SOUVENIR SEED SOWING INSTRUCTIONS
If you have received a Souvenir Seed from us, here are some sowing hints.
This runner bean, Wisley Magic, can be sown indoors from mid April in a pot of seed compost and sealed inside a plastic bag until it germinates and gradually acclimatise it to outdoors when frost has stopped. Or sow it outdoors when the soil has warmed from early May.
Do send us pictures of the planting and the growing as Breaking Ground is an ongoing project and we would love to know how these beans fare.
MEETING AT UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON
We had a meeting with Head of Painting and Lecturer from Printmaking last week re the possibility of being Artists in Residence in the Printmaking Department. Discussions went well and they seem very interested and see the benefits for the students. All to be confirmed in the next week or so. Exciting to be taking Breaking Ground forward by testing and turning ideas using screen print techniques and maybe etching. We will give talks and tutorials in return for use of the facilities.
SOUVENIR SEEDS
We have made a series of Souvenir Seed packets. Each contains one bean seed.
We will send these to people who were unable to come to Allotmenta, the Open Day in October and those who have expressed interest in BREAKING GROUND and the allotment residency.
Currently we are developing work started during the residency.
REPORT ON BREAKING GROUND
We reviewed BREAKING GROUND together yesterday and filled in our report form for the NAN New Collaborations Bursary. We found that we have been able to work together in a fruitful partnership and that we have achieved what we set out to do: find out if we can work together; try out being in residence on a site; make some new work.
We realised that BREAKING GROUND has become a wider-ranging and longer-term project. We have been in touch with the University of Brighton re developing some of our ideas in print. We plan to transpose the work indoors and try it out in a Project Space and move towards a future exhibition.
ONE VISITOR TO ALLOTMENTA SAYS:
‘Really enjoyed the Open Day. These things I loved, just being there with all the mix of still-growing/dying/dead things around in a frame of mind that allowed letting them be as they are rather than (as one does in ones own garden) fretting about tidying, planting, sowing, not allowing weeds to get a grip etc. The weather and the top of the downs. Your drawings, the snail shells on sticks (pour encourager les autres), the table of stuck, arrested seeds, the poppy seedhead drawn in poppy seeds, the sense of community with everyone eating seedcake and enjoying the collection of material in the shelter, the humour creeping in in all sorts of ways, Roz sewn to a leaf, the picture frame/cold frame. The sense of movement and life, so different from your average gallery, snails, seagulls, crows, clouds, whatever the caterpillars are on the cabbages, cabbage whites? The mixture of information , observation and whimsy.’
