Main Areas of Focus

My interests are wide-ranging, primarily in how human beings affect and are affected by the natural world of which we are part, and the related theology and psychology of connectedness.

Artist

Creating beautiful and thought-provoking art as a means of supporting care for planet and people, nurturing a sense of place, and building community

Writer

Articles and blogs on economics, environment, nature, attentiveness, applied theology, arts, and anything that interests me

Consultant

» Website development and training
» Energy efficiency and renewable energy consultancy
» Research and reporting

Latest News and Produce

What I’ve recently produced. What I’m working on. What’s in the pipeline.

News

Notes to self

Poetry is an exercise in patience.

Blog

National Poetry Day

Writing haiku, inspired by the natural world around (and perhaps inside) Exeter Cathedral.

Published Writing

“How do I like thee? Let me count the ways”

Inspired by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Facebook. Gotta love the AI image generator's attempt to produce a "cloud of thumbs up emojis". It really can't do hands... or faces.

Academia

“Living the questions” again in 2023/24

Teaching on the Medical Humanities Special Studies Unit at Exeter Medical School, introducing fourth year students to conceptual and environmental art; looking at meaning-making and how we turn ideas into art; making art.

Performance/Event

“Think chair” poetry reading

A reading of "Think chair" and other poems more or less related to items of furniture

Exhibition/Installation

"Think chair" for "Get On Board 39"

When I responded to an invitation to 'think chair', Studio 36 published it.

Recording

"...and the Greatest of these is Love"

In their second album, Antiphon presents world premiere recordings of three choral works by Michael Walsh: an unaccompanied Mass of the Holy Trinity; a full-scale Requiem Mass; and The Way of Love, a setting of five love poems by Rupert Brooke. We recorded it in July 2017 in the crossing and Lady Chapel in Exeter Cathedral.

Talk/Workshop

Prayer and Bible reading groups

As part of starting a new blog devoted to prayer and spiritual life, I have moved over the material on related workshops and group work.

Random Work Generator

There are a number of threads running through all my work. Here’s a random sample from each.

Attentiveness

A lane of two halves: one year on

Last year, I did the first half of a walk down the 1800s route of Woodwater Lane. I managed the western half as far as the Retail Park, before giving up due to the rain. Exactly one year later, I completed the journey.

Environment

"Particulart, or the art of knitting, chemistry, meditation and gentle protest"

Particulart is all about knitting. It's also all about the Exeter Incinerator, which was inaugurated on 16th October 2014, and about waste management strategy, and monitoring emissions, and the environment, and health, and transparency, and visual impact, and chemistry.

Making

Press Release - "Knitting exhibition shows climate change to be ‘Up in the Air’"

An innovative art installation goes on show this week to bring alive the greenhouse gases that are causing climate change. Local artist Clare Bryden has been knitting larger than life versions of the particles and making card games. The exhibition, which will be on display from 11-24 July at the Glorious Art House in Fore Street Exeter, is designed to be a playful way of sparking people’s interest in the science and issue of climate change.

Place

Regeneration with Lynn Bailey

Yesterday I had a great meeting with print artist Lynn Bailey, who had come to Kaleider to hear my talk on Working with Gold. She had produced work responding to Mincinglake Valley Park for the dissertation part of her Fine Arts masters.

Play

“Particulart: Up in the Air” opens on 11 July!

Buy a coffee and cake from the Glorious café on the ground floor, and wander up to the second floor gallery for 3D knitted molecules floating in the Earth’s atmosphere!

Public Engagement

Laying foundations with the Quarry Pod

The Heavitree quarries have been voted by the people of Heavitree as the next theme for the Heavitree Squilometre. Of course, the quarries are actually in St Loyes.

Science and Data

Science and heart

Last night, I heard Ben Bradshaw, MP for Exeter, speak about "The Church and Civil Partnerships". He prefaced his talk with some science. But people don't believe what they believe because of the science.

Social Justice

It’s the equality, stupid

Clare Bryden. It’s the equality, stupid. Church Times, 30 July 2012.
Measures of wealth and poverty are complex and subtle; but there is one simple factor, argues Clare Bryden.