Bridgeguard Blog | Stephen Turner

Bridgeguard

Artist Stephen Turner records his experience as guardian of the Maria Valeria Bridge between Esztergom (Hungary) and Štúrovo (Slovakia) from October 1st 2011 – March 31st 2012.

The Bridge Guard Residential Art - Science Centre supports artists, scientists or any other professionals working on projects with the idea of bringing together, connecting, bridging. The Maria Valeria Bridge between Štúrovo (Slovakia) and Esztergom (Hungary) was reconstructed again in 2001. In its long history the bridge was longer destroyed than in service. The program is supported by the 'Stefan and Viera Frühauf' fund, the main carrier of the Bridge Guard Residential Art - Science Centre.

See: www.transartists.org

Moth Watch

Pupa of the cameraria ohridella moth occupy a bowl of fallen leaves from Horváth Géza Sor in Esztergom. The warm weather may temp one or two to appear as moths and the opening leaves of their favourite food in the nearby vase attempts to persuade them that it is really spring. I hope to catch […]

Mar 21, 20121 min read

Local Colour

Different parts of the horse chestnut tree including seed, root, bark and leaf were collected from many street trees in Esztergom and Štúrovo. By steeping, boiling, baking and burning, different local colours were surrendered and have been stored in glass jars with a potential for use. Pure chestnut hearts produced a delicate pink as well […]

Mar 21, 20121 min read

Conkers

Conkers from different trees in Sturovo and Esztergom are painted in watercolour made from the colour of the tree itself. Esztergom (top row) 1 Vadgestena Fasor, Kis Duna 2 Nagy Duna Sétány 3 Horváth Géza Sor 4 Bajcsy Zsilinszky U. 5 Szent Anna Kegyeleti Park 6 Bazilika Štúrovo (bottom row) […]

Mar 21, 20121 min read

Seed of Life

I have previously shown that the tree on the site of the former Sport Presso Café in Štúrovo still stands sentry on the approach to the Maria Valeria Bridge. This is its seed, encapsulated in clear resin to preserve its memory forever. The resin is also etched with a drawing of the tree and […]

Mar 21, 20121 min read

New Production

The root and branch exploration of local street pattern has now given a pleasing graphic to promote public access to my new work at the Bridge Guard Residence here in Sturovo. A two metre square linen canvas dyed in horse chestnut tree colours fills a wall; delicate citromsarga festek from Esztergom and pure concentrated Štúrovo […]

Mar 10, 20121 min read

Tree of Life

I have made a Tree of Life symbol based on my interpretation of the street plans of Štúrovo and Esztergom with the connecting ‘trunk’ of the bridge in-between. Strong roots, crown and sturdy trunk provide a road map for connection, continuity and interdependence.

Feb 28, 20121 min read

Invasion

Divisions from the first battalion of the order Cameraria Ohridella penetrated an undefended Slovakia and Hungary as early as 1994 as the diagram above clearly shows. Their steady advance across the 800 kilometers from Macedonia has proved unstoppable, with the walled city of Vienna falling as early as 1992. Advance brigades are now encamped in […]

Feb 19, 20121 min read

Ice and Water

Floes of sheet ice covering about 30% of the river surface are moving down stream on the Duna and it is great sport for local people to watch the stone piers of the Bridge compact then shatter them – before they progress more sedately down stream.

Stephen Turner

Feb 8, 20121 min read

Sport Presso

‘Sport Presso’ was a much loved restaurant on the road leading up to the Danube before it was necessarily demolished to facilitate the rebuilding of the Bridge in 2001 (The single span visible through the restaurant window around 1977, is a remaining section of the earlier structure). A horse chestnut tree on the site was […]

Feb 7, 20121 min read

Snow Flurries

The recent warm weather ended with day and night long flurries of a fine light snow, which settled on hard frozen ground and on the more giving branches of the studio tree which gained an enhanced highlight of white reflective line overnight.

Feb 5, 20121 min read

A New Forest

A tiny forest is growing from conkers beneath the arching arms of their parent tree by the Little Danube in Esztergom. Further from the ground, buds opened during the course of unusually warm winter days have been killed during their freezing nights. My own collection of conkers, planted in pots in the studio courtyard, are […]

Feb 3, 20121 min read

Crystaline

Small square crystals are forming on the base of the aluminium boiler, on the dried up remains of a used conker ‘soap’ solution.

Jan 24, 20121 min read

From the Heart

The hearts of more than twenty conkers were shelled and finely grated. Native American Indians in the 1890s would sprinkle this material into streams in order to attract and knock out fish; a practice alluded to in Michael Ondaatje’s book Divisadero (p 139). When warmed in a pan of water from the river however, […]

Jan 24, 20121 min read

Tree Guard

The vadgesztenye fa within the grounds of the Watertown Parish Church (Visiváros Plébániatemplom) in Esztergom, has its own permanent cast iron guardian.

