I’d been swimming every summer in the lake with the kids when they were young, but I can remember clearly the day it became something that changed my life. On the morning of 9 August 2019, I woke up wanting to swim. There was no one to join me but off I went. Alone, just me. That year I swam on my own until Christmas (not continuously, of course, I still had to eat and sleep).
Things went a bit off during the pandemic but I was soon back in it once we were allowed out again. As I mentioned before, I take a notebook and while sipping my post-swim drink I write in a journal.
I write down the date and weather, and how the water was – the colour, the temperature, are there waves or is it still? How does it feel against my skin? The time of day, whether there were other people around. I observe and jot down the birds, the quality of the light, what I see, how my body feels, my mind feels and how my heart feels. When I’m in the water is one of the very few times I can calm down my hyperactive brain and this sifting my thoughts afterwards is golden.
When I looked back on almost 5 years of journal entries, there were over 55 mentions of dogs. I had noted their appearance and characters, if they were swimmers, or on paddleboards or little boats. Whether they were barkers and bouncers, family dogs playing with kids and other dogs, or solo companions. If I heard them called by their names that got noted down too. “Baguette!” “Nushka! Au Pied!”
And so the idea of Lake Dogs came into my head. I want to make a body of work inspired by all these notes I’ve kept. I have a collection of interesting lake driftwood and access to an inexhaustible supply of it. The mud of the lake too is a beautiful yellow ochre that once transformed into clay and wood-fired gives me a range of golden reds, browns and black. I have the perfect raw materials to combine with plaster.
Then a year ago Bang came into my life. I had no intention whatsoever to take on a traumatised dog, but the refuge he came from hadn’t properly assessed him before putting him up for adoption. Born in hunting kennels, I assume an attempt was made to train him for hunting boar and deer but he was terrible at it thus beaten and then thrown out and left to fend for himself. I don’t know for how long but it took the rescue association 10 days of leaving him out food to gain trust and catch him. Like me he had been very good at masking and doing what was necessary to people please while waiting for his forever home. A month in with me and the depth of his trauma and behavioural issues became glaring. But unfortunately I was completely in love with him and had no intention of giving up on him. It wasn’t what I wanted, hell no. I wanted a calm and quiet studio buddy, swim buddy, a pooch to sleep on my bed and scamper up hills with. Like Luna had been. Instead it’s been a wild ride, and even with the help of a dog trainer, costly to my sanity, my sleep, my social life and of course my purse.
Bang is pure muscle, long-legged, long-eared and long-snouted. He’s an absolute beauty. One day I’ll make a sculpture of him, but for my first lake dog I took him as inspiration for another skinny scenthound I saw blindly following her nose excitedly until she ran in to swim with her human woman. It was September 2022 and I noted the woman had a lovely yellow swimsuit and her dog honked joyously while she swam. And I also wrote that day that I dreamed of having a dog like that in my future life. After the passing of my beloved dog Luna in 2023 the universe gave me Bang. And he and I, we will get there, we just have to take the scenic route.
So, I made the first lake dog. This is the first time I’ve made a dog armature completely from driftwood. Every joint is made with wooden pegs too. The only wire supports the paws and ears, but I would like to resolve this in future armatures. Wire limbs have too much flexibility and so have the screwed-together joints. Wood makes for a much sturdier and stronger sculpture, and I love how the shapes of the wood underneath influence the form of the dog and give so much expression and vitality. It’s as if the shape is already there and my job is to coax it out and embellish somewhat.
So just another 54 dogs to go now…