A Cry In The Wilderness
Sally Matthews 1990
Mercilessly hard to find, Sally Matthews' second sculpture at Grizedale 'A Cry In The Wilderness' is another carefully crafted scene lifted straight from the natural world, as Matthews herself described:
"We can drive faster than a cheetah runs and kill quicker than a lion. We know how a horse moves and how a bird flies. We may be amazed by 'Wildlife On One', but we forget, we do not live beside animals any more. Our admiration and the mystery of animals has been belittled by our achievement. We are not listening. They have senses and a reality that we have lost or never had."
For younger readers, 'Wildlife On One' was a BBC One documentary series, but this televisual blast-from-the-past aside, Matthews' quote still carries relevance today.
Photograph by Mike Oram
This sculpture wins the award for the longest time it has taken me to find. After giving up due to time constraints on my first visit, I returned a second time with my friend Ken and we conducted a more thorough search. After looking for a while with no joy, we were ready to have a little cry in the wilderness of our own, but eventually discovered we hadn't quite gone far enough and stumbled across the dogs on the wall, on the edge of some trees. It took us a few minutes more to realise that their quarry, a deer, was hiding in the woods. Thanks to tree felling this sculpture is out in the open now, but remarkably, it's still there today.
