KAT WOOD

Photographic series taken throughout The Shepherds' Residency, which is a part of the Neringa Forest Architecture programme at

@nidaartcolony

In August 2021, I became the shepherd for a flock of 30 Skudde sheep, this included daily grazing walks in dedicated forest areas.

The flock of sheep belong to artist Laura Garbštienė’s, her recent practice encompasses temporal art forms and reflections on natural phenomena, ecological awareness, domesticity, and the decline of rural life. Since 2013 Garbštienė has lived in Šklėriai, a small village near Dzūkija National Park, with a small herd of Skudde sheep, where she promotes spinning as an anti-capitalist movement to unite people from diverse cultural backgrounds. In 2017 she started Verpėjos (The Spinners) – an artist run initiative to research and discuss rural traditional lifestyle and nature preservation on a local and global scale.

The Shepherd’s Residency and Neringa Forest Architecture programmes are developed in collaboration with the Curonian Spit National Park, co-funded and organised as part of NERINGA - Lithuanian Capital of Culture 2021.

Skudde, a breed of sheep native to Lithuania and also the title of Kat Wood’s new project, an unfiltered and personal account of shepherding a flock of sheep on The Curonian Spit, Lithuania. The Curonian Spit is a 98 kilometre-long sand-dune spit that separates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. Its northern portion lies within Klaipeda County, Lithuania and its southern within Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia.

Working under the project title ‘The Shepherd’s Residency’ artist Kat Wood was responsible for watching over a flock of 30 sheep, walking them through Grobštas forest for several hours each day, with the purpose of preserving the landscape.

Skudde is split into three different publications; the first one features a mix of portraits and landscapes, highlighting scientific research by Curonian Spit National Park, alongside raw photographs of lambing, dog attacks and friendships made. The second draws parallels between the experience of Shepherding in Lithuania to Wood’s experience of hill-farming in the North of England. The last publication is a documentation of textiles and wooden frames Wood has produced using by-products from the project. All three publications are bound using hand spun wool from the flock of sheep and are bound into one hard-back case.