Jan 19, 20121 min read

By Fire

Dry dead leaves from a horse chestnut tree at Ade Andre Utca in Štúrovo produce a fine silvery ash which is carefully collected and ground into a particular and distinctive Štúrovo Grey.

Jan 15, 20121 min read

Blue Notes

I brought home a damaged twig from the horse chestnut tree beside the Maria Valeria Bridge. Splitting the teriminal bud revealed the wholeness of its springtime shape; entire, tightly wound, compressed and infused with fluorescing blue aesculin notes under the black ultra violet light. Will April ever seem so green again?

Jan 10, 20121 min read

Fluorescence

Aescelin in the bark and leaves of the local vadgesztenye fák (horse chestnut trees) shows colour in wavelengths invisible to the human eye, in the range of 10 to 400 nm. I detected its presence through the secondary blue fluorescence of a twig from the tree in a jar of Danube water under ultra violet light. These high frequencies are […]

Jan 8, 20121 min read

Out of Darkness

Out of the darkness of a cold night flared a celebratory light, which for a short while conjured the darker matter of a more enduring tree.

Jan 2, 20121 min read

Fragmented

Horse chestnut trees are mirrored in the slowly flowing Little Danube, whilst finches chatter in the London planes which face them from the opposite bank. Locally resident Mallard ducks seem largely unmoved by the moment as they, none the less, radically change the scene.

Dec 27, 20111 min read

A Seasonal Bridge

Dec 25, 20110 min read

Snow Patrol

Winter arrived at the Maria Valieria Bridge today and so I was able to make my first snow patrol.

Dec 22, 20111 min read

Solstice

All the lamps beside the Bridge are firing up to replace the vanished sun; ahead of the longest night which lies ahead.

Dec 21, 20111 min read

Up River

The ‘Sultan’s Way’ ends at the Austrian Capital of Vienna where I arrived yesterday, to find the Leopold Gallery replete with its own images of the Horse Chestnut Tree. The tree itself arrived in Vienna in 1576 at the instigation of Carolus Clusius, the imperial director of the botanical gardens and today there are over […]

Dec 20, 20111 min read

The Sultan’s Way

A sign has appeared on the horse chestnut tree guarding the bridge, which I then spotted repeated on the bridge itself and on the ‘Kat Steps’ up to the Catherdal where the path ran cold. On getting back to the studio I followed a less demanding route on my computer to http://www.sultanstrail.com as promoted on the […]

Dec 13, 20111 min read

In Memorial

Dec 10, 20110 min read

Tender & Tough

The Bridge is quite hard against the sky this evening, but so soft upon the water.

Dec 5, 20111 min read

Essence of Horse Chestnut Tree

Boiled seed cases reduced to an essence and made into colour. Spent energy of autumn waste transmuted into a new energy of artistic creation. From the tree, to an ink, to a painting of it.

Nov 29, 20111 min read

Lunar Surface

A moon recently slid slowly through the boughs of the tree in the courtyard of the residence like a luminous egg suspended briefly from a branch. Size and scale suggest questions of time and distance. The detail of a conker recovered from beneath the same tree reminds me strongly of a lunar surface in […]

Nov 25, 20111 min read

Sounds Off

There are very few leaves left on the horse chestnut trees. Isolated on the branch, curled inward, dry and distinctly dead, they will fall easy victim to the next gust or three of wind. None the less, they still present a precious sight against the morning sun. Surely nothing can spoil the moment.

Nov 21, 20111 min read

On Thin Ice

Irridescent blue flashed from under a log and he was away along the river bank at twenty miles an hour and soon lost to sight. Kingfisher. Ruing the heavy tread of my boots that started him away, but content to enjoy the more static patterns of very thin ice topping the Kis Duna on a […]

Nov 19, 20111 min read

Flow Patterns

The leaves creep along under the bridge where I have been watching their sedate progress for some minutes. Behind my back the traffic flows by much more quickly.

Nov 17, 20111 min read

Panoramas

A Sunday walk to the heights of the Burda a few miles east of Sturovo was rewarded with a panoramic view of the Danube valley shrouded in late morning mist but with the still distinctive outlines of Esztergom’s basilica church and the Bridge. The Burda is 388m above sea level and part of the nature […]

Nov 14, 20111 min read

The Archbishop’s Horse Chestnut Trees

On this sunny saturday afternoon, I set out again for the Basilica to confirm the whereabouts the ‘archbishop’s horse chestnut trees’ as Patrick Leigh Fermor put it.

Nov 12, 20111 min read

An Early Bridge Guard

I have again picked up the two books by Patrick Leigh Fermor which bring to life the experiences of his nineteen year old self walking from Amsterdam to Istanbul in 1938, through a continent soon to be consumed by a cataclysmic war. ‘A time of Gifts’ concludes on the bridge between Sturovo and Esztergom, and […]

Nov 8, 20112 min read

Gravity

A wind is blowing the very few remaining leaves from the horse chestnut around the courtyard adjoining the studio. Its about to get dark, as a dog barks and an aeroplane with a vaporous tail, cruises well above the local turbulence.

