markandrebecca ford

by anna jane begley

Mark and Rebecca Ford are environmental artists, educators as well as husband and wife. They’re the pioneers behind Two Circles Design and have represented the UK at several International Environmental Land Art events. They’re based in Slindon in the South Downs National Park.

When I speak to Mark and Rebecca Ford over a Zoom call, COP has just begun, already mired in controversy as its chief executive is caught promoting fossil fuel deals on camera. There is a general pessimism – a hopelessness – in the air in regard to the environment and our relationship with it.

So the Fords’ faces appear on my laptop screen like a gust of fresh air – quite literally; they are calling me from a village called Slindon in the South Downs, a 600-square-mile haven of woodland and wilderness that boasts chalk downlands, wildflower meadows and a pristine coastline. No wonder, then, the Fords became land artists: an art form that uses natural resources as its paint and stencils, and the natural landscape as its canvas.

“Land art has been going on for 60 years, maybe 70” Mark tells me. “Maybe we’re the fourth-wave? I don’t know. You could say that Andy Goldsworthy, Chris Drury, David Nash from the 70s and 80s led the way for the group that we’re part of.”

Mark studied fine art at Sunderland, initially as a painter, then moving onto sculpture. In 1994, he was introduced to willow craft. “Goldsworthy’s assistant was doing her PhD and she took me to a willow bed because I was weaving with ivy, nettles and grass. So we got some willow from Durham – Durham University had a willow bed at the time – and I started using that.”

Rebecca’s background is in English and creative writing, but had been interested in crafts from a young age. “When I was a kid I used to do a lot of tree climbing and creating dams and kind of did my own land art,” she says. “From childhood, we were both really interested in using all sorts of natural materials like leaves or grass or trees or pebbles.

“When I met Mark [in 2003], he was doing his first willow dome for a commemoration memorial and he took me along to weave it in for the first year. It was my first experience – I didn’t do it right either!”

In some ways you could say Rebecca’s pull toward land art was fate: her father starred in the lead role of the 1975 biopic Winstanley, the 17th-century social reformer who led a commune group known as the ‘Diggers’ because of their attempts to farm on common land. The notion of land art, with its emphasis on shared resources and making art that’s fundamentally communal, draws clear parallels with Gerrard Winstanley’s socialist and ecological writings.

But the foreshadowing doesn’t stop there. “[Our family] basically lived with Winstanley for three years. Our dad disappeared and got very deep into the role. He was always making woven houses and wearing all these beautiful woven…” Rebecca doesn’t finish her sentence, getting caught up with Mark in the period in which the film is set.

History is something that is integral to the couples’ thinking. Mark cites the example of The Stargazer, the wicker man they made this year for Butser Ancient Farm: “It’s been done by a museum for 20 years and they’ve always hired in scaffolding. But would they have done that in prehistory? All you have to go on is manuscript drawings, and [looking at those] they probably wouldn’t have done. So I don’t use scaffolding for our work.”

So how important is historical accuracy in land art?

There’s a long, considered pause. “I just think ‘keep it simple, stupid’” Mark eventually responds. “If you have scaffolding that you need to move around the figure, why don’t you just be inside the figure then you move around the inside?”

“It’s important when it’s important,” elaborates Rebecca. “If we’re using historical accuracy to say something then it needs that integrity, but if we’re not making that point then we can play with it. It’s also a statement on historical accuracy because we have evidence from the past but then there’s the interpretation.”

“But there’s lots of stuff we just don’t know because it hasn’t survived,” Mark interjects – I get the impression he’s enthused by the topic. “Sometimes we use tools made of wood, so we grow the tools which of course wouldn’t survive in the archeological record. In fact we’re currently devising a flint tool that can cut willow effectively time after time without having to sharpen it.”

“I disagree with Mark on this one,” says Rebecca. “He’s absolutely determined to find ways that they would have cut willow back in the Stone Age.” She turns to Mark. “You’re so committed to finding the tool but everyone we’ve spoken to says it would only work for two or three goes. I’m not saying you won’t find it, but I’m a little bit sceptical.”

