by Carla Caruso

Ever stumbled across words or artworks, created from bark, leaves and the like, in the Park Lands?

Chances are you’ve happened upon the designs of Adelaide sculptor and installation artist Jane Skeer.

Her community art is an extension of the work she’s renowned for, collecting detritus of various kinds – including ratchet ties and other plastic and paper waste – and turning them into things of beauty.

During 2020, Jane sat on Adelaide’s streets and asked people how they were doing during the pandemic. “Whoever wanted to, I got them to write how they were feeling in a couple of words. Then I took their photos and made a massive, big ***installation*** *of [their] words and messages.”*

Jane started her ‘land art’ around Adelaide, off her own back, as a way of dealing with the pandemic. “I was battling myself with the COVID situation of the world and I just thought, ‘If I’m feeling like this, there are other people out there who need my crazy head [thoughts].

“So, I just started writing, actually, words – just writing ‘love’ everywhere or ‘hugs’ or ‘faith’ or ‘hope’ or words that I needed to hear.

“Then it just turned into making my circular works and different patterns out of nature. I was walking for 15km a day every day, just making work.

“Every day I was posting [photos] on Instagram, so those who didn’t happen to pass my work would get to see it on my Instagram site. Hence, I ended up with a lot of followers … People started following me [online] when they’d see me, and people would stop and talk to me.

“I had a grown man one day come up, with two great big dogs, and I thought, ‘Oh, my god, what’s he going to do?’ Then he said, ‘I just want to hug you, you have just got us all through.’ … It is my way of hugging the world without actually giving you a hug.”

*One of her ephemeral works in* *Carriageway Park / Tuthangga (Park 17). Photo: Jane Skeer.*

Jane will exhibit photos of such designs at a Seppeltsfield gallery on July 29, as part of the SALA Festival.

Fans of her nature installations, though, may be saddened to hear that they’ll no longer be a common sight soon. (Jane’s hoping others will continue where she leaves off, however.)

“I won the Samstag [scholarship] award last year. So, I’m about to go to the Glasgow School of Art to study [a master’s degree] for two years. I leave in two months,” Jane says.

“I’ve never been to Europe, so it’s all a big world, about to open up for me – a big, scary one. It’s one of the biggest awards in Australia for emerging artists, so I’m pretty chuffed and overjoyed because I’m an older artist. Like, I’m 57.

“So, they’ve actually trusted that I’m going to have some years ahead of me in art-making. Normally, [it’s a] young people’s sort of dream, but I put it down on my dream list, and I actually get to tick it off now.

“One of my main heroes is working there at the moment, and his name’s Andy Goldsworthy. He’s working there for 12 months, doing this sort of work … He’s been given 12 abandoned buildings to build these massive, big installations, out of nature, inside of. So, I’ll be at every single one of them, you wait.”

*Near the former COVID-19 testing site in Victoria Park / Pakapakanthi (Park 16), Jane turned the garden bed, where the pine trees are, into “a patchwork quilt of pine needles”.*

Jane, who hails from SA’s South-East, graduated from the Adelaide Central School of Art at 51. She’ll be leaving her husband and four grown children behind in Adelaide.

“My husband doesn’t know how he’s going to cope,” Jane says with a laugh. “But I said, ‘I’m going, I’m doing this by myself, I have to – it’s my time to find me.’

“I think it’s just important to find ourselves before we part the Earth. My mum got breast cancer at 61, and she’s not around anymore, and I’m knocking on those years, aren’t I? So, I’ve just got to make art while I can, that’s it.

“It’s something you can do until the day you die, no matter where or when. In the hospital bed, I’ll still be doing … whatever I call it.”

When not meandering outdoors, making art, Jane works out of Norwood artist studio and gallery space Collective Haunt. She plans to enter a photo in our Adelaide Park Lands Art Prize next year.

“I’ve made lots [of land art] in the Botanic Garden [in Park 11] – much to, probably, the gardeners’ disgust, when they come across them. But there’s nothing you can’t mow over!”

As well, she says: “It’s basically been the Park Lands along Greenhill Road and Dequetteville Terrace – I’ve made [installations] all through there. I can be there for three to four hours; it just depends. I don’t have a time because I’m basically walking around. No one’s paying me by the hour.

“Then I turn my back and people can’t get over that fact – how can you spend so much time doing something, and then you walk away, and a dog will walk over it? I don’t think about that, though. As long as I’ve got a photo, that’s how I’m holding them.

“I am still doing [such work] most days; I’m just not posting them anymore.”