Wooden Sculptures in Ashton Park, West Kirby

Woodland dolphins?

A section of Ashton Park in West Kirby, Wirral, has been developed as a pocket-sized woodland trail. The height of the old trees readily lends itself to this theme, even though the smooth expanse of one of the bowling greens lies just beyond the bench in the photo above. Taking pride of place along the trail are a number of fairly new carved sculptures made from stumps of felled trees. While I'm not too sure of the dolphins, which in my opinion aren't sufficiently site specific to work well, the other sculptures are lovely. You will have to click on the images to see them full-sized in order to enjoy their details.

Sculpted owl

A pair of nesting owls

Old Man of the Woods

Dangling from low branches around the trail were an assortment of wind-chimes and paper Xmas decorations - mostly snowmen and tree cut-outs - possibly created by one of the ranger-led activities for children. I think it's important to encourage people of all ages to try their hands at various forms of creativity.

So often these-days, arts and crafts are presented only via manufactured packages, ie. kits. Buy the kit, assemble it, call yourself a craftsworker. Copy Japanese cartoons and call yourself an artist. Real creativity is born through experimentation, through bringing your own individuality into any given project. Take ideas from elsewhere, by all means, but then give them new life by exploring what those ideas mean to you. And if one way of doing this is getting kids to decorate a few trees and shrubs, great! From little acorns...

...And the photographer's assistants!

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