I took the drawings out on to the land today and set fire to them… ruining them, destroying the work I have produced so far on the Block Chain project. I have saved the ashes in a jar and want to use them somehow to progress this further. I documented the process and the resulting imagery offers beauty and perfection out of my control. As the flames engulf the drawings, the mundane A4 paper becomes a silky, sensuous material. Liberated by the non-existent artwork, there’s no need to continue the quest for the perfect drawing on the golden section line. The ashes are beyond weightless.

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After a Sunday morning of pointing old stone walls (filling in the cracks) here on the studio renovation, I spent the rest of the afternoon drawing from the photos of the ‘found’ cracks from the previous day.

These drawings are on A4 paper, folded to find the golden section line on each sheet, then creased along this line.

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Continuing the BlockChain The Power of Two project:

In response to Denise’s idea of revisiting the wall that ‘blemished’ her face, I went wandering this morning to the local village and on my way took photos of all the sites of imperfection I encountered. Whilst Denise is intending to conceal/hide the blemish on the wall, I wanted to reveal the imperfections I found. I am enjoying the play with the fruitless attempts to perfect and the finding of beauty within the imperfect, reducing the quest to an obsolete, as Denise says.

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Block Chain The Power of Two – Dissent Art Collaboration January 2018

This week saw the start of Block_III of the Block-Chain The Power of Two project with Chapel Arts Studios. I am currently researching in more detail the idea of unattainable perfection and the act of ruining works under the hashtag #blockchaindissentart

This has begun by recording details of decay, aging and imperfections around me, within the natural and built environment. So far, this has included washing soil to remove cracks, polishing freshly plastered walls and boarding out studio spaces.

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‘Nature is us all in the end’… Olive trees, Fig trees, Skulls & Bones, Plants, Skin, Death, Decay, Growth… This quest for an unattainable perfection… cleaning, scrubbing, improving, making, remaking, attempting, controlling, ruining, reflecting… ‘we make things – in turn they remake us’… Working in this environment: sculpting, constructing, plastering – recording the imperfections, cracks and decay.

The photos above are taken in and around my studio – glass bottles, plaster, clay soil, dirt and dust, plants surviving with very little water, growing through cracks in the old, stone terraced walls, in contrast to the sharp, measured lines of drawing boards within a box like structure.

The clay soil is dry and cracking after a long dry winter and unusually warm temperatures, I started to wash the cracks and try to reattach the soil.