Alan Franklin – Carron Crag – 1995
Material: Wood
Trail: Carron Crag Trail
Theme: Landscape
Form: Abstract
Maps Featured on: 1995 – 2005
Status: Removed, no remains
Quote from the artist – “Harbour is an attempt to build a piece of work which is in empathy with its environment, and which takes on both the scale and the natural beauty of the forest. It is difficult to compete with the landscape so I deliberately chose densely planted spruce. Essentially everything was brown rather than green, which homogenised the site. It was the equivalent of the white walled gallery in terms of being ‘neutral’ – there wasn’t that huge vista or scale to compete with… The site had a slope to it; it was on a hill so initially thoughts were quite formal putting a horizontal plane in a vertical context.”
- Franklin building Harbour, from ‘Natural Order’ Book, Photo by Val Corbett
This was a huge sculpture approximately 30m by 40m wide. It was completely reliant on the living pine trees for support. Waste timber from nearby windblown spruce trees, painted white and criss crossed through the forest like a latticework. The top view above goes a way to show the extent of the artwork.
It was possible to walk through the sculpture via the pathway created, which can be seen to the left of the image. All the wood was kept at the same height, however the forest floor rose and fell underneath the sculpture. This meant when walking through the piece, you would start of with the sculpture at knee height and would quickly find it rising up towards your waist. This is similar to the feeling of wading out into water. The white wood, resembling the horizontal nature of water, along with the vertical trees resembling yachts in marina, lead to the name ‘Harbour’.
Photograph taken early 2000s
This is one of my photographs. This is the side view, as you can see the close planted spruce trees make it incredibly dark in there.
Last listed on 2003-5 map. The area was clear felled in around 2004 and with the trees went Harbour.
Photograph taken by Reece Ingram 1997
I believe the waymarker for this sculpture was a butterfly, created and sited in 1997. After Harbour was removed with the areas clear felling, this was moved down to mark Columns.
Artist’s Website: www.alanfranklin.net
Page last updated April 2020
Grizedale Forest Sculpture An Unofficial Archive 