's probably not a very good idea either. Just only look at the steps. Don't look down, just look at the steps. The things we do to bring you documentaries on the World Service.

7:12OK,

7:17so we're descending the path now. This step's so big that people have made a dirt step to climb it. I try to take John's advice, but it's hard not to think about the sheer drop from the cliff just a few steps away. I can feel my heart racing. I just inch my way down the cliff painfully slowly while trying to maintain some dignity. We're not crazy far.

7:55Four more steps. After what feels like an eternity, I'm quite relieved when I eventually set foot on the sand. The soothing sounds of the beach. come into sharper focus.

8:12Well done. I can see now why not many people come down here when you perhaps have more accessible beaches around. Yeah. Sometimes people come by boat to this beach, so I think I'll do that next time. It might be easier. My knees are still trembling.

8:37We've safely made it down to the beach, but John still has no idea what he's going to create. I'm curious to find out how he starts his work and where his ideas come from. So we're on the beach now and we still don't fully know what you're going to do. What's the first step? Do you just feel your way through it? I look at the space a lot and try and work out where I want to do it. I will be doing that. I see you're doing that now. Yeah.

9:08I'm just observing John and he seems really immersed in the moment. John's work is not defined by meticulous planning. Very often when he arrives at a location, he simply allows the environment itself to guide his creative instincts. So there's a certain authenticity, a rawness to his work that comes from this unscripted interaction with nature. But he's been doing this now for about 15 minutes and he's just looked over at me now, so I think he might have generated an idea. Let's go and find out. I've got a plan. You've got a plan. so take me through the decisions that you're making right now so i'm gonna start with a center point and then i'm gathering tiny stones of one color the purple color start with small stones working my way out from three lines and then it'll become a triple spiral so i've just Just put down some lines, just drawn really faint lines with my finger to give myself a bit of a guide as to where the stones are going.

10:32The lines will get covered by the stones anyway, so they won't even be visible. And how do you know the lines are the exact length, is it? I don't. I don't know. I'll find out when I get there. I'm glad to hear it's not a clinical measurement. Oh, no. A little bit like nature is not like that. Exactly, yeah. When I'm drawing those lines, it's kind of like you use the full extension of your arm and then the arc can't really be inconsistent. I might have to pivot my body a little bit. You're squatting down and just using the length of your arm at full extension. Yeah.

11:25So I just placed the first stone. I think that's going to go right in the middle. I'm going to need a lot more small stones.

11:36So we now have three spiralling arcs starting from the centre point, working their way outwards, gradually getting larger in size. The stones, which only ten minutes ago were lifeless and scattered, begin to form a harmonious pattern under John's skilled hands. Every stone, every curve, every nuance is essential to the work, and each moment counts because time is now ticking.

12:07John, I see you're bringing out a very sophisticated piece of equipment, which is two sticks and some string. Yeah. Are they driftwood as well? Yeah, yeah. They're all from the beach. that I've, you know, it might not be this beach, but the beaches I've been to. And I use this for sand drawing a lot because it's a good way to make perfect circles. So you put the stick in. The other stick is just holding the string. I've just wound the string around it. I've got a loop on the end, so I put the loop around the stick that I've put in the centre. I'll unravel it, bring it to where the edge of the lines that I've drawn are.

12:48so this is the most important one because it's the closest to a to a permanent stone that's in the environment already

13:05so there we are got the circle it's perhaps a bit bigger than I intended it to be but hopefully it'll be all right. Might be a bit of a mad rush towards the end.

13:20John's finished sketch is now etched into the sand. We have three spiralling arcs and surrounding that is a perfectly drawn circle. In a very short space, we've gone from ambiguity to clarity. We've gone from having no plan and no idea to having something which now has form and great potential.

13:44What is it about stone that appeals to you? Well, there's so many options. There's sand drawings. You can't really do things that are three-dimensional. You can make things appear three-dimensional. Ultimately, they are flat. You can work on a really large scale, but you also can't work with colour. So you can only work with shades. So the stones offer more potential to me. Even though stone is the hardest material, it's still sculptable. When you use enough of that object, you can create form. So it might not be malleable, but it is if you use enough of it. And is there something about the physical aspect of the stone?

14:28Was that something that you enjoyed? Yeah, definitely, and the sound. So when I gather them, and when I put them down, when I've gathered a few, You know, you get this sound and it's like, I guess it kind of reminds me of childhood and having marbles. The chink sound is just really nice. Something extra therapeutic about that touch and the sound of it. A few hours have now passed and it's 2.30 in the afternoon. John is now placing each stone with care on top of his earlier sketch. but the work is really progressing quickly now and John is sourcing the right size and shapes of these purple stones from the back of the beach with absolute precision.

