A couple of weeks ago I headed out to Newark to find all the decorated book benches as part of an art trail by Newark Creates and Wild in Art. Many of you may be familiar with Wild in Art sculptures that pop up all over the country, and even as far away as Sydney and Sao Paulo. The last ones in Nottingham were the robins in 2018. You could pick up a free map from either the Palace Theatre, Newark Bus Station or download from the website. I was using a downloadable map on my phone until I fortuitously bumped into one of the people who’d organised the trail wrapping up some media interviews and she gave me a paper map. The trail finished on 5 September (this is one of a series of posts I had planned to put up before the event I was writing about finished but which got delayed due to a family medical emergency).
There were 11 sculptures shaped like open books to find all decorated by artists from the East Midlands. Some are based around local places and history, others are about fairy tales and nursery rhymes.
I really enjoyed walking around finding the benches – it took roughly an hour or so to find them all and though a few are a little out of the centre (maybe a ten or so minute walk) the rest were quite centred around the market.
Some of my favourite benches included:
Newark by Day/Night by Paul Fox Goddard which celebrates some of Newark’s most recognisable sites, such as the market where this bench was located.
Another one I really liked for the cute details was this bench called Noble Newark & Nursery Rhymes by Vicky Kuhn outside the Palace Theatre which had fun depictions of nursery rhymes figures – I particularly liked the cow jumping over the moon, the cat on the fiddle riding a canal boat and Humpty Dumpty sitting atop Newark Castle.
And finally this rather touching bench called Corporal Ciapek by Nicola Mills in the Buttermarket which pays homage to members of the Polish Airforce who fought during World War 2. Corporal Ciapek was in fact a dog, adopted by Polish 305 bomber squadron as their official mascot during the war – he apparently had his own oxygen mask, customised parachute and a leather jacket. You can read some more about him here.
A fun way to kill an hour or so Newark is quite a pleasant town to wander around.
Louise Jayne's Blog 