Wolves

Sally Matthews – Great Intake – March 21st 2021

Material: Metal, Concrete, Organic Materials

Trail: Grizedale Tarn Trail

Theme: Nature

Form: Figurative – Wolves

Maps Featured on: 2021

Status: Still in situ, as new Oct 22

Two new wolves have been created and sited high on an outcrop above the new footpath which runs across Great Intake, between Bogle Crag & the tarn. Originally set to be installed in 2020 this sculpture must have been pushed back by the pandemic to late March 2021.

Quote from the Artist “This is not just our Land- This is their Land.

I make and draw animals as I see them – no myth, no fairy tale – animals that share the earth.

Wolves are our evolutionary companions, but our power over their habitat and existence is too great. Grizedale seems the perfect Forest for wolves but now there are none.“

“Wolves and Deer have always been intertwined – predator and prey. Wolves have been seen as a threat to humans and their livestock for centuries and so demonised and persecuted. Are wolves the more frightening or is our ruthless persecution of them and our inability and unwillingness to live alongside them what we should be more frightened of?

Whereas deer have been ‘sport’ and food so have been valued and conserved. The last wolf in England was chased from Cartmel in Cumbria and killed near the coast in the 14 th century, but Grizedale holds the precious and only remaining herd of indigenous red deer in England. We are now the wolf – keeping the deer population at a healthy level within the Forest.

We have placed ourselves as predator – nothing to be frightened of but ourselves.”

Above, work in progress photographs courtesy of Sally Matthews.

Here you can see the metal armature that forms the shape of the wolf. Chicken wire then bulks out the form and natural materials such as wood, wool and straw are added to create the realistic character of the animal.

Sited just around a corner from A Cry In The Wilderness, another sculpture by Matthews, and one which depicts a hunt in progress. The fact that his area of the forest has only recently been made accessible to the public, adds to its feeling of wildness.

In the history of sculpture at Grizedale these wolves are unique. In a way they are a continuation of a previous sculpture, Sally’s Wolves from 1993. It is almost as if these two wolves have strayed from the pack over on Brock Crag, or perhaps they are a rival pack keeping watch over their own part of the forest?

Without knowing they are there, you could easily walk past them, the two wolves simply melt away into the forest.

Photographs taken 28th April 2021

Artist’s other work in Grizedale –

Wild Boar Clearing – 1988

Gallery Boars – 1988

A Cry In The Wilderness – 1990

Wolves – 1993

The Hunted Exhibition – 2019

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Artist’s Website: www.sallymatthews.co.uk

Page last updated Oct 2022