The concept or the idea behind our bubble carpet is inspired by the Brussels Flower Carpet. I haven’t actually seen the carpet but planning to go this August. It amazing examples of collaborative site specific work with universal appeal.
The actual making of the Carpet is based on a plan worked out in advance, consisting of several stages.
Everything starts, often a year in advance, with projects and scale models, illustrating a commissioned theme (such as the commemoration of great events, or the arms and shield of a town, and sometimes the proposals of local horticultural associations).
Once the theme has been produced in representation and symbol, the number of flowers and colour combinations calculated and the outlines finally drawn on the ground, and then the work starts. The skilful, dedicated work of a hundred experienced gardeners and their enthusiasm enables them to put together this giant floral jigsaw in under four hours.
The day before, the spaces between the floral patterns will already have been filled with rolled turf. The flowers are packed together one by one, 300 to every square meter of the ground, (+/- 750.000 flowers!) so tightly (no soil is used at all) that they won’t be blown away by the first puff of wind, and create their own microclimate? In heat waves, the turf has to be watered to prevent it from shrinking, but if the weather is too wet, the grass can grow 4 to 5 centimetres in 3 days?
Our Carpet Our Magical Journey’s
Instead of flowers we used recycled scrap fabric eat your heart out M&S. We worked collaboratively to make the final piece. Our planning was intuitive but careful. Our installation is not static it will take us amazing journeys inspired by our imagination and the story….Winnie’s magic carpet.
Fran read the story and we talked about it. We made our magic carpet by joining up all the pieces from last week to make our bubble carpet. We all sat around what we had made and took turns to travel on a magical journey. We went through passport control and the driver checked the lights. The rest of the class made wind sounds. The magic dust was sprinkled and we took off. During the stormy weather we had to hold on very tightly. Maree travelled beside us in her space craft.
This week was a performance with sound, imagination and storytelling. It was really magical to watch the journey unfold. I would have liked to have recorded the sound to share the experience, the movement, the energy…
