iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

I called out from the East Sussex library system store their copy of Aristotle’s The Nichomachean Ethics. Had tears come when I opened it and found its first readers took it out during the Second World War, when this area was often bombed. And yet people went out to get this text on how to live…

Photo shows the issue stamp page of an East Sussex County Library copy of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics. The first issue dates are from the years of the Second World War when this area of the UK was often being bombed

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

‘Understand how much time it takes for a work, or a path, or a life to take shape’ A sculptor’s advice for art & life: David Nash is perhaps best known for his living art piece the Ash Dome - planted in the 70s for the next millennium. He has literally grown a meaningful life. Here is his advice

Image of the Ash Dome by sculptor David Nash: a ring of Ash trees planted in the 70s and tended ever since into this dancing intertwined shape. Their location in Wales remains secret.

“the sculptor’s advice for art and life Always give your ideas ‘molecules’, quickly, before they fade: just a title is enough, or a sketch, or a few notes on scrap paper, sellotaped up and kept in view. In this way, a thing beyond your time, resources, or abilities now, is far more likely to happen in future. Be professional and serious in your work, however late and tentative your endeavours. Measure success not by the number of people who respond to what you make but be motivated instead by that one necessary person you might meet, whenever you risk putting a well-intentioned work into the world. Be moved, also, by the possibility of becoming that person to others. Tell a true, ongoing story of your life as well as your art. Even if you receive no reward or notice for what you do, you still gain meaning from this, and purpose. Understand how much time it takes for a work, or a path, or a life to take shape. Be alert to the teachings of chance.”

— The Cure for Sleep by Tanya Shadrick

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

Well-worn: Husband & Wife Was going about my quiet day alone at home, thirty years married, when the sight of our clothes without us had me stop and fill with feeling. Always-there but never-noticed: his habitual outfit, mine, hanging together on the basement door.

A white wooden door is open to a dark basement. On the door is a yellow handpainted coat rack. On the lefthand hook is a man’s khaki gardening hat, and a faded blue workjacket. On the centre hook, beside it, is a woman’s blue-and-white-spotted headscarf and a navy apron. Portrait of a long marriage as workwear.

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

“Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!” In memoriam #VirginiaWoolf #DOTD 28 March 1941 📷 Starlings over the River Ouse at Southease, near Woolf’s last home - Monks House, Rodmell, Sussex

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

‘She worked on the Harrier, the Concorde. She had a love of speed and freedom. Sports cars. Like the one in which she fled. Flew. From marriage and family. From us.’ Stunning piece by @npitchford.bsky.social for the decade-long collective #BirdsOfFirle project… selkiepress.com/2025/03/18/b...

selkiepress.com

Birds of Firle: She Was Always in Flight by Nicola Pitchford

Aerodynamics was her chosen field of engineering. She worked on the Harrier, the Concorde. She had a love of speed and freedom. Sports cars. Like the one in which eventually she fled. Flew. From ma…

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

‘I once had a winter that was wordless’ In 2020 @littletollerbooks.bsky.social published my #BirdsOfFirle: origin story of a decade-long collective project on hope & grief as the things with feathers. I used Twitter to reach people; hope to relaunch here soon www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing...

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Nicola Chester @nicolawriting.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Deeply moving, beautifully drifting writing from @npitchford.bsky.social for the wonderful, occasional body of threaded stories that is @tanyashadrick.bsky.social’s #BirdsofFirle .. “as if belonging could be as multiple in its objects as love is.”

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Honoured to be part of the beautiful, fragile collective work #BirdsOfFirle, created & curated by Tanya. An ongoing project of 100 writers responding with objects & online to a single physical manuscript, circulated by post over the course of a decade. On grief & hope as the things with feathers...

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

selkiepress.com

Birds of Firle: She Was Always in Flight by Nicola Pitchford

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Clare Rogers @clarerogersartist.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

This silver birch tree is in my back garden & is probably 50+ years old. I aimed to capture it with the remaining few golden leaves clinging on last autumn. Neighbours have always wanted it cut down, but I turn a deaf ear. ‘Heartwood’ Monotype and Drawing 23x29cm

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Katharine Norbury @katharinenorbury.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Multiple oaks perhaps from a long-forgotten jay’s cache.

Several oak trunks seemingly growing from a single base.

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Tim LeRoy @dirtmeetsthewater.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Looking Eastwards is my ongoing artwork where I document the view down the lane from my house. #LandscapePhotograhy www.dirtmeetsthewater.co.uk/looking-east...

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

“The first bird surprised me… Engraved in memory: black leather legs, rictal bristles on the beak, an aluminium eye, and every wing-feather filigreed by white light so I could feel the hooks and barbules holding each one together, a chain mail” #NatureWriting www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing...