Nov 5, 20111 min read

Death of a Moth

The continuing warmth of the Autumn weather encouraged a pupa living amongst the horse chestnut tree leaf collection in my studio to metamorphose into a moth. I found him on the white painted wall somewhat disorientated by the absence of spring growth. Not withstanding the nature of the beast, it was with some sadness that […]

Nov 2, 20111 min read

A Day for the Dead

Today is All Saints Day and local people are remembering past generations of their own kin in the nearby Catholic cemetery. An hour after the sun set, this churchyard was refilled with warm coloured light from candles in transparent orange, yellow, pink and green vases surrounded by a sea of flowers arranged about each inscribed […]

Nov 1, 20111 min read

Reading

Just finished reading ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ by John Le Carre and before that the ‘The Undefeated’ by George Paloczi-Horvath. A piece of fiction by a western writer who made his name out of the Cold War and an autobiography by a Hungarian writer imprisoned and tortured for ‘political crimes’ from 1947-55, by the government […]

Nov 1, 20111 min read

Early Planting

It is possible that the Turks brought the Horse Chestnut tree to Sturovo and Esztergom, as they reputedly fed the fruit (conkers) to horses, in order to improve their condition. It was surely also widely planted for its beauty and the shade it offers on hot dry summer days. While the Turks could never impose […]

Oct 29, 20111 min read

The Pipe is Still a Pipe

I am trying to learn a sufficient Hungarian to get by, as it’s spoken in both Esztergom (Hungary) across the Bridge as well as here in Štúrovo (Slovakia) because of the historically large ethnic Hungarian population. Shop signs in Štúrovo for example are in both Slovak and Magyar. I read ‘Just Enough Hungarian’ in the bath, […]

Oct 23, 20111 min read

Knock Knock

A single woodpecker was tapping a tattoo around thirty feet up, near the top of the horse chestnut tree here at Pri Colnici 2. It took a while to find him, for despite the bright plumage he blended in well and his sound and movement gave him away first. Soon after he left, four […]

Oct 22, 20111 min read

Care and Maintenance

The horse chestnut trees on this particular stretch of road are well maintained and have only recently been carefully pruned. When the new bridge was under construction there was considerable disruption to the highway and surrounding path as the photographs demonstrate. Their careful protection must have been ordered and so someone here is doing a […]

Oct 20, 20111 min read

Pyramid Selling

Katrin Litschko came from Bratislava to interview me as part of a feature about the Bridge Guard residency programme, which includes interviews with founder Karol Fruhauf and an earlier bridge guard from Germany called Michel Jochum. The broadcast was for Radio Slovakia International and the link below is to the complete half hour show conducted […]

Oct 18, 20111 min read

Cameraria Ohridella

Leaf detritus beneath all the horse chestnut trees I have recorded in Sturovo and Esztergom are home to a huge population of overwintering pupa of the Cameraria Ohridella moth – a species first observed in the late 1970s in the Macedonia region and which has since made steady progress north and west throughout Europe. It […]

Oct 17, 20111 min read

Durability

Which is the more durable. The painted steel of the Maria Valeria bridge or the chestnut tree standing sentry beside it? The latest bridge is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, whilst the tree according to local knowledge is at least fifty. The natural state of iron is oxide wrote the respected Victorian writer John […]

Oct 16, 20111 min read

Conquerors

The last of the conkers are being blown from the branches of the chestnuts on Ostrihomska Cestra, the approach road to the Slovakian end of the bridge. The children do not play conkers, but perhaps this river crossing and its surrounding peoples have seen too much of putative conquerors over the centuries already.

Oct 15, 20111 min read

Showing Affection

Symbols of love abound in most places where people gather and can take many forms, but hopefully we can manage without etching our enthusiasm for the emotion onto too many more horse chestnut trees. I am all in favour of affection for nature (it’s the beginning of greater care and understanding of the natural world), […]

Oct 13, 20111 min read

Feast of Simon and Jude

The annual market to mark the feast of St Simon & St Jude, has brought a flood of people who are channeled between two narrow rows of stalls running the length of town, from pedestrian centre to the thinning urban edge; about five times the length of the bridge I am taking time out from […]

Oct 8, 20111 min read

New Blooms for late Moths

It was hot in the grounds of the Basilica today and the archbishop’s horse chestnut trees were in unseasonal leaf and bloom; new green leaves looking relatively free of the leaf mining moth for the most part. It is a strange sight to see these spring greens sharing a branch with the withered oxide orange […]

Oct 4, 20112 min read

Good Fortune

Illuminated sign outside a national gambling or lottery store (www.ifortuna.sk) at the Sturovo end of the Maria Valeria Bridge. I was just wondering about the mixture of striving, hope and chance that carried me here for the next six months, as I walked home with Carl Orff ringing in my head. ‘O Fortune,  like the moon  […]

Oct 1, 20111 min read