15:16And do you take a break for lunch then? Sometimes, if I feel like I've got enough time. I have got food with me but whether I'll stop is another thing. But sometimes I don't just because I'm sort of in the place, in the zone. So I just don't eat until I've done everything. The one thing I didn't fully appreciate until now was how much hard work this actually is. It's a really physically demanding process and John hasn't taken a break in hours. He's completely immersed in the work. It's a little bit like watching a long-distance runner. I don't mean this in a weird way, but are you aware of what time it is?

16:00I don't actually know, to be honest. I have no idea. It's easy to lose yourself in the process. The sounds that we're hearing, I mean, I'm sure I can describe it better, but it sounds like one of those meditation CDs. Listening to this for four, six, eight hours, even subconsciously, helps you just relax a little bit. Do you feel that? I think to a certain extent it can be too relaxing. But I often put music in when I start to feel my feet dragging. And what's your go-to choice of music? Death metal. Death metal. So describe the music to me. I'm in a band called Plaguefather. We are a mixture of death metal, deathcore, doom, melodic death metal, black metal.

16:56we've got lots of different combinations in there. It's quite a death, sort of a metal soup. Yeah. And this is the band that you're a lead singer in? Yeah. So one of the lyrics from this song is I carve myself a place of salvation before now starved of this freedom to sculpt my own world away from the ways of humanity. Obviously it's over-dramatised for a fact, but... My social media name is Sculpt the World so to sculpt my own world is the key quote there isn't it? Two very different worlds colliding. It's been one of the most surprising things to hear that while doing these beautiful ephemeral in many ways calming artworks between your ears is this really intense music.

17:51It's not an obvious thing to do. That's for sure.

18:21Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. And that's with Kyle Smith-Bino joining us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott. So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye.

18:51You're listening to the documentary In the Studio from the BBC World Service with me, Doolta Hare, and land artist John Foreman.

19:04John's latest sculpture is a striking composition. A large stone circle, approximately 10 feet in diameter, adorned with three intricately designed spirals. Beaches vary widely when you think about colour. Some beaches are almost monochrome. This beach is technicolour. The dominant stone colours in front of us are pale blue, lemon yellow, and a kind of deep russet red. But if you look really closely, you can discover the quiet presence of purple. And because he's now taking this colour and amplifying it in his work, it alters the way that you view the landscape. It's a slightly weird experience.

19:48And so, through his work, it's heightened my sense of awareness of what's around me. So do you think we're on track time-wise? I would say I must be a little bit behind. You know, now it's more about just finding lots of stones that are relatively small and blue or purple, and they'll just be dotted and it'll just make it look like it's really moving. That's the whole point now, is just making the motion. It occurs to me that the environment, in terms of the tide, you've got a limited amount of time, you've got a limited amount of space, you've got a limited amount of resources, even though each, in their own right, are quite vast.

20:33But actually, as an artist, that egg-timer on your work is actually a bit of a blessing in a way, because you've sort of got to complete something within a set period of time. You can't really procrastinate because if you do, you leave with nothing. So is that pressure a little bit, in a way, a good thing? Yeah, I would say so. It's definitely a good thing sometimes because, like in the past, I get... I've been a bit, like, over-ambitious in the time span you've got. You're just putting too much strain on yourself. you'll get to a certain point the tide's getting closer and you've got like what should be an hour or two's work to try and do within 20 minutes and it's too much stress too much strain on your back to be like bending over picking rocks at a pace that you just shouldn't be doing and then it's not therapeutic and it becomes something else Are you happy with the work at the moment?

21:36Yeah, I think it's going to be cool it's a lot wider than I meant it to be originally. It's a lot bigger, really. I'm really struggling to work out how far to fade the stones from the edges because the space between is looking really blank and it's bothering me.

21:58That sound you can hear behind me is the incoming tide, relentless and unstoppable, and it now threatens to erase John's work before it's even complete. We are now listening to the artist's race against nature's clock.

22:16And how long do you think before the tide will come in? Because you've also got to send up a drone as well and photograph it that way. Yeah, not long. That's a concern. I should probably get it up very soon. Land art has evolved because of social media. John has nearly a million followers across his accounts. And this next step of the process is vital, not least because in a matter of minutes, the artwork will be reclaimed by the sea. So we've gone from using a stick at the start, from ancient equipment to the more modern. You've now whipped out a drone, and it's all gone very high-tech very quickly.