‘Nest’ by Penny Evans and Nicola Whayman

What comes to mind when looking at a small bird nest dislodged from a garden hedge? Strength and resilience to withstand the buffeting of spring gusts of wind; the softness of the lining carefully constructed by the adult bird to provide a warm, safe haven for the newly hatched chicks; and resourcefulness too, with the careful choice of materials interwoven into this remarkable structure.

A found nest in Penny’s garden was the starting point and inspiration for our Material Dialogues collaboration. This resourceful little bird had used the materials that are fundamental to both Nicola and Penny’s art practice, including merino wool fibre, that it had ‘found’ in the garden, presumably after Penny’s workroom bin was being emptied.

Nicola and Penny found themselves discussing the sadness of the empty nest after so much beautiful handiwork had taken place in its construction, not forgetting the many sorties to feed the chicks to a successful fledgling.  Were they successful? How many chicks had been raised?  Did this empty nest resonate with us both at all and our desire to fill our lives with art-making, where perhaps we once nurtured and cared for?  

Nicola, inspired by the nest, created a willow and birch structure, adding crochet, naturally dyed wool, found wool on a barbed wire, feathers from her moulting chickens, and nettle fibre to provide a soft lining, pretty much as the nest had been made, to get a ‘feel’ for nest building.  Now to make large!  Penny had sketched an idea for a wall installation ‘nest’.  Using British-grown willow, Nicola set about making the structure, and Penny, using wool that the little bird had used in the nest (merino and silk fibre), wet felted ‘nodes’ onto the structure where the branches overlapped. Were we at a crossroads or different junctures in our lives… the nodes somehow felt appropriate.

This has been a great experience for us both working together and adapting our materials to create a dialogue between us as artists, mothers, and our materials.  So enjoyable that we are going to continue the collaboration with an exciting exhibition in Woodbridge, Suffolk, in June 2027!