Earth Notes is a collection of sculptural spheres, each crafted from hand-harvested clay sourced from distinct locations across the UK. Every handful of clay carries the unique geological and historical imprint of its origin, becoming a tangible record of place, memory, and time. Together, these spheres form a family of materials that explore the eroded traces of a past shaped by nature and human interaction.
This project is the culmination of my Master of Fine Art at Bath Spa University, where it served as a core component of my creative practice research. Rooted in walking and foraging across the UK’s dynamic landscapes, Earth Notes investigates the evolving relationships between land, material, and maker. It reflects a deeply embodied process that transforms raw, foraged materials into objects imbued with rhythm and resonance.
The labor-intensive process of forming each sphere mirrors the fragility of the natural world. Clay is excavated, dried, crushed, and sieved by hand, with no tools beyond hands and a simple glass jar. These intentional limitations liberate the making process, encouraging instinctive responses and fostering a meditative rhythm. Repetition becomes unconscious, allowing the hands to discover the clay’s hidden properties—its fibres, layers, and pores—and enabling each sphere to assert its own identity.
Alchemy plays a pivotal role in the final stages of creation. Through burnishing, subtle details emerge, transforming each surface into a richly layered narrative of its material history. Complementing these clay forms are hand-dyed textiles that absorb and archive the embodied memory of the landscapes they traverse. Together, these works create a tactile dialogue, inviting audiences to reflect on their own relationship with the environment.
By presenting fragments of the earth through Earth Notes, I aim to inspire curiosity about the origins of materials in our everyday lives, encouraging deeper connections with the natural world. This practice celebrates the overlooked, forgotten, and unwanted, transforming them into objects of beauty and significance.
Earth Notes
Wilfried Southall, Sustainable Community Engagement Award - A project or process that uses diverse or unexpected collaboration to promote social cohesion/inclusion or reconciliation
The project was recognised for its strength and impact through the Wilfred Southall Sustainable Community Engagement Award, which celebrates projects that use diverse or unexpected collaborations to promote social cohesion, inclusion, or reconciliation. As part of the recognition Artistic Researcher and Academic Steve Dutton reflected on the work, emphasising its immersive potential and inclusive, non-hierarchical approach. Dutton remarked:
Edie’s statement in the catalogue states that “By making interactive, immersive work that is open to interpretation: moving “installations”, textiles and moving image she encourages a thoughtful and emotional audience response.”
The panel felt that potential for immersivity in Edie’s work was the key, both in terms of what was there to see, and also in terms of where the work might be heading Funnily enough Charlie Tweed asked a question yesterday about what might actually constitute a community. I think I made a flippant remark about it at the time, but, on reflection I think I was too quick to make a silly joke, as there really are questions to be asked about what community is? What constitutes it, especially in the environmental, post human, non-human context and I think the panel recognised this as a question sitting within Edie’s work. There is something ‘inclusive’ about it, something non-hierarchical, that it was (almost) literally made up of a series of oddballs, each one having its own history and presence in relation to the ones around them.
It was unclear how they came about but we imagined they were made not just by Edie’s hands but by others too, over conversations and shared stories. On a personal note, I took that further and imagined people sitting around the clay ‘floor’ digging and shaping those spheres, under the cover perhaps of the clay stained clothes like some form of yurt, surrounded by non-human critters. And here, Charlie’s question then about the make up of a community comes back to mind, where are the edges of the that community? in the people for sure, but also perhaps in the critters or even within the deep time which speaks within the very nature of the materiality of our worlds.
