Earthbound: a fascination with what lies beneath our feet
"The artist enters a specific state of mind when he is walking, enabling a creative space to appear. There is a reduction in conscious attention, a letting go, and the mind is able to slip into a different gear." (On The Track of Richard Long – Juliet Miller)
Earthbound - featuring new works by Artist/papermaker Jane Ponsford and ceramicist/curator Kim Norton. Their unique collaboration resulted in unexpected responses to their local landscapes. The studies and resulting objects, artefacts and pieces represent an artistic conversation about ‘Earth’ with each exchange signifying the contributor’s counterpoint and response to the previous statement. They have been engaged for many months in a collaborative exchange project, called A6. This involved each sending a series of parcels of collected and made objects, to which the other would respond. The only rule was that they work within the A6 paper format.
Follow their conversation. (from the most recent)
Jane Ponsford
Jane Ponsford April/May/June 2020 A6 Project with Kim Norton 5th Exchange LockdownKT10
I have found this iteration of our exchange both one of the most fascinating and the most difficult to actually carry out. During our previous exchange the impending pandemic came ever nearer and lockdown was imposed part way through but this exchange was carried out completely within those restrictions so the landscape explored was entirely local. Oddly I didn’t find that this restricted me at all. This landscape of the home ground seemed to have been waiting for me to find it or actually I had been dawdling until circumstances compelled me to see what was in front of me. There was no shortage of materials to explore even though the actual space had shrunk to a few square metres of slightly dishevelled back garden.
Thinking back to the beginning of the lockdown, some of the characteristic qualities of the period were the extraordinary quietness, in which usually unheard birdsong was loud. There were many days of sunshine with blue skies and the air was clear. The simply structured days with nowhere to go and nothing to do seemed very long with the kind of intensity of detail that reminded me of my childhood.
To make a start on this iteration of Earthbound I began with the simplest things. I picked dandelion flowers to make dye while at the same time I began to dig up an overgrown flowerbed. These two things directed all the subsequent work.
Dandelion from dent de lion or lion’s teeth because of the serrated leaves, also known as pissenlit because of the strong duretic effect of the plant’s roots. All parts of the plant are edible and the flowers can be used to make yellow dye either through drying the flower heads and grinding the yellow petals to make a pigment or by seething the fresh flower-heads to make a dye bath. Dandelion can be used to make wine, coffee and as an ingredient in dandelion and burdock drink.
Culturally rather than practically they can be used in various ways; we make a wish by blowing the seeds from a dandelion seed head or use it to tell the time as a dandelion clock. The dandelion along with the daisy is arguably one of the most familiar plants in in Britain and across Europe
I used the yellow dandelion dye to colour beaten cotton rag pulp to make paper and the remaining exhaust dye I used for dip dying cast paper and scraps of cloth. Initially I made sample sheets of A6 paper and then I used the pulp to work through some basic forms; a circle, a set of small pinches of pulp along a thread, some small stick-like elements and began to think how they should arrange themselves. I decided to make some more dye but found that the dandelion heads had all gone to seed. I had run out of time.
Remnants / fragments
Meanwhile in digging the flowerbed I found domestic archeology. There were shards and fragments of pottery and glass, bits of rusted iron, broken stems of clay pipes, broken bricks, bits of black polystyrene from a plant tray and scraps of woven biodegradable plastic. Some of these things were Victorian or earlier and some from much more recently.
Alongside this processed industrial material were other things that were ‘natural’ but not natural from this area for instance pieces of limestone, flint and coal, all of which had been brought here. These are materials from geological time not historical although everything has been made from material that has existed forever in some form or another.
Digging deeper I found clay at the base of the garden wall. This material was definitely local; the nearby village is called Claygate and there’s a Kiln Lane not far away. Brick making was a local business. The village is at the start of the clay deposits around London and in the past provided bricks for much of the surrounding area including Hampton Court Palace. The Claygate Beds, the most recent layers for the London Clay take their name from from Claygate.
