Breaking Ground

I think at last, after much trial and error, I have decided on a way to mount & count my dandelion fairies.

They are numbered and trapped under sellotape on black card which makes both the fine white fluff and the darker brown seed both equally visible.

Then, when they're all counted, I'll think about how I'm going to use my microscope slides.

ANOTHER DANDELION

As I thought about dandelions I remembered another dandelion. This time from my Foundation Show in 2000. I showed this slide at the University of Brighton talk 2 weeks ago. Pressed flowers again. My first pressed flowers were collected when I was five years old. I can see the book in my mind's eye – a school drawing book, dull blue paper cover, a flower on each page and the name I had identified and written carefully in pencil. The names are pressed in me: red dead nettle, yellow archangel, bistort – there was a dandelion too.

OLD DANDELIONS

I looked at Judith's dandelions and remembered my dandelions. I made an etching, back in 2003. Two flowers were pressed onto a soft ground layer on a steel plate, overlapping, intertwining. This was etched in acid, inked and put through the press to produce this image. One of a set of flower etchings named Apparitions. And the dandelions have appeared once more.

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.