Ashide - A Second Nature
'Ashide - A Second Nature' is a collection of high quality, impressionistic photographs, including innovative panoramas, by Carol Ballenger and related haiku by John Powls themed around Japanese style gardens in South West England. In the creative process of developing the final collection the haiku, the photographs and the gardens iterate and respond with eachother. Work on the material is almost complete for examples click here (???????). It will be published, eventually, as a book but will first be exhibited and e-published via this site.
Carol and John have produced 2 successful collaborations of photographs and poetry. 'Dartmoor Dreams' and the most recent, 'Stone Universe' (Halsgrove 2001) which took a similar, exciting but accessible approach to interpreting the theme of Dartmoor.
Ashide is a style of Japanese poem from the 11th century Heian era where calligraphic interpretations of a poem are woven into a watercolour garden illustration, for example in the sweep of a plant stem. Similar presentational effects will be achieved in this collection.
'Ashide - A Second Nature' has the active support of the Japanese Garden Society. 2005 is EU-Japan Year of People to People Exchanges. 'Ashide' is registered as an official project and is taking advantage of their EU-Japan wide publicity and other support.
Exhibitions of the work are planned from late Autumn 2005 through 2006, perhaps with linked poetry/music performance. A 'flagship' exhibition will be held at the Japanese Embassy in Piccadilly in 2006.