Far from being a reduced palette of materials, there were almost too many. I felt rather overwhelmed and reduced to arranging fragments of broken things for a while. These things weren’t just materials either, they were broken bits of quite specific things that spoke of previous lives.
My Approach In response to Kim’s methodical testing of materials throughout the project but particularly in the 4th Exchange I decided to just work through the materials I had been presented with by lockdown but I realised that I couldn’t pretend to be dispassionate about them, or about the strange circumstances we were living through. Everything seemed to be a metaphor or symbolic of some aspect of the current period and after trying unsuccessfully to evade this I decided to embrace it.
The dandelion was a dyestuff but also a metaphor for time and elusiveness. The broken things I had found were remnants of industry but also spoke about the passing of things.
Laying out the materials in a rough grid gave me a way into the exchange. I would treat them all as of equal importance and just work through making samples and objects in response to them. At the time I am writing this I have used many but not all of these materials / found things but need to send my (late!) exchange to you. I have made over 30 response / sample pieces so far although I’m not sending them all to you and I haven’t yet started working with some of the materials and ideas that interest me the most.
I was particularly pleased with some paper made from dried bluebell leaves, which I soaked and beat on a board to break down the fibres to make the pulp.
Quite late in the proceedings I realised that the cloths I use to blot or test dyestuffs or dry paper on were also part of this body of work so I tore them into strips so they would fit within our self imposed A6 format and sewed them together into long strips that can be rolled up or unfurled. In many ways they echo the journey through all the materials. There is clay, iron from both the clay and scraps of rusted material I found, tanin dyes, dandelion dyes and combinations of all of these things in a jumbled juxtaposition.
I have sent you some of the things I haven’t used as well as the ones I have. The materials / objects I haven’t used yet are mainly the fragments of pottery and glass.
Materials I am sending you: Claygate clay Glass Pottery shards A dandelion seedhead A scrap of biodegradable plastic fabric Dry bluebell leaves
Images: A drawing of a dandelion plant from ‘A Curious Herbal’, Elizabeth Blackwell, 1737, British Library www.bl.uk Other pages from the book from www.illustratedgarden.org
Map of the local area from 1896 reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland https://maps.nls.uk
Photo of fragments from the garden
Materials I have worked with: Cotton / linen rag pulp Cotton & silk fabric scraps / thread Dandelion flowers / seeds Bramble stems and other tannin rich materials Dry bluebell leaves Claygate Clay (London Clay) Rusted iron and mild steel wire Coal Broken stems of clay pipes Fragments of brick and pottery Mordants & modifiers
Test Pieces / responses: 1. A wire (mild steel) sketch bowl containing dandelion seeds 2. A sheet of cotton rag paper dyed with tannin (bark) dyes. On top of this is placed: 3. A small cast paper and wire element dyed with tannin modified with iron 4. A circular sheet of cotton rag paper dyed with carbon based ink and pressed with crushed coal 5. A ‘grip’ sample piece of cotton rag paper dyed with dandelion 6. A sheet of dandelion-flower dyed cotton rag paper stacked on top of: 7. A sheet of cotton rag paper dip-dyed with dandelion flower 8. A torn strip of cotton cloth dyed with tannin and iron curled into a spiral 9. An A6 piece of cotton cloth with various dilute dyes and dip dyed with tannin and iron with: 10. A circle of wire with cast paper elements dyed with tannin and iron placed on top of 9. 