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

I’ve just created a Slow Art starter pack. Alongside that, sharing this link to a @bbcsounds.bsky.social show I took part in alongside my mentor #DavidNash. Also includes work of sculptor #JamesTurrell & musician #JemFiner… www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

bbc.co.uk

Seriously... - Pursuit of Beauty: Slow Art - BBC Sounds

Illuminated snails dancing, sculpted volcanoes and music playing for 1,000 years.

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Big Bearded Spookseller @bigbeardedbookseller.com · 01/12/2024

Receding, up on the wilds of Teesdale 2011, Canon EOS 60D #photography #BlackAndWhite #Landscape

layered fields going into the distance in black and white

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

A #SlowArt starter pack… go.bsky.app/V6j8hdS A meeting place for all interested in artists of any discipline - photography, fine art, sound, writing, illustration, more - who make work with a long-running, repetitive, ongoing, cumulative or time-defined nature. Glad of shares & suggestions

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Rob Hudson @robhudson.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

"The days are getting shorter and colder, but I ask you to remember: even as the Winter comes in, there is Hope and there is Light." ~ Seamus Heaney Towards Another Summer.

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

bbc.co.uk

Seriously... - Pursuit of Beauty: Slow Art - BBC Sounds

Illuminated snails dancing, sculpted volcanoes and music playing for 1,000 years.

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Like my mentor #DavidNash, I make work with long timespans: It’s also the art I’m most drawn to… If that speaks to you too, here’s a starter pack of others engaged in serious noticing - through repetition, return, time series & other forms of slow art… go.bsky.app/V6j8hdS

Join the conversation - slow art: artists who work with time and repetition. A Bluesky starter pack created by artist and author Tanya Shadrick

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Patrick Limb @patchlimb.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

“The ability to start out upon your own impulse is fundamental to the gift of keeping going upon your own terms. . . . Getting started, keeping going, getting started again in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm." - Seamus Heaney

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Ian Denton @iand777.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

This Rook reminded me of the Mountain Gorilla that David Attenborough famously encountered in Rwanda. They both share the same intelligence in the eye. @tanyashadrick.bsky.social #ukbirding

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Ian Denton @iand777.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

The Corvid flypast at the cottage just now, on their way to the roost in the nearby copse. This contingent was pretty much pure Jackdaw - the Rooks had sorted themselves out separately, choosing not to have a 'joint enterprise' display. #ukbirding #wildlife #naturalhistory

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Nick Tankard @nicktankard.bsky.social · 10/10/2024

This is what I get up to sometimes: nicktankard.co.uk Pondering some ideas of my own at the mo but also very much open to book illustration commissions. Cheers 😊👍🏻

A collection of images of my illustrations in thumbnail size. Watercolour, acrylics, pen and printmaking illustrations of various books (The Signal Man and The Woman in Black) and some artwork of New York, San Francisco, Tromso among others.

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

‘This was just a crow. / That never fit in anywhere in its life, / or did anything worth mentioning. / It sat there on the branch for a few minutes. / Then picked up and flew beautifully / out of my life.’ - #RayCarver 📷 from #BirdsOfFirle series by @tanyashadrick.bsky.social

A black and white photograph of a rook in flight, wings outstretched, just feet off the ground after swooping down for food. The image is divided in the middle into a bottom half of foreground - Firle Beacon, a high point on the Sussex Downs - and the valley stretching out into light grey in the upper half. An image from the durational Birds of Firle series by Tanya Shadrick

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The Unhurried Reader 📚🦊🇺🇦🇬🇱 @theunhurriedreader.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

The older I get, the more I find value in the gaps, the negative space (known as ma in Japanese) that makes sense of the things around it. With this week's cold weather and now strong winds on the way, the trees will soon be bare and there will lots more gaps to absorb and balance us.

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

One of the most generous online souls I’ve ever encountered… @theunhurriedreader.bsky.social’s book reviews - which began on her exquisite instagram - are now in beautiful new long form on Substack. Love this one of @annelouiseavery.bsky.social’s Reynard the Fox open.substack.com/pub/theunhur...

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

“…the gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit’s one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound…Go up into the gaps.” — #AnnieDillard Image from #BirdsOfFirle by Tanya Shadrick

A black and white high contrast photo of wave-like cloud cover. In the top right hand quadrant a rook is heading - wings spread, tail fanned - out of frame. From the artist and author Tanya Shadrick’s durational Birds of Firle project.

