Making
19 June 2017
Sat at my beautiful ergonomic desk with the smell of hot car tyres wafting into the room from the flat roof outside my window. The computer won’t let me in and nor will the doors.
Everyone very friendly but I am feeling that usual ‘stuck’ feeling on a new project, of not quite knowing where to begin. Aching to be making. Don’t know what to make.
Day One
25 May 2017
The start of my Leverhulme artist in residence in the Geography Department at Sheffield University. Feeling like a new kid at school, not sure of where to go, knowing virtually nobody. I introduce myself in offices and am greeted with beaming smiles. Asked to come back to sort paperwork, I make my way to the Students’ Union and get a coffee, with an appropriate ‘Number 1’ table marker for my first day – there’s warm sun, a light breeze and a happy atmosphere.
I meet with ‘my’ Professor to discuss the plan for the year and talk about the proposed trip to Svalbard, and am given a desk and a computer in the Post Doc room, temporarily, until a studio/office can be found that I’m allowed to grubby with ‘art’ things, instead of all the clean stuff that people usually do here.
For the next ten months, I’m going to be looking at all things ice, carbon, coal and methane. I’ll be looking at the links between Sheffield and Svalbard, the writing of Robert Neal Rudmose Brown, the founder of Sheffield Geography department and an Arctic explorer who has written screeds about Svalbard, and looking at some of the consequences of the carbon cycle and climate change.
Sheffield – 1
25 May 2017
The start of my Leverhulme artist in residence in the Geography Department at Sheffield University. Feeling like a new kid at school, not sure of where to go, knowing virtually nobody. I introduce myself in offices and am greeted with beaming smiles. Asked to come back to sort paperwork, I make my way to the Students’ Union and get a coffee, with an appropriate ‘Number 1’ table marker for my first day – there’s warm sun, a light breeze and a happy atmosphere.
I meet with ‘my’ Professor to discuss the plan for the year and talk about the proposed trip to Svalbard, and am given a desk and a computer in the Post Doc room, temporarily, until a studio/office can be found that I’m allowed to grubby with ‘art’ things, instead of all the clean stuff that people usually do here.
For the next ten months, I’m going to be looking at all things ice, carbon, coal and methane. I’ll be looking at the links between Sheffield and Svalbard, the writing of Robert Neal Rudmose Brown, the founder of Sheffield Geography department and an Arctic explorer who has written screeds about Svalbard, and looking at some of the consequences of the carbon cycle and climate change.
The Waters Wide
5 May 2017
I’m delighted to be showing at Cartridges Law in Cowick Street during Art Week Exeter (AWE) from 14- 21 May 2017. Please see the AWE website for details. You are very welcome to join me for a private view on Thursday 18th May at 5.30pm – 7pm. Please contact me if you would like to come so we can provide more than just water…
All works are for sale, 10% of sales to go to Devon Wildlife Trust.
Leverhulme Artist in Residence
15 February 2017
Stunned and excited to be the Leverhulme Artist in Residence at Sheffield University for 2017-18.
Carbon 52
24 October 2016
Every week, for a year, I’ve been writing to the Prime Minister (whoever it happens to be at the time) about Climate Change and environmental issues. It started with all the pre-COP21 optimism. It ends with the news that 2016 is set to be the hottest year ever on record. I’m not sure how I’m going to exhibit these yet. For now, some snaps.
Manor Magazine
12 February 2016
Huge Thank you to Belinda Dillon and Manor Magazine for the beautiful article in this month’s issue. you can read the full article here: MANOR 008 naomi hart
Alone
4 August 2015
3-4 August 2015
Anchored opposite Roede Oe (Red Island).
We are on day/night reversal – it makes very little difference anymore, ‘I don’t know whether it’s Christmas or Tuesday’.
This place is so beautiful.
I am alone on Ezra.
Alone in the world.
Fogbound in the ice
25 July 2015
24 July 2015 00:30
I can’t quite believe I’m writing this. We are moored up to an ice floe, now stern into one and bows into another, about 15 nautical miles SSE of Scoresby Sund in the Denmark Strait (previously the Greenland Sea). I’ve just been out to check the weather – still foggy, so no point waking everyone to carry on – and we are drifting at about 0.9 nm per hour south, as we are now caught in the current. Other than the first few minutes when we first saw the icebergs, I am not scared. Though perhaps I should be.
Leaving Husavik I was sick as a dog for 48 hours, vomiting about 12 times until the end was that brilliant greeny-yellow colour of bile and stomach acid. I tried 3 times to make my watches, but could not stand or sit upright, so ended up on the saloon settee, in everyone’s way, opening my eyes to see them coming or going from watch – wet, cold, sick, tired and having to do extra because of me. I have had half a glass of cranberry juice, 2 bites of bread and half a cup-a-soup in 48 hours. Urine, when I first go and for the next 10 hours is a violent sunset orange – slightly more alarming than the fluorescent yellow after D gave me Vitamin C tablets.
Sounds of sailing
5 July 2015
Sunday 5th July 2015
R, D and S letting out reefs in the middle of the ‘night’ (as all sleeps between watches have become). Banging waves, to silence as they ‘heave to’. The stomping, squeaking, muffled voices, banging and creaking of ropes, then the gentle swish of water one and a half inches away from my ear as we get going, not fast enough, more banging, stomping, creaking, jibe!, jibe! then we are going again.
The bang, bang like a galley door of the staysail sheet pulling through the block above my head.
The clatter-clatter drone of the engine cruising at 1500 rpm. At one particular speed it sets off beeping, something wrong with the alternator.
But the stove is lit, now the waves are not crashing over the deck, so inside is at least warm. I still don’t want to do anything except sleep.
I couldn’t do this for a living.