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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
