ARTISTS TALKING

# 92 [21 February 2008]

ABSCESS

Been away, absent, from the University Residency with a tooth abscess.  I looked abscess up: from the latin for going away, separating.  Absent is also from latin but from a dfferent root: to be away, not present.

Looked up the latin for the vegetable names:  tomato is Solanum lycopersicum; leek is Allium porrum; pea is Pisum sativum.  

All this reminds me of school again, roots of words, latin lessons; and of The School for Artists that we constructed on the Allotment Residency. School has framed my life- born in a school, can't seem to leave school, always want to learn more.

# 91 [19 February 2008]

SEED NAMES

Been fascinated with the names given to vegetable seeds - they speak of close relationships with growing, of history, of handing on and handing down, of people and their experience on allotments over generations.  The names are so different from the plain name, the official name, the latin botanical name. 

Have screenprinted selected seed names for tomatoes, peas, broad beans, leeks, dwarf runner beans, climbing French beans, carrots.  

# 90 [15 February 2008]

MORE BACKGROUNDS

Spent ages setting up to print more backgrounds.  Still getting small smears in the ink but some of them are ok.  Want to finish some of these first ideas in a day or two and spend the last week trying out something new. 

# 89 [14 February 2008]

A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

I was beginning to feel I was going through the motions - days of printing so far had resulted in stiff and formal plans of the allotment, but I didn't really feel that anything was "happening". Perservering, I made up a stencil of "footprints" and printed up a muddy trail around the allotment plan, negotiating the carefully marked out plots.

Then, as I always do, I tried printing them on to a piece of blank paper, moving the paper in & out of registration, printing & over-printing & watching as my print appeared. The new print seems to move the work on beyond the allotment itself and link to the broader themes within my work, considering invisible, implied or understood boundaries, territory, paths and passages.

# 88 [12 February 2008]

BAD DAY

Today everything went wrong.  I stayed late on Monday setting things up - cutting paper, taping the screen, ready to go when I got in today.  

However my first print went wrong, the tape lifted giving a curvy line where it should have been straight.  Washed off and tried again.  The paper stuck to screen.  Washed off.  Next black streaks appeared.  I gave up.  Turned the power hose on the screen and washed off the stencil.  Started a new photostencil to have easy straight lines.  Off to the dentist in the afternoon.  Work meeting tomorrow, so not back at the screenbed until Thursday.

Stuffed a thrush with dead stems and moss - see image.

# 87 [11 February 2008]

PRINTMAKING - DAY 4

Back in the print workshop today I've been printing a plan of the allotment showing its "boundaries" and the layout of the beds and paths. Of course, anyone who knows allotments will realise that this is not as simple as it sounds since allotment boundaries are often more "understood" than defined.

I've printed quite a number of the plans and will use them as a structure to work on to, recording some of the processes and activities which I actually carried out on the allotment.

Allotment - "a portion or thing allotted; a share granted."

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

# 86 [10 February 2008]

TO SEE A PROJECT SPACE

Roz & I travelled to Portsmouth & Southampton on Friday. We went to the Aspex Gallery for a 1-2-1 with Sarah Palmer to talk about our BMPD professional development project, then we went on to see the Millais Project Space at Southampton Solent University. We wanted to look at the space to see if it might be a suitable venue for the next stage of Breaking Ground, where we plan to work in three different project spaces along the south coast for a week in each space, inviting selected artists and arts professionals from each area for a private viewing and a discussion about the work we make at the end of each week.

PREPARATIONS

This evening I’m preparing for another day’s printmaking in Brighton tomorrow. I’ve got a stencil ready to print from – an outline plan of the allotment showing the “boundaries” which were understood, but in reality, almost invisible. More and more, the focus of the work I’m making is on the relationships which became important during the allotment residency, and the territorial issues which I was interested in as a visitor feeling the need to make a space for myself which would be my “safe base”.

# 85 [6 February 2008]

THIRD DAY

Spent the morning cutting paper to size, taping the photostencil window to the right size, setting up registrations - then I began to print grey backgrounds, large and small.  The light cartridge paper stuck, but the heavy canaletto paper worked well.  Now I have 7 large and 14 small backgrounds to print on next Monday.

Began to draft out some of the things I want to print:  names of vegetable seeds.  Who named a climbing French bean 'District Nurse' or a pea as 'Gravedigger' ? How were those names handed down? Who wrote them down? 

# 84 [5 February 2008]

SECOND DAY

More layers added to the bird prints, more browns too.  The thrush looks rather angry. Some on paper but also printed the pair of yellowhammer and thrush outlines onto thin canvas.  The plan to is cut them out, sew them together using thorn stitch and stuff them with allotment leaves, dead stems or sheep wool - people grazed their sheep on Tenantry Down before the allotments were laid out.

# 83 [5 February 2008]

DAY 2

Made my first prints today using a screen-printing technique I hadn’t used before.

I wanted to do a quick mental re-cap of my thoughts & ideas about the work we’d made on the allotment. So working directly onto the screen, first I made lists of “Allotment Words” and “More Allotment Words” – a sort of brain-storming session, printing the lists from the screen with transparent printing medium. Then, still working directly onto the screen with water soluble crayons and pencils, I began to try to transform my thoughts into quick & spontaneous drawings – a new way of working for me. Predictably, the process of printing began to get the creative juices flowing. Now I’m making plans for tomorrow.