11. A bundle of dandelion dyed cast cotton pulp elements tied together with thread 12. A wire bowl containing dry bluebell leaves 13. A ‘grip’ sample piece of cotton rag paper dip dyed with tannin 14. A piece of silk dip dyed with an exhaust bath of bramble and then iron with 15. A small circular piece made from dandelion dyed cotton rag pulp on wire placed on top of the silk strip 16. A ‘grip’ sample piece of cast bluebell paper 17. A cast circle of cotton rag paper and various cast paper elements on a thread both dyed with dandelion dye 18. A sheet of paper dip dyed with bramble dye 19. A larger ‘grip’ object, cotton rag pulp dyed with tannin and iron 20. A sheet of paper made from beaten bluebell leaveswith 21. A small bundle of cast cotton pulp elements dyed with tannin and iron tied together on top of the bluebell paper 22. 3 pieces of coal threaded onto wire 23. A sheet of paper dyed with tannin and iron with 24. A circle of wire with 3 sections of broken clay pipeon top of the previous sheet 25. 2 cast paper and clay on wire elements 26. A found piece of rusted iron with thread dyed with rust 27. 4 long strips of dyed cotton fabric folded or rolled
Kim Norton
Kim Norton
5th Exchange with Jane Ponsford. April 2020
Contents Photographs - Site images the back of the studio mounted on paper with text - Geological map South East London, sheet 270
Objects I am sending you: - 5x Greengage branches covered in London clay from Beckenham mixed with hair - 1 x buddleia wood covered in London clay mixed with hair - 1 x Loganberry wood bound with flax thread dyed with rust - 1 x Cherry branch bound with thread dyed in apple bark - 1 x piece of concrete - 1 x rusty metal cable originally found on the Thames path in Woolwich. Recently it’s been sitting in my studio, and used to dye the flax thread. - 1 x porcelain thumbed form with rusted metal fired to 1200oc - 2 x A6 fabric swatches dyed with Apple bark canvas and calico - 6 x porcelain panel pages with text washed with natural iron oxide
Initial Thoughts
LOCALITY ----------------------------HOME How will lockdown impact the work?
OR
WILL IT?
This exchange is the first experience of us all being in complete lockdown. It immediately restricts movement But can focus the mind on what’s closer to home.
THE GARDEN
THE PLANTS SE6
THE STUDIO
In response to some of the materials from Jane in exchange 4. Roots Moss Lichen Brambles Plant Materials collected from my own garden Branches Cherry Loganberry Greengage
Buddleia Adam Buddle could be described as one of the chief architects of England’s Edgelands ……… a botanist who died 300 years ago’ (imported the buddleia from South America)
‘A plant that has with the help of wind and weather, self-seeded across huge swathes of unchecked, uncultivated land around our towns and cities.
The Buddleia or ‘butterfly bush’ has become such a significant marker of edgelands territory.’ From Edgelands Paul Farley and Michael Symmons-Roberts (page137) Plan of the space behind the studio. The boundary between two gardens
Here is the layout for the redundant space behind the studio.
The photographs illustrate the space as you walk around it.
THE TEXT ON THE PANELS AND PRINTED ON THE BACK OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE THE SAME.
Telling a story of the space The mood of transience Hidden from view With an air of mystery
THE EDGELAND BOARDERS BACK TO BACK SIDE BY SIDE
Two materials have already been in previous exchanges The London clay no:1 Apple bark no:3 Both materials are being used and explored in very different ways. London clay to cover tree branches. Is a reference to the adobe brick, or the cob buildings mixed with straw, and used as a protective skin-------outer layer
Binding------Wrapping---------------restricted------------------boundaries around distance ------------being confined to a particular place-------------lack of movement------------------------------------------------------------------------------enclosed spaces--------- small spaces
In relation to the bound branches The greengage branches covered in London clay Sit
On top of the concrete
Natural vs Manmade
Sit ---------Side-----------by ---------------Side
Gardens are often cultivated spaces.
IRON --------------------In response to one of Jane’s pieces in parcel no:4 I was immediately drawn to the delicate wire circle with a small paper iron dyed element ANDof course London clay is heavy with iron------ creating that distinctive yellow tone.
