Rodney Dale

When she moved to March from London

When she saw the Fenland landscape

Chris Wood felt an alienation

From the harsh, relentless flatness,

Harsh, relentless, spartan flatness

Echoing all her negative feelings.

Chris had left the RCA where

She had worked with glass and mirrors

Light, reflection and illusion

Space and virtual images and

‘Now you see it, now you don’t’ things.

When she moved from March to Stretham

Settled in a friendly village

Chris’s visual response be-

Came the opposite completely.

Where there had been alienation

Now there grew a fascination

For the lettuces a-growing

In their soldierly verdance

In their military precision

In the fields twixt there and Wicken

In the fields of good John Shropshire.

Now obsessive lettuce lattice

Preyed upon her sense of order.

Chris reflected that reflection

Would produce a pattern virtual

Complementing patterns real,

Juxtaposing real and virtual,

Stimulate the thoughtful viewer

Thus connected to the landscape

By the cunning use of mirrors.

So Chris built kinetic artworks

Using optical effects to

So distort the linear patterns –

Though dependent on positioning

Viewer vis-à-vis the objects –

That she caused an interaction

Twixt the optics and the landscape

And – sine quâ non – the viewer.

Thus Chris Wood achieved her object –

Showing that the serious, sombre,

Aspects of those interactions,

Images along the trackside,

Demonstrate the playful flipside

Raising smiles along the wayside

Showing mirrors have a playside.