Anna Chapman Parker, author of Understorey: A Year Among Weeds, in conversation with Professor Sarah Casey - Together they talk about drawing, plants and places, and about what is often overlooked or elusive.

Understorey follows Chapman over the course of a year as she observes and draws the weeds and common wild plants that she encounters in her daily life – in her garden, along a local pavement or road edge, or following a tarmac path along the river. Rich in observational detail, enquiry and sensory experience, Understorey retunes us to the small-scale, to the overlooked or undervalued, and reinvests the value of noticing, taking time and paying attention.

Anna Chapman Parker is an artist, writer and teacher with a particular interest in drawing and the relationships between drawing, writing, body and place. She was a visiting artist at CAMPLE LINE in 2023. Understorey is her first book and was published by Duckworth Books in June 2024. She lives and works in Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Sarah Casey is a visual artist and Professor of Fine Art and its Histories at Lancaster University. Through drawing and sculpture, her work investigates the shifting boundaries between human history and geological time. Since 2020 she has been working with glacial archaeologists in Switzerland in response to archaeology emerging from alpine ice. This work was exhibited most recently at the Henry Moore Institute (2025). She lives and works in Lancaster and Dumfries & Galloway.