Open your eyes and take a look around, as local artist Christina Gestra guides a sketch and walk session around Vauxhall’s green spaces, encouraging inspiration and observation.
Join Christina Gestra, Landscape Architect and Artist, for this two hour walk where participants can creatively respond to the green surroundings of Vauxhall’s urban forest.
Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned urban sketcher, join this session and discover the joy of drawing on location, showing your perspective of the world around you. Drawing materials and paper will be provided, however you are welcome to bring your own if you wish.
Your walk begins at 6pm. Meet outside the Tea House Theatre in Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. From there, you’ll be guided around the park, moving on to Harleyford Community Gardens and Bonnington Square, looking at different tree forms, colours and textures.
The group will then move in to Vauxhall Park where you’ll have time and space to reflect upon and creatively respond to the walk or their immediate park surroundings. This will be a flexibly-led creative session with informal guidance and the opportunity to try bark rubbing, abstract drawing or poem writing.
The route is on paths and level grass surfaces (where appropriate and safe), and is therefore suitable for wheelchairs and pushchairs. Please dress appropriately for outdoor weather conditions, wearing sturdy footwear and waterproof outer clothing.
About your guide
Christina studied Landscape Architecture at Edinburgh College of Art in the mid 1990s and has worked as a Landscape Architect since 1998 within a broad range of practices, sectors and roles both within the UK (London) and the Netherlands. Amidst working directly for design practices she has also been involved with and worked for the Architectural Biennale in Venice and has lectured part time in spatial design for the University of the Arts London since 2007.
Parallel to architecture, Christina has practised as a multi media visual artist for 30 years, often creating and inter-twining ideas of her work relating to the environment and the spaces we inhabit. In recent years, combining her various interests with the importance of trees, environmental and community she founded and established an environmental arts initiative entitled ‘if trees could tell stories..‘ The project looks at an area through the eyes of its mature trees, envisaging all the changes these dignified silent witnesses may have seen over the decades, and in many cases centuries, reflecting on this through creative processes, activities and local walks.
Based locally in Vauxhall, an area in the process of undergoing a phenomenal amount of urban growth and change, Christina has delivered a range of local projects that consider Vauxhall’s past, present and future through the local mature trees and memories of local residents.
Read more about ‘if trees can tell stories…’ at www.iftreescouldtellstories.com.