COLOUR DYE Iron and rust Pinched porcelain vessel mixed with rust from the metal cable included in the parcel The same cable provides the colour dye used for the thread. Feel free to use any of these fabric samples. Natural iron oxide used on the text panels. (Seen below is the unedited printed text.) Edgelands Non- places
Location:
The redundant space behind the studio.
OR
The
hidden haven
depending
how you
look at it.
The unkempt
The heart of the garden
The shed
The compost boxes
The unseen
The storage
The secret space
The secret place
Lost and Scruffy
Full of possibilities…….
The
point
where
TWO spaces meet
There are no clear boundaries
here……
Bridging the space
between
the
beginning
and the
end of TWO gardens. Where bags of sand will sporadically appear and disappear, but with no trace of human movement.
Kim Norton
4th Exchange with Jane Ponsford
30th March 2020
Contents Large porcelain pinch bowl with Red shale collected from Lower Vellow, West Somerset Small porcelain pinch bowls No2: 4gms soil from Snowdrop Valley, Cutcombe, W. Somerset No4: 4gms soil from Dunster, W. Somerset No6: 6gms Red sandstone from Lower Vellow, W. Somerset No8: 6gms soil from Quantock Hills, W. Somerset No10: 4gms Charmouth mudstone from Jane No12: 4gms Seaton redstone from Jane
All fired to 1200oc Dried fern from Quantock Hills
Photographs 2x Lower Vellow flooding
2x Quantock Hills 1x Kiln at Dunster mid 18thcentury 3x maps – material collection points Ordnance Survey Exmoor 119 1930 Ordnance Survey Bridgewater and Quantock Hills 120 1929 1x shades of Brown from Werners Nomenclature of colours adapted to Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Mineralogy, Anatomy and the Arts. P.Syme page 51 Vellow shale and sandstone in jar Vellow sandstone on canvas, with Vellow shale. (the shale sits on top of the third cut our section see images in notes)
Notes The kiln at Dunster An updraft circular, local red sandstone kiln, internally lined with brick. Used between 1750-1850 for firing earthenware and roof tiles. The kiln survived as it was converted into a gardeners shed for over 150 years (from off the beaten track in Somerset 2015) Lime kilns Lime was used to dress acid soils. 18th century coal and limestone was imported from Wales Brown is an old colour Its ancestors are the horses and bison painted in prehistoric caves, The clothes of our ancestors were brown. Most skins are brown Brown cloth always dressed the poor. (Chroma; Derek Jarman p79) Earth: ‘When the word evolved over 100 years ago from Anglo-Saxon versions of the old English terms. ‘Eor(th)e’ and ‘ertha’ and the German ‘erde’ these words simply referred to the ground’. (Soil Culture p20)
WEST SOMERSET a familiar landscape- we have family there. I collect and forage with every visit to Lower Vellow.
When it floods it appears to bleed………..
The Landscape has strong associations with Wordsworth and Coleridge.
This exchange has been a response to the Seaton Redstone and Charmouth Mudstone that Jane used and gave me samples in exchange no:3
The colours change -----------------
-------------- As you move -----
--------- Across --------------------------- the land
THE REDS, THE DEEP BROWNS
Mapping the
SOUTH WEST THROUGH ITS SOIL
THROUGH ITS EARTH
Kim Norton 2020
Jane Ponsford
A6 Project with Kim Norton
4th Exchange Homegrown/Lockdown
In our most recent exchange you sent some bundles and arrangements of twigs from your apple tree. I found these familiar things rather moving and although I had already planned a new more remote location for my next period of research, I found myself similarly entranced by extremely local materials in response, luckily as it turned out. The things that have fascinated me for this iteration of our exchange have been found on my home ground within a few yards of my front door.
