A busy day today with many things to think about – progress with our BMPD Professional Development initiative, planning Eastbourne Festival 2009 as I have recently become a Director of the new Eastbourne Festival company, and, now that we have been given funding for it, planning the next stage of Breaking Ground.
I'm still puzzling over how to mount and count the dandelion fairies, with little success. I have ordered my greenhouse & marked out its area in the studio. It is small – 144cm x 71cm x 191cm high. Just big enough for one person to stand or sit in. I put my chair in the space to make it mine – My Space.
I have decided to order a greenhouse – just a little one. The sort that comes with a tubular steel frame – a bit like the frame of the gazebo we used at our Allotmenta Open Day – and a pvc cover – almost a cross between a greenhouse and a polytunnel.
As a child, my Uncle had a market garden & the memory of the smell of warm, moist soil and ripening tomatoes is still strong in my mind. Greenhouses are places of potential, productivity; places where natural processes are rapid and rampant. Things happen there. Exciting things, unexpected things.
Last week I cut all the 45 dandelion flower and seed heads that have grown on my doorstep dandelion in the last couple of weeks. I have pressed them in one of the wallpaper books which I was using on the allotment as a sort of experimental sketchbook.
I have selected 7 dandelion seed heads which appear to be completely intact so that I can mount & count the seeds. However, the "fairies" are almost impossible to see when mounted on paper, so I have been trying other ways of mounting them and discovered that it seems to work to mount them on glass. I have ordered some microscope slides.
Also been experimenting with drawing seeds & have gone back to our "School For Artists" starting point, using a technique which has been productive for Roz, but not for me – until now perhaps.
BIRD BOX AND A GRANT
Two presents this week:
the first was a bird box made by my daughter – a home for the stuffed thrush.
The second was the award of an Arts Council Grant for the Arts for Stage 2 of Breaking Ground – Hooray.
Now we have to get cracking with arranging the Project Room development work and Platform Evenings. How will we fit it all in – exciting.
