A good meeting this morning with a Tarmac man. It is starting to turn towards autumn and I couldn’t figure out how to put the heating on in the studio, so the meeting was held with coats still on!! However, everything was positive, little irritations will be ironed out and the bigger ideas such as legacy pieces and exhibitions were agreed in principle. A further meeting at the end of October to take things forward and the project gains strength.
First time back in the studio since getting back from France. It’s good to get back and touch base, all the insecurities you feel as an artist come to the surface if your not working (I’m following all the blogs dealing with issues of identity with real interest). It’s a brief time here though as I’m off to Liverpool tomorrow for a few days, calling at Glasplies in Southport to get some latex for a new experiment (though the rubber matting I asked for hasn’t appeared). I do feel that to the quarrymen I’m either something that is an irritant or I terrify the life out of them because I’m a woman. There is a work in this…
Thank you Nicola Naismith for the Edward Burtynsky link. I clicked on to see the video you spoke of and found a whole world of, as Burtynsky says, ‘places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.’ This dichotomy is what draws me to make work and why I am drawn to a quarry residency. As Susan Francis has also just commented about wallpapering over rough walls – there is a direct relation between what lies beneath the surface and the veneer we see.
Please check out the Burtynsky website, to see the scale he evokes in his work.
I am in France at the moment so away from my quarry. However, where I am staying has its own quarry! A little down the hill a small hamlet was built to house the quarry workers. Now, disused, the quarry has become a lake. I couldn’t resist climbing over to see what lay behind the corrugated gates….
This is the water container from the quarry for the studio…
