Blogging the Blean

The Cure for the Common cold

Colds: I have been talking about this with my friend across the road (Jim the plumber). Actually I feel like a plumber; always working on another job and not the one I’m suposed to be. This is actually an art form in its own right! Always being a day late with with everything you do because you are so busy juggling different tasks, you can only deal with imeadiate issues! Fire Fighting.

We exchanged phrases like ‘just going to buy some materials’ and ‘off to get some breakfast’ or ‘the vans got an MOT this morning’ which really mean you wont see me for the rest of the day and my favourite one ‘yeah its coming along’ which really means you aint done anything on it for ages.

I was very pleased with the completion of the terraced housing insect homes.

Anyway me and Jim have found a cure tor the common cold! Self Employment.

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I feel like:

a cow bred for milking 4 times a day in a mega diary.

or a battery hen

or a robot

or

A rider in the tour de France whose climbed x2 Pyrenees mountains already today and who now faces the Tourmalet before the finish line.

or the Star Ship Enterprise after a battle with the Klingon’s….Shields down and running on impulse power.

Then I found this!

Inspiration,

to be able to negotiate the obstacles in life’s path, jump the seemingly, too wide to cross voids and dance through the landscape of life’s ups and downs.

And I now realise there is a difference between motivation and inspiration.

7.45 mins of your life…. not wasted.

Inspiration.

A round up of 2010.

Highs:

This year started and finished with two blog milestones. A-N Blogger of the Year for a walk with Cosmo at the start, and recently the Blogger Interview with Andrew Bryant. This online community grows from strength to strength and I so glad I’m involved.

Being awarded a modest amount of money from Canterbury City Council to enable the whole Blean Woodland thing to happen. http://wildartintheblean.blogspot.com/.

Making lots of new working relationships. Even though my earnings were down by about a quarter from last year it has been one of my busier years.

Dover Kent Whitfield Primary School, Ceramic frieze

Benenden C of E Primary School Kent. ‘Discovering Malawi Project’

The St. Georges School Garden.

Completion over several years of the award winning Isle of White Eco Loos: The Greenest Loos in the Nation

St. Helens Hospital Exterior Mosaic Entrance Feature

Briary School Club Building. Exterior make over.

Engaging Landscapes Project, Medway . The Strood Community Trail http://stroodcommunitytrail.blogspot.com/ this project involved working with my friend Jo and Animate http://www.animatecommunityarts.com/

Other smaller projects included:

Design collaboration with Paula Groves on two pieces of large metal sculptures. http://www.sculptedmetal.co.uk/www.sculptedmetal.co.uk/HOME.html

The big draw, at Chatham Dockyard to create a user generated map

‘Home grown Talent’ working with an animation production company for only one day scoping content for a film with secondary school pupils.

Poetry City, pavement drawings delivered as part of the Canterbury Festival

Other highs included my son becoming head boy at his secondary school and my two daughters enjoy school (on the whole). How well our garden is looking. I have really enjoyed riding my bike through the kent countryside with a group of friends. And putting a bird table in the garden and a peanut bird feeder outside our kitchen window as been fab.

Finally: My car is really developing personal characteristics and idiosyncrasies that make it special like an old friend.

Looking Forward to:

The Kent schools Torch Project. A pilot project aimed at supporting a wider kent schools programme celebrating the Olympic values. Working with http://www.workers-of-art.co.uk/

working with the North Kent Community Church and the residents of Springhead in Ebbsfleet to produce artworks.

The creation of the Wildart Sensory Trail in my local Blean Woodland. http://www.kentwildlifetrust.org.uk/ working with the kent wild life trust.

Working with Future Creative again http://www.future-creative.org/default.aspx at St. Georges school to continue landscaping their school grounds.

Being shortlisted for a large ground feature celebrating a market town in central England.

Working with Rosalind Davis at The Core Gallery on an artists talks/resources programme.

A return to doing some painting? Which also means developing work outside of commissioned projects.

Just walking in the woods with Cosmo.

Talk of vistiting Istambul.

The Lows

My lovely wife says there are DIY tasks looming all over the house and garden?

Being too busy all the time for relaxing and just chilling out.

Not learning anything new, nor getting out to see inspiring things and places.

Buying a macbook and being totaly confused and frustrated by it.

Working more and earning less.

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Wildart

My project is now called ‘Wildart’ and I felt a little odd as other peoples agendas were streaming in, and my own interests sidelined. I was surprised how despondant I felt, because I knew funding would would change everthing. So what I’ve done is write down the really interesting things this partnership with the Kent Wildlife Trust will offer.

Its not about spending money to make art objects of superior quality, with intellectually driven motives: its about working with other peoples skills and knowledge to create something with what you’ve got access to, at no cost. This is a very different kind of creativity.

I am not allowed to use anything non native. materials like wire, cement, stone from a quarry are not allowed, so you can see how challengeing this will be. I can’t introduce any planting unless it is already growing there.

This is actually a fantastic opportunity to design stuff which requires other peoples expertise and skills etc. Here is an example; I can’t just go and buy a load of 3×2 and 6×1 tanalized timber and make some seating say. No No No…..no ‘but we have got some trees we can cut down’.

uh..kin..el…… that’s an approach which changes perspectives!

Having spent 25 years making stuff with slate from India, mosaic tiles from France, wood from somewhere like Canada, and landscape designers who take a trip to all the way to Holland to place an order for 7 trees of a particular type, to create a specific effect during autumn, in a public park in central