They both laugh with one another as the debate on the matter comes to an end. They’re clearly a couple whose creative disagreements are a large part of their success. “It tends to be: I’ve got some ideas [for a piece], Rebecca has some ideas and Rebecca’s are more grounded and more possible,” Mark admits. “So we make Rebecca’s idea and we make it as big as possible with the materials and the time that we have.”

Big ideas is one way of putting it; they’re currently concocting a project around the myth of the Knucker dragon, an aquatic beast associated with Lymninster in West Sussex. “Apparently this dragon was absolutely terrifying, eating loads of children and causing havoc,” Rebecca tells me. “And somebody chucked a church bell around its neck and it went down a bottomless pond. It’s still down there, waiting for its revenge. One day we’ll do a project drawing on that story.”

Mythology is a theme that permeates the Fords’ works. They made a ‘tetrapodicus’, a four-legged creature with a long neck, in Montreal just one month prior to our interview. “I was looking for something that could be plausible as an actual animal,” explains Mark, “and I found this reference to a tetrapodicus monstro from 1827 and thought ‘this fits’. We try to have something historical or something of origin to humankind, sometimes animal kind or plant kind. When I was working on my own I did a lot of drawings around the origins of life, so a lot of seeds and large scale pods.

“It’s a really friendly, organic, ambiguous form. So it could be a fruit, a seed, a person, anything.”

“We’ve never had an intention to confront or challenge people,” says Rebecca. “People are confronted and challenged enough in life. We try to create this sense of people coming home to themselves, like a gift you give to people and they have that experience. And if there’s a story element, then it creates the moment you have a conversation with someone. Some people love to hear the story and it will start to get embellished as we’re exhibiting, so over two weeks or so the story will start to change and shift.

“We did these lovely things called Aardvark-bird-badgers, and we created this whole mythology around them that they like to go into the woods and drink bluebell nectar. But we just really enjoy making up stories. Mark writes a short story for our niece and nephew every year, just silly adventures, and does all the drawings.”

Do their niece and nephew come up with ideas for their sculptures? “They haven’t yet,” says Rebecca. “But maybe we can get to work on them.” Their 27-year-old daughter Florence is also an environmental artist and occasionally joins them to do sand drawings, “or things with leaves”. Florence, who has Down’s syndrome, and Mark have an Instagram page showcasing their works called Artists with Down’s Syndrome.

With the next generation already becoming environmental artists, what do Rebecca and Mark see for the future of land art?

“There is some controversy with land art as it’s people going into nature and moving logs and sticks and stones around. Some land artists have a manifesto to be responsible; for example, if the wind can blow the leaves then it’s probably okay for you to move them, but you don’t move an established log that’s been there for years because underneath it will be an entire ecosystem,” Rebecca explains.

But ultimately, they’re optimistic with the future of land art and the relationship it forges with nature. “If we go into schools and children are creating a mandala out of leaves, they’re really connecting with the colours and textures and they get to see something different. Anything that connects young people to the environment is so important now.”

Mark and Rebecca are also training an apprentice from the University of Chichester who’ll be working with them from February to June, learning not only how to make the colossal 14-metre wicker man but also social media strategy and networking. “It’s like filling an invisible pipeline with conversations and networking, things will start to come out the other end,” says Rebecca.

They cite the example of the acorn they’re building the following weekend – the architect who commissioned them was taught by Mark and Rebecca at primary school. “He said us teaching him influenced him to become an architect. We thought that was wonderful.”

Before Mark and Rebecca head off to the local pub for a neighbour’s 80th, they tell me of their busy plans for the next year: exhibits in Winchester, Switzerland, Texas and Yorkshire to name a few. But, Rebecca says, nothing beats the ethereal beauty of the UK’s south eastern landscape. “It doesn’t matter how beautiful the place is, the South Downs will always be our spiritual home.”