ARTISTS TALKING

# 150 [5 October 2008]

IMAGES

Thank goodness it rained today.  I had to stay in and I spent hours pulling together a powerpoint presentation to show the earlier stages of BREAKING GROUND:  the residency on the allotment and ALLOTMENTA Open Day, the University of Brighton Dept. of Fine Art Printmaking Residency, the time we spent at Phoenix Project Space, Brighton and the Open Day and Discussion Event which we called OUTSIDE IN.  I realised we have had 3 stages of the project already.  UNDER GROUND, the residency at Pine Gallery, Hastings which starts on 13 October for 10 days will be stage 4 and our final project space and Open Day/Discussion event which will be in Margate at Crate Project Space in November will be stage 5.  And we will have worked on BREAKING GROUND for 2 years.

# 149 [3 October 2008]

PREPARATIONS

With only 10 days to go until the start of UNDER GROUND in Hastings, Roz & I have been busy making our preparations. We've been sending out invitations to our Open Day, which this time will include a Big Draw event - DRAWING IN THE DARK, and we already have two people booked in for the Discussion Platform at Talk About The Work.

# 148 [30 September 2008]

CRATE PROJECT SPACE, MARGATE

Today was wet and windy, just right for a trip to the English seaside, and Judith and I trained to Margate to see Crate Project Space where we plan to hold our third Breaking Ground experimental residency next month. 

Margate has some interesting buildings and is in regeneration mode. We met Moyra and Chris from Crate who showed us round the Space.  It is great, there is a dark room too with a small hatch through to the large white room. We talked things through and have agreed to be in residence from 21 - 30 November.  Open Day will be on Saturday 29 November from 2-4pm with a Talk and Discussion at 4pm.

The building was formerly a printers and I was struck by the many- paned windows and the outside iron staircases leading to a roofspace. Apparently there is still some printer's ink in the dank cellar.   

We will have to stay overnight in Margate for most of the time and we started our search for handy accommodation.  Also had time to call in at Turner Contemporary Droit House on the harbour and look at the plans for the new gallery.

# 147 [24 September 2008]

DRAWING IN THE DARK - BIG DRAW EVENT

Plans are beginning to form.  Judith printed our first batch of invitations yesterday and we took them to Talk about the Work at Claremont Studio for our first piece of advertising.

I registered BREAKING GROUND as an organisation on the Big Draw website and put details of our Big Draw event: DRAWING IN THE DARK which will be part of our Open Day for UNDER GROUND on Sunday 19 October 2-5pm.  I am starting a collection of chalk and clay to draw on the dark walls of the basement Pine Gallery.  You can draw those underground creatures,  tunnels and chambers.

# 146 [24 September 2008]

GATHERING MOMENTUM

Roz & I are excited this week at the momentum which is gathering as we pick up the threads of our project following the summer break. Yesterday we looked together at the space at the Pine Gallery where we'll be working in just under three weeks time. As always, our ideas and imaginations began to work together as we thought about what we might do during our residency there.

Then, today, we received confirmation from Crate in Margate, that they can offer us the Crate Project Space for the third & final residency in November. We're going to visit Crate next week, and are excited about the prospect of working in a town where we haven't worked before, meeting new artists, taking part in new discussions about art and making new work!

# 145 [17 September 2008]

While researching some of those creatures which build their homes underground I've been reading a great book called "Animal Architecture". This has really caught my imagination, and I've become especially interested in those amazing animal architects of the Ant & Termite families!

I'm intrigued by the apparently meticulously structured ant society in which worker ants become physically adapted to carry out their tasks - some workers developing huge heads used to block the doorways to their nest (if that is their allocated task), others with bodies transforming into living storage vessels to contain huge amounts of honeydew to feed the colony.

I came across a scientist, Walter Tschinkel at Florida State University, who has been making amazing plaster casts of ants nests - how did he do that?

# 144 [6 September 2008]

BREAKING GROUND goes UNDER GROUND.

Just getting back to work after the holidays and beginning to prepare for our next residency, UNDER GROUND, in the basement Pine Gallery at Claremont in Hastings.

I went to Orkney on holiday and was amazed at the history embedded in these small islands. People have lived on Orkney for 6000 years. We visited several fantastic Neolithic sites and (not entirely by co-incidence) I was able to spend some time in underground chambers in a variety of mounds and cairns. Perhaps the most puzzling was the deep pit of Mine Howe with its 29 steep, ladder-like steps down to a tiny chamber; the most fascinating,  Maes Howe, with its Viking runes and tales of the mid-winter sun shining through the tunnel entrance onto the inner wall of the chamber at sunset.

# 143 [2 September 2008]

EATING THE BEANS - EATING THE ALLOTMENT

A few days ago a friend visited from Hampshire.  She brought a bag of runner beans grown from the Wisley Magic bean I sent her earlier in the year.  She said the plant was prolific.  We ate them for supper and they were delicious.  We ate the allotment. 

# 142 [12 July 2008]

Going through my photographs of the last weeks I am interested in the stories which they tell. I must begin to organise, order and edit. Perhaps one of my summer jobs will be to make a workbook.

# 141 [11 July 2008]

The last few days have been a blur of activity - Open Day, Discussion event, consultations, mentoring, dismantling... what a pleasure today to begin to catch up with everything else which has been put to one side for the last couple of weeks.

Today I am posting some images of the final installation of our work. We have gathered a huge catalogue of pictures now over the course of the project, and are thinking about ways in which we might be able to produce a publication at the end of it all.