Footprints.

In October I was wondering where else can I take my work, how else can I show my interest in nature but in a new and exciting way. I had already explored mud painting and leaving materials outside but I knew there were other ways to capture nature. Then I had this idea of growing my own bit land, where I had control over how often it got watered, what soil went in, and if any seeds should be placed in.

The boxes were made by cutting a metre long (close to a metre) bit of wood into four bits and then nailing them together to make a frame. I then attached a very thick bit of cardboard to the bottom. After the box was made, I filled in any gaps with filler (filler that you place in holes in walls and ceilings) and then I had the decision to either leave the frame in its natural wooden state or paint it. I decided to paint it white, I thought that I wanted the control over this piece, obviously I could not control if anything grew but the rest I did, so I wanted it to have an unnatural look to it. After I had made one box, I decided it just wasn’t enough, so I made four. These took a long time to finish as I wanted them to be perfect, to be tidy as I wasn’t sure what the gardens were going to look like at the end at least I would know one thing would look right.

Before I had started on these and when the idea had just came to me, I was talking to fellow art student Emily and she mentioned an artist who had an exhibition very similar to my idea that was then on display in Tate Modern, Abraham Cruzvillegas.

He made numerous amounts of triangular shaped wooden boxes and filled them with soil, collected from parks all around London. His work is done on  a much larger scale so there is a larger chance that something would grow in some of his plant boxes. I visited this exhibition Empty Lot (2015) and what I was expecting was completely different to what there is. I don’t know why but I was expecting much larger boxes that you would walk between to get a closer look at what was growing but actually the only way you can get a look at these plant boxes was too look down from either sides of the balcony. A lot of the boxes actually had nothing growing in but some did and the different soils had very different colours to them, making it clear that were collected from different parts of London.

However art makes itself evident, it shall remain, above all, raw source material in all its natural, unstable, physical, chaotic and crystalline states: solid, liquid, colloidal and gaseous. It is the joy of energy. 
2002 São Paulo Biennial 

This quote by Cruzvillegas is very fitting with Empty Lot, he has taken something that is completely raw and natural and has turned it into an installation that represents the city, chance and hope. There were lights that were lit onto the plant pots and they were also watered throughout the six months it was on display. After this there was only the chance and hope that something will grow. Chance and hope is what I rely on as well with my work. There was no guarantee that something will grow.

Four Months On. 

It was at the start of January that I was finally able to place soil into my wooden plant pots and now we are nearly at the start of April and in three of the boxes not much has changed but the fourth one has started to grow moss and a stem with two leaves at the end.

This is very exciting for me and I feel that if I can correct the other boxes, then I could end up with four boxes with life in. With the box that is growing something, there seemed to be a lot of condensation on the clear plastic wrapping (I had placed wrapping over the top of the boxes to keep the moisture in) so I have sealed up the other boxes as much as I can in hoping they would keep the moisture in and hopefully this is will cause growth to occur. Another thing I have done is I have picked seeds from random flowers on the fields and placed these seeds into the soil, hoping to promote more growth.

Quote taken from http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/hyundai-commission-2015-abraham-cruzvillegas/introduction

Here is an update on he copper left outside. Not much has changed, or changed as much as it did in the first week but there are slight diferences. I have moved the flower pots again.

On Sunday the weather was so beautiful, I decided to go painting down at Friars Meadow. Not using acrylics or oil but by collecting the mud at the fields and mixing it with water. It has been a while since I have done this and it made me realise how much I have missed it. I have enjoyed the challenge of seeing what will be created by placing materials outside and leaving it to nature but actually painting something is the thing I love.  Although my main focus has been seeing the changes and markings left by nature and this has been exciting, I will now also be looking at painting with mud again. I like having my paintings be a part of the land. Mud is such a versatile material to use, and easy to manipulate on canvas.

An artist who is well known for his mud drawings and walks is Richard Long. I wrote my dissertation on his works and processes . There was an exhibition I visited in Bristol, Time and Space, 2015, at the Arnolfini, with many of his documented walks and mud paintings, and I found these fascinating and beautiful. The photographs that showed the traces he left in the grounds and where he had moved rocks and sticks, was a way to document his actions but also were stunning to look at. He had clearly thought about the composition and so for people like my sister, who had joined me, she could appreciate the beauty in the photographs without needing to understanding the importance of his actions. I had seen many photographs of Long’s waterfall paintings but when seeing it up close you can really appreciate the large size of it and the frantic jestures he used to create the waterfall like effect, which probably couldn’t be fully appreciated on a smaller scale.

Waterfall Line, 2000, River Avon Mud on emulsion. Photograph from http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/long-waterfall-line-t11970

In a previous blog post I mentioned using cyanotype as way of documenting the traces left in mud. I first attempted the cyanotype on a heavy canvas fabric but because of the thickness of it, the cyanotype did not work and ended up being either very faint and patchy or too dark.

This was slightly frustrating and I felt that this would never work but I then decided to try a thinner material, and this was much better. The patterns are much more discernible. The process of creating these cyanotype prints is a very long one, to start is the marking on the acetate of all the dents in the mud, this can take roughly two hours to fill in one, then dipping the fabric into the chemicals, drying the chemicals (this can take a day and more). The final part is placing the acetate onto the fabric in the light and waiting a couple of hours. With the finished cyanotype prints, I plan to frame them, having them in the same series, as one artwork.

A lot of my work has revolved around failure and.. hopefully success, I have never been 100% sure that what I do will workout, or can be seen as art.

An artist who embraced a look of failure in his work was Andy Warhol with his Marilyn Monroe print ‘Marilyn Diptryct’ 1962, acrylic on canvas, 2054 x 1448 x 20 mm, created after her death from a drug overdose. A multiple of the same print but in each one it differentiates, either with colour and then with fading, a look that in  printmaking can be seen as a failure but this was not the case with Warhol, it was intentional, representing ‘the star’s demise’.

In 1967, Warhol did thirty silkscreen prints, another example of where he intentionally made some of the prints with imperfections, where the facial features aren’t aligned properly, with the same idea of representing her death.

My first attempt at using cyanotype has not gone to plan but it’s a learning curve as this is something I have not tried before but it is something I am going to keep trying and getting better as the last attempt came out better.

Week one is now over and there are already changes to the copper I left outside and this is even more evident when moving the plant pots and under the copper is as new.

I have now moved the pots so hopefully next week when I do this again, there would have been more marks caused by the exposure to the oxygen.

When moving the pots, the copper did curl over but as it’s the exposure the air that causes the brownish colour, this shouldn’t change much.