SIXTH DAY
Today we had to get cracking on setting up and sorting out. I made my wallpaper, tacked up the prints, arranged the birds.
We got rid of excess materials, mess and furniture. Still much to do but it is beginning to take shape. We drove to B & Q in search of turf – last rolls sold out this morning. Perhaps I will have to dig some from the allotment – how come I did not think of that before. Bought some towel hooks. The cress is growing.
Home to make the courgette cakes. Open Day tomorrow.
FIFTH DAY
Up at the allotment first thing to gather raspberry, blackcurrant and gooseberry leaves to print napkins. Later start at the Space. Felt subdued today. So much organisation and promotion to do that the work is having less attention. I feel the need to bed down in the work again. To get connected and inside, to make a place – maybe I must gather a great heap of the dried grass and line with raw felted wool like a nest.
Went home to consider and then up to the allotment, the original place of this project. Remembered my urge to clothe myself in the allotment and took up an old tee shirt and straw hat. Covered the shirt with raspberry leaves and started weaving a veil of bindweed. This is more like it.
FOURTH DAY AT THE PHOENIX PROJECT SPACE
It took all morning with both of us working on covering the end wall with lining paper. After a welcome sandwich I messed about with the paper drops on another wall trying to get the pattern and placing right. I have decided. Sunday will be the best day to make the wallpaper.
Bumped into Emilia Telese downstairs and met the AIR Advisory Group who were having a meeting at Phoenix.
Placed the polaroids on the school bench – keep trying to find a way to show these pictures found on the allotment.
Received our first piece of outside from Philippa who cannot come to the Open Day. She brought a couple of birch logs from her woodpile.
Roz & I have been talking about the sort of questions we are asking ourselves as we make work. Much of our discussion centers on how we see ourselves in the world – especially in relation to the natural world of which, after all, we are a part.
I am interested in the extremes of existence which I've observed, from the invasive, entwining Bindweed I have picked, pressed and drawn upon, to the delicate baby runner bean plants which I have nurtured for my installation and which are now woven into a taught framework of twine and string.
Yesterday I noticed a patch of wall near the place where I was drawing, which had been hastily painted. An area of wall-paper faintly showed through the paint. I began to trace out the barely visible pattern in pencil, extending the inter-twining stems, flowers and leaves across the wall.
Over three days we have filled the Project Space with things from the outside. A transformation has taken place. We are experimenting and finding new things happening.
Yesterday I planted my runner beans indoors. Like Roz's furniture, they started life indoors, then went outside. Now they are back inside.