The materials are very humble: Bramble, lichen, moss, root fibres, nutshells discarded by the squirrel
I have mainlyused the brambles either as a material or as a dye in making my objects and test pieces. The tannin dyes from the bramble shoots and tips make a pale brown colour, which alters in contact with iron - as you can see in the scrap of paper cast on the iron of the wire circle. This reaction formed the basis of the narrow range of colours that I used. I gathered the other materials I that collected together within bramble dyed little containers. The idea of containment and connections was an important theme. I also loved the bramble stems for their own sharp defensive forms.
Materials I have sent you: Lichen Root fibres (they might need soaking to be flexible again)
Test Pieces: 3 bramble twigs 3 small containers with lichen, root fibres and moss (will probably need to have their contents put back inside the containers) 1 wire ring with cast cotton rag paper dyed with tannin and stained with iron 4 sheets of cotton rag paper dyed with bramble tannins and modified with iron 1 bramble necklace 1 collection of 10 discarded nutshells
Photos: 1 of the site of the growing brambles and 1 of the simmering leaves and shoots
Jane Ponsford April 2020
Jane Ponsford 3rd Exchange with Kim Norton
Responding to our last exchange my initial thoughts are that I want to cast the net wider for collecting materials. While I will always be fascinated by chalk and the Downs which are the material and the setting from my childhood, I want to take the journey further. At one point I know we talked about walking the length of the path either between our two starting points or for the full extent of the link between our research areas and although I know that was an impossibility for all sorts of pragmatic (I almost wrote ‘down to earth’) reasons, that thought made me want to collect from further flung locations. So I collected materials myself and asked people to donate materials.
Materials I have sent you
Seaton Redstone, from the SW coastal path in Devon (Map ref: 50°42'10.5"N 3°04'37.4’W) and Charmouth mudstone, from Charmouth in Dorset just along the coast Test Pieces 25 - 30 tiny cast paper scales coloured with various earth materials including the above, partly collected from my own walks and partly given by others. These are very small but the geographic area that they refer to has spiralled out to include the West Country where my brother lives now and where part of my family originated, as well as the Downs (chalk), St Martha’s Hill in Surrey (sandstone) and London (clay).
To be arranged in a shoal. Several sample sheets of paper uncoloured or coloured with chalk, mudstone and redstone from Seaton. To be piled up. A shallow hoop of greystone pigmented paper A taller, narrower cylinder of the same. To be arranged with / on / near the piled sample sheets.
There is something very satisfying to me about the density and flatness of these pigments and I am very drawn to them because they come from landscapes where my family have lived for generations. In my previous text about the second exchange I said that I intended to work from domestic materials for instance, dust but actually I find myself wanting to move further outwards. Next I am planning to collect material from the Fens where the other side of my family originated. I look forward to finding out what the black soils of Lincolnshire and the silt of the Great Ouse do and the marks and pigments they produce. Earthbound will then draw a line across from one side of the country to the other in tiny A6 episodes. This iteration of the exchange feels like a leaping off point.
Books I have been reading: Wanderlust, Rebecca Solnit The Footing, various authors, Longbarrow Press, a book of poetry about walking ‘as a mode not of travelling, but of being‘ Signs & Wonders, Marina Warner Drawing Water, Tania Kovats The Old Ways, A Journey on Foot, Robert Macfarlane The Natural History of Selborne, Gilbert White The Library of Ice, Nancy Campbell
‘Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains.’ Rebecca Solnit, Tracing a Headland, from Wanderlust
Kim Norton
3rd Exchange with Jane Ponsford 2nd Feb 2020
COLOUR PALETTE BROWNS, RED BROWNS, CREAMY GREENS. Location: South East London, Peckham, Nunhead.