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

‘I only know that a rook / Ordering its black feathers can so shine / As to seize my senses, haul /My eyelids up, and grant /A brief respite from fear’ — Black Rook in Rainy Weather, #SylviaPlath 📷 from #BirdsOfFirle series by @tanyashadrick.bsky.social

A high contrast grainy black and white photo of a rook landing on a barbed wire fence in the left hand midsection of the image. To the right is a cross-like finger post, blurred by rain. From the durational #BirdsOfFirle series by Tanya Shadrick

A high contrast grainy black and white photo of a rook on a fence post in the left hand midsection of the image. It looks to be pecking at a large blurred raindrop -which was on the nearby car window of the photographer. From the durational #BirdsOfFirle series by Tanya Shadrick

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@maryfrancesness @maryfrancesness.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

a winter's tale

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Ian R. Pearsall @ianrpearsall.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

'Field Ploughed Through' Charcoal & Varnish Private Collection

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Radio Lento @radiolento.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Hello + welcome to another flurry of new followers! Radio Lento is a podcast of quiet places. Subscribe for weekly episodes. Or listen to the ones we prescribe each day. Everything is recorded by us. Listen ad-free, plus no talking or music. Here's one of our most popular episodes > bit.ly/LenSkY

empty shingle beach on a grey day. gulls resting on the wooden posts of the groynes.

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

“As a child in farming country, I’d learnt long ago the parts of animals but only as things dead or diagrammed… I’d been incurious to them as living creatures in relation to one another… Now I couldn’t stop looking.” #BirdsOfFirle www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing...

A high contrast, lo-res black and white image of a rook flying from left to right above a barbed wire fence. Taken from the longitudinal Birds of Firle series by artist and writer Tanya Shadrick

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Susanna Crossman @susannacrossman.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Le brouillard breton. Novembre.

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

“I recorded the rooks for hours, months. At first light and last. In sun and storm. Following them on days when my chronic pain lifted just enough for me to track them from Beacon to Bottom; most days using the car as hide.” #BirdsOfFirle www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing...

A black and white image of a rook, wings spread along the diagonal of the frame. White background. From Tanya Shadrick’s Birds Of Firle project

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Rob Hudson @robhudson.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

"The days are getting shorter and colder, but I ask you to remember: even as the Winter comes in, there is Hope and there is Light." ~ Seamus Heaney Towards Another Summer.

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 05/11/2024

& november light smokes in cold burnless dwindling anticyclonic greysky weight informs aching in & out each end of day corvids are soot caught in it commuter traffic on the main drag dots out ellipsis at throb of dark

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

‘Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.’ — #SylviaPlath

A black and white high contrast image of rooks flinging themselves around before nightfall & roosting time. Image by Tanya Shadrick.

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

For those I’ve just met here, an intro After a sudden near-death at 33, I determined to live with more risk & generosity. I became a hospice scribe…then a performance artist writing a mile in public…& a publisher of others’ words…now author of The Cure for Sleep, which holds these stories, more

A woman working at a written scroll, while knelt at a low writing table looking out over an outdoor swimming pool. You can see her bare feet and the books she has piled beside her.

This is the writer Tanya Shadrick at work on her two-year public undertaking the Wild Patience Scrolls: a mile of writing. Image taken by Steve Creffield

“a mile of writing. This is how I’d do it: expand my life at last, even while it continued to be bounded by town and the school run, morning and afternoon. On my home ground, inch by bloody inch. I wasn’t able to wander my country like Whitman and all the other travelling writers I admired, so I must make something from my constraints instead. Stake a claim to a small, fixed spot under the youngest hornbeam tree beside the outdoor pool and be a prospector of stories, all spring and summer. What I’d done in private with hospice patients, I’d call forth now from swimmers and sunbathers, mining too my own memories of the wild and free. How exciting it was. To have an idea. Thrilling as the first days of falling in love when you find yourself reciprocated, the universe seeming to see and smile on your desire.”

— The Cure for Sleep by Tanya Shadrick

“where does it begin, our turn away from risk and adventure? Why do so many of us hide in routine, shrink from opportunity? What I asked in that luxurious last minute of living, my fear disappearing into wonder even as I was laid awake on the operating table. Where does it begin? What I ask again, in this story of my life before then, and since. For if the events which wake us are sudden, what leads to a sleep of soul and possibility is harder to trace. We have to go back through all the tales told to us (or by us) about the world and its workings: that bramble thicket in which we lost our will and way.”

— The Cure for Sleep by Tanya Shadrick

a headscarved woman knelt at a low writing table at which she is working at a scroll that is unwound for many metres to the left and right of her.

This is the writer Tanya Shadrick finished her two-year mile of writing as an inaugural resident of the Jan Michalski Foundation in Switzerland.

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European Writers Salon @saloneurope.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

We made a Starter Pack for anyone new to this place so we can find our people. Let us know if you want to be added to it go.bsky.app/73irajm

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Deborah Parkin @deborahparkin.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

I wrote a piece of Tanya about my Jackdaw series - she was so encouraging and I will always be so grateful to her. I would highly recommend following Tanya and reading her Birds of Firle project too - you will be inspired.💙

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Still miss this jackdaw, my friend for two years. Would sit beside me and bite my thumb when I only fed it, wanting instead to turn pages in my book and have me read to it. Must verbal bird I’ve ever encountered - its own fluency, and appetite for sound, both

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

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