An Instrument of Nature: Making a Broom Brush

In Persian, a paintbrush (ghalam-mu) is a tool whose roots trace back to antiquity, to the word for stalk or reed (kalamos): an instrument of nature before it was an instrument of the human hand. A plant became a tool, and the tool kept the plant's name – a pattern that repeats itself across languages. Even a broom carries the name of the shrub it was once made from, and a brush, the word for twigs.

This workshop invites participants to this tradition of wildcrafting and fabrication. Before there is a painting, there is an instrument, and before there is an instrument, there is an exploration – a walk through a garden, a park, a stretch of dirt road where something has fallen or gone to seed. Participants gather what the neighbourhood offers that day: dried leaves, fallen sticks, grass gone brittle in the sun. Then, the way a reed once became a brush, participants bind what they've gathered into brushes using simple materials like thread, tape, and glue. No two brushes are alike, because no two walks cover the same ground.

This practice is a quiet return to a time before a tool was bought: to when it was handmade before the work began. A brush made from what nature offered up asks a different question – not what can I make with this tool, but what does this season, this environment, this particular patch of nature have to give and what can we make with it. The answer to this question changes every time.

The workshop concludes with painting together, unhurried, using instruments that may not exist tomorrow, but did what they were gathered to do.

SAMAN POURISA is a multidisciplinary artist and creative pedagogue holding a Master of Fine Arts in Art in Public Space from Bauhaus University Weimar. Her participatory practice provides space for non-hierarchical forms of learning, encouraging both critical thinking and creativity through work on the elusive line between nature and culture, learning and unlearning.