The Birds:
The relationship to man and birds is very different to man and dog. There is a hedge in our back garden where countless sparrows live. I watch them they are busy zipping off, coming back and zipping off again. Birds live their lives under our noses yet they go unnoticed a lot of the time. They are gateways into nature’s world, once you start watching them and listening to them there seems to be a threshold that you cross to…….. Somewhere….. a daydream place!
I have four birds in this mosaic to make and I have completed two, and found myself creating the landscape behind for these birds. Fields and hills, nice countryside for them, daydream places again. I remember probably the only time when the entrance door to my workshop was open at the same time as the back door, and a pigeon flew straight through in flash of a second. I never ever have both doors open at the same time as it creates a draft which blows all my papers off the table and makes the brown kraft paper stored on the wall in a roll flap vigorously, so I very rarely open both together. This was so surprising I kept thinking about birds and omens, not that believe in them but you could understand why something like that could mean something if you wanted it to? In Guatemala the currency is called the quetzal after the bird. The tail feathers of which were used as money way back in Mayan times….and the Solomon Islands also used red hummingbird feathers as money! I can’t see how that would work, but love anything that radically changes capitalism…..Again my friend Joseph Beuys wanted to influence future politics and remove money and change the understanding of capital to create dignity money?
‘Everybody’s dignity is exchanged as a commodity, the so called salary dependency. To show that money should shift to a democratic regulator of everybody’s work, creativity and dignity. So I would call this kind of understanding of money, the dignity money, the ability money of people’.
If anyone can get a handle on what this actually means then you’re a better man than me Gunger Din. But society without money……wow…. it takes an eccentric artist to try to realize it. Politians I’ve not heard any of those entertaining the concept.
Two more birds to make.
Stop Press
My client has just this second phoned me asking about installation…….I suggested after the winter…whats the rush it took over two years to get here. But I might have to install three mosaics before Xmas. This when I agreed to do another job in the lead up to Xmas at the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens……. Doh.