Annotated notes form the illustrated booklet
Contents
Photographs Stuart Road allotments, South East London Falstaff Apple tree Stripped Falstaff apple wood on paper In bundle tied with flax thread Circular apple bark Bark in glass jar London clay soil - fired to 1050oc 1200oc London clay soil with 2gms chalk, sand, bone ash, wood ash, all fired to 1050oc and 1200oc London clay soil with 6gms chalk, sand, bone ash, wood ash, all fired to 105oc and 1200oc Clay sticks imprinted with apple wood, fired to 1050oc and 1200oc Bruno Munrani THE CIRCLE
Trees
Grow following a concentric circular pattern Botanical signs For annual and biannual plants (see written noted for drawings) The allotment This place/space is situated in the heart of the urban landscape Yet
It enables me to experience subtle changes that occur throughout the year in much the same way as my garden
21 sticks Cast linen rag wire and chalk made by Jane in exchange no2 12 young branches 1 for each month sewn onto paper dyed with London clay made by Jane.
BUNDLES________GATHERING__________HAY______ STRAW BALES______TO CARRY_______MOVEMENT_______THROUGH SPACE
LINES, MAPPING, LOCATION, DIRECTION………………………….
THE TRANSFORMATION OF MATERIAL
Clay collected from Beckenham Park Pace sent in parcel No1
Changes occur
Deepening
And
Darkening
With heat
‘Before firing, the London clay would be mixed with sand, chalk, ash from domestic fires and bone scrap collected back doors nothing salable was ever thrown away by thrifty Victorian households From Underlands: A Journey Through Britain’s Lost Landscape Ted Nield
Kim Norton 2020
Kim Norton
2nd Exchange with Jane Ponsford
23rd December 2019
Photographs credits
Uffington white horse, Oxfordshire
Sombourne quarry, Hants
Basilius Besler plate 361 from Hortus Eystettersis 1613
3x hand carved chalk chunks from Sombourne quarry,
3x chalk circles on paper.
Reads:
No1: Immediate thoughts in response CHALK-WHITE-CIRCLE
No2: The three chalk circles were made using the dust created from the carved chalk pebbles. Marks and traces, nothing wasted.
No3: David Nash, Ash Dome
Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels
Andy Goldsworthy, Pebble Circle
Chris Drury, Medicine Wheel
Maya Lin, Artic Circle
Richard Long, Midsummer Circles
The Sun and Full Moon
Craters
The circle in landscape
Crop circles
Stone circles
The labyrinth
Responding to Jane’s first parcel using chalk, it was through this very material we both met in 2015 whilst exhibiting at 10 days Winchester-Chalk
Full circle, or beginning
Colour palette winter white
The Uffington white horse: The oldest chalk cut hill figure in Britain. Approx 3,000 yrs
I grew up in Oxfordshire- this is a familiar landmark.
INK LINE DRAWING FROM THE WHITE HORSE
The abstracted line
The abstracted Curve
This is rooted in place and unchanged by time
CHALK
SOFT CLEAN EDGES AND SURFACES
Hand carved, the dust has used to make the circles on canvas
FLINT
Goes hand on hand with chalk, bone like, black in the centre with a white skin.
Reminds me of Henry Moore
FROM CHROMA DEREK JARMAN
White is the
Dead mid-winter,
Pure
And
Chaste
The snowdrop, galenthius nivalis (candlemas bell)
Don’t bring those snowdrops in to your house They’ll bring you bad luck
Cold snow-white winter
Snowdrops: the first winter flowers to emerge
Galanthus derived from two greek words
Milk and flower
Nivalis snow
Milk flowers of the snow
Drops of milk
Snow piercers
Snow bells Kim Norton 2019
Jane Ponsford 2nd Exchange A6 Project with Kim Norton
Responding to our first exchange, my first thoughts are:– We are both very concerned with actual PLACE and not just material from the place. Your material comes from a place that resembles a ploughed field and mine from a raw area of exposed chalk on the scarp side of a hill. I lived nearby when I was a child and at that time the exposed area was bigger and reminded me of the emerging fossilised bones of some enormous creature. Chalk is also the material and subject through which we first met and although I want to move on it seemed important to start there. Your forms are very evocative of process, one a hollowed out form which clearly shows the scraping marks of your fingers to remove material, the other, a compacted shape that not only speaks of the way in which it was made but also calls to be picked up and held in the hand. So my first actual responses are ones which I cant send other than in writing; picking up the clay object and holding it cupped in my hand and pushing my fingers into the hollow grooves of the emptied block.
