In May 2003 North Somerset held its first Arts trail, organised by volunteers and enthusiastically supported by both contributing artists and visitors.

I was inspired by having this new showcase opportunity in our neighbourhood to create something to exhibit that was rooted in the locality but would also have a universal interest. I chose to make a collection of images that showed as many different forms of water as I could find within a short (mostly walking) distance of my home – the Arts week was scheduled for early May and I began in the previous autumn photographing streams, rivers, watering the allotment, ice, snow, frost, hail, mist, steam, puddles, dew, raindrops, clouds… there’s a lot of watery forms out there! The exhibition was called ‘Water on the doorstep’.

My exhibition space was the stairs and landing of our home and I decided to play with the idea of the water cycle. On a small screen at the top of the stairs I played a video of a natural spring that rises in a wood not far from our home (see video below) while at the bottom of the stairs was a small monitor showing the feed from a CCTV camera located by the loft window that was focused on the hilltop above where the spring rose – this screen showed the weather passing the neighbourhood – including the rain that seeps into the ground to feed the spring…

Between the tv screens up the stair wall and on the landing were a selection of the photographs I’d taken over the previous 6 months – there are more images on my flickr site