Bridgeguard

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 […]

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 […]

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) […]

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 […]

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 […]

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.

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 […]

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.

‘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 […]

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.

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 […]

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

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, […]

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

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.

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?

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 […]

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.

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.