My second response to your objects and material was to make an echo, a nesting set of hollow rather than compacted, cone shapes which explore that inside / outside, skin / mass of your two shapes and then to continue by making objects that can sit within each other or be piled or stacked or placed together in relationship to each other. The last response was to make some sticks, dipped in chalky liquid, which could fall or be thrown in an informal arrangement, neither a massy weight nor an empty container.
I used a little of the earth dust that you sent me to colour some of these forms. The clay is built into the cotton pulp before couching the forms. I loved using it and enjoyed the colour but too late in the process, realised that I should have gone to the place it came from to find a stronger connection to the place.
Materials I have sent you: A Petrie dish of leaf litter. When I made my objects I imagined that the small chalk bowl would hold some of this material. The rest is for you to use if you would like to.
Test Pieces: 3 nested cone pieces, cast cotton rag pulp with chalk dust A small chalk bowl, cotton rag pulp, chalk dust A flat chalky dish, cotton rag pulp with chalk dust
Circular Piece (wire, cast cotton rag pulp with chalk dust) 3 cotton rag pulp and clay circular pieces – one can be placed inside the flat chalky dish or can stand together with the others. One of these sheets is stained with a tannin dye made from leaf litter and bark. Two sheets of cotton rag paper, one with a small amount of chalk dust and the other with your clay dust built into the sheet 21 sticks, cast linen rag pulp, wire, chalk gesso
Notes: Next I want to bring my materials closer to home. I am interested in investigating domestic dust
In November last year we each started with a place that spoke to us or was familiar and exchanged materials and objects we had made in relation to these places. The two photos show some of these things. Kim’s photo shows her notes and visual references and Jane's image is of a sheet of handmade paper coated with a rough chalk gesso photographed on chalk.
Jane Ponsford November 2019 A6 Project with Kim Norton 1st Exchange
Location: The Whites, Box Hill Nr Mickleham, Surrey
Grid Ref: TQ 17560 51781
Materials enclosed:
A Petrie dish of chalk dust
Test Pieces:
1. A chalk bowl, (cotton rag pulp, chalk dust) To collect To contain
To embody
2. Circumference Piece (linen thread, cast cotton rag pulp elements with chalk dust)
To measure
To contain / enclose
To tally or count (paces, breaths, minutes)
3. Two sheets of cotton rag paper, one smeared with coarse chalk gesso, one with chalk built into the sheet
Two photos of the site (from one of the chalk paths near The Whites on Box Hill), one photo taken in February and the other in October 2019
Notes:
Jane has worked here before and lived nearby as a child so it feels like home, which is a good place to start out on the journey. Chalk landscape. Familiar / strange
Land / sea
Ground like bone Kim Norton November 2019
Exchange No 1, Location: Beckenham Place Park, South East London
Materials: Unfired locally collected clay
The solid diamond (wet weight 376) (dry weight)
Small mass of clay soil made quite simply by using both hands, by doing so there is direct contact with the earth. Although it has undergone a process of transformation to create an object that possessing a quality of intimacy and preciousness. It links us back to ground we walk on.
The carved rectangle. (Wet weight) (dry weight)
Built within the confines of an a6 format
This can be viewed by looking down into it.
Although it resembles the vessel or container. It’s very much the opposite by digging down, carving out and removing material there’s an essence of excavation here. Where space is clearly divided
Both pieces were made using clay soil from Beckenham Park place in South East London
Dug out of the ground to construct a new swimming lake in the park and had been redistributed the other side of the park resembling a freshly ploughed field.
Thoughts
Both pieces have been left unfired
There was something I wanted to maintain here.
Once fired it becomes ceramic, and takes on a different language.
