Green viewers, welcome to today’s Enlightening Entertainment.

We have just watched a fascinating performance at TRAIL Recycled Art In the Landscape, a wearable art show held in Teignmouth, Devon, the United Kingdom. TRAIL is a network of volunteer professional artists and artist-led community groups, who through their work express their concerns on environmental issues and climate change.

Liz Lockyear is the founder and coordinator of TRAIL.

Initially we started off with just landscape. And since then, it has evolved. We now have the gallery every year, and we also have something called wearable art. Everybody has to work with recycled materials, at least 70% in each piece. Or if the work is, if the work is maybe photography, which doesn't really come under the heading of recycled then we really ask for the work to be very, very much related to environmental issues.

This piece is called the “Electri-City,”. And it’s a cityscape made up of old bits of computers, photocopiers, washing machines, VCRs, TVs.

Jan O’Highway is a mosaic and ceramic artist and art teacher. Jan has used her artwork to express her concern for the planet and hope for a sustainable society. For her creation, “Four Seasons,” Jan used all recycled materials.

With these particular pieces, they were originally inspired by… in, oh where is it? Cirencester, there’s a museum. Cirencester is an old Roman city with… an amazing floor, absolutely huge, great big floor of the Four Seasons, a Roman, you know, absolutely with four heads of the four different, representing the four seasons in the corners.

Textile artist Vineta Cable combines traditional crafts of sewing, patchwork, quilting, embroidery, along with various recycled materials, to make her creations. Inspired by the garments worn by England’s Queen Elizabeth I, Vineta created an elegant regal blue dress named “Bluebelle,” which is actually made from discarded samples of furniture fabric books.

Generally, I primarily work with textiles, and I always have liked to use something that has had a previous use, especially dresses and clothes from charity shops.

Can you tell us a little about your bags, please?

My bags are called “Pink Not Brown Paper Bags.” That’s because they are mainly made of paper. It’s various types of paper. This particular one recycles some wallpaper.

This here uses magazine paper… and it’s three layers of magazine paper. And this particular bag is made out of tissue paper… that has been applied to a fabric background.

They look very beautiful, but are they functional?

They are fully functional.

British artist Liz Lockyear transformed a barn into a huge sculpture, and has been reflecting on the relationship of human activity with land and nature.

was a very big piece of work, but it really looks particularly good from the inside, because when the light shone from the outside, it was like being in a cathedral, with all the colors of a stained glass window.

Liz emphasized that TRAIL’s development is due to the creativity and energy of all artists and groups involved.

But I would say nearly every one of the artists that work here have always worked with recycled materials, and so consequently this is the natural habitat for them. It will bring together lots of different people, people that have different philosophies, different religions, different cultures.

Now let’s meet painter and art teacher Rachael Bennett, who enjoys working with recycled cardboard to work on and usually paints without using brushes.

My landscapes are not supposed to be naturalistic, they are supposed to be like a gesture to make you dream, really.

I want people to be able to be freed up by them, as they are when they are on a shoreline, or in a field, so that they can have time to contemplate.

I use boxes, quite a lot, because they describe liminal space very well, I think. So I carve into them and I cut them about… then I put them back together. But I never ever change shape. So they are as they are.

Let us now walk out of the exhibition hall to visit Vera and Peter Stride’s sculptured home garden, which has changed other people’s unwanted things into admirable art. Vera and Peter are self-taught artists who work with recycled clay. Using special techniques such as wood firing and smoke firing, Peter has personally designed and built kilns by reusing old bricks. Peter also made a chair out of ash and hedge cuttings, calling it the “Ash Throne.” Vera’s work includes animals and birds, in which she shows the nuances of their expressions and attitudes.

Nature and the environment have been the main themes of artist Luci Coles. Her work reflects her feelings about the fragility of our relationship with the Earth.

Using an unwanted dressing table, stool, standard lamp, crushed glass, recycled concrete, and reclaimed plants, Luci created a sculpture named “Concrete Jungle,” which remains in the Homeyards Botanical Gardens, serving a practical function as a habitat for butterflies. Luci also talked about her three-dimensional work, “Bird Nest Project.”

I’ve had a character… I call “my little bird.” This is the first three dimensional realization of my little bird A little bird looking for something or searching for something or having to build a new home.

So it’s looking at recreating nature, giving nature a bit of a helping hand to keep itself looking good.

The little bird remembers a lot of the past, it remembers how things were meant to be, and it remembers all the ancient ways of the birds. The little bird is torn between the two worlds, because… it still remembers its past, and its not quite making sense of the future, and its ever so worried about its little eggs.

The piece on the wall behind me, which I call “Exterior Design,” is a kind of show homes, so that future generations of little birds can choose what their nests can be like.

So the birds are having to recreate their own idea of a nest?

Yes, well there is a whole relationship that goes on between the bird and the eggs. They are the future that we’ve got to look after, and so the little bird strives to make the world a wonderful place for the little eggs to live in, for the future generations.

Many TRAIL artists run workshops for the public, to reinforce the green concept of “recycle and reuse.” Many of them are also the leading force of various community groups that work on environmental issues. Gill Greatorex is running an outdoor art group in her village, which has produced various metaphorical pieces for TRAIL projects.

We have a lot of fun together.

Access to Community Education (ACE) is an organization that provides recreational and learning activities for physically disabled adults. To address the problems that humankind has created for wildlife, they created a sculpture called “A Plastic World for Birds.”

Shaldon Primary School in Devon is one of the children’s groups that TRAIL artists have long been working with as well.

We’ve had an artist in residence come in to the school, who has sort of set up projects, got ideas from the children to think environmentally, using recycled materials. They have done things like wigwams. They have done bits of tree-hanging butterflies made out of recycled materials that are then hung in the trees in the Botanical Gardens, which the children have really, really enjoyed doing.

To bring attention to the problem of plastic bags, 800 volunteers each constructed one square by knitting 4,000 plastic bags destined for landfill. The project took 1,000 hours and ended with an enormous soft sculpture named “Broken Rainbow.”

But what was quite amazing about that project was how many people were on site and actually agreed that we had to do something about it, because they were littering up our countryside and our seas.

Environmental artist Lauren Ballard created a flock of sheep sculptures out of plastic bags.

It was very kind of just playing around with wire and things really that a sheep sort of materialized, and then it kind of grabs people’s sort of imaginations I think as well, just because of the materials and properties of it really, it’s quite comedy. So a flock of them quickly, sort of materialized.

The Bee Project aims to save the Earth’s vital pollinators. The huge decline in bee populations has been caused partly due to climate change.

We use TRAIL as a platform to promote environmental awareness. And in Dawlish, we focus on a particular issue, which was saving the bees.

Okay, so I’ve made these bumblebees. But are focused on the individual species that are threatened.

We were really trying to encourage people to think about what they could do for themselves as well, A major part of that was the flowers that they could plant that bees are attracted to. So the nectar-rich types of flowers, a lot of them are kind of wild flowers, and also fruit flowers and herbs as well.

Artist Gill Greatorex has created a series of artworks from foil tops she has collected from bottles.

We’re talking about fruit juices… we have a fruit salad, we have strawberry. We have all sorts of flavors of fruit juice.

Vegetarian artist Maddy Norris’ work has recurring images of circular, spiral and labyrinthine themes, which she uses to refer to the ancient wisdom and spiritual knowledge of indigenous tribes and their traditions of respecting nature, animals, and Mother Earth.

The spiral incorporating everybody, and sharing, not trying to take or be selfish, or exploit. I just would like… and everybody else I hope. Would like to be able to save Mother Earth and everything upon it.

Maddy has made a transparent sculpture called “Glimshims” from plastic drink bottles.

Liz Lockyear’s sculpture is made out of old car hoods. She named it, “I've stopped the world but I don't want to get off.”

So the way the piece of work comes together is, you know, is not quite as the world as we know it, but it was also… the ice caps are melting down through and, and the continents were being distorted. If we actually continue to be very selfish about the things that we do, of course we will, finally we will be left on our own. Really what we do need to do is work together.

A climate change… I think it is all going to happen. I think it’s going to happen much faster than we think.

I think we should actually be looking at working together on such issues as climate change. It’s one of the big issues that I think could actually unite countries.

We see the effects of it now… in countries where they, you know rely heavily on their, the land and farming. These people are the ones that are going to be affected most by it. I think it’s part of our obligation really and responsibility to help them.

I don’t think we are going to afford the land that can support cows sold as beef any more. But I think we are all going to have to be vegetarian.

We can’t wait for somebody else to come along and sort it out for us, we each have to make our little contribution.

Our delight and appreciation, all caring TRAIL artists for your unique creative eco-conscious projects. May your art works continue to renew our thinking about our precious planetary home and ways to protect it in our daily lives.

For more information about TRAIL Recycled Art In Landscape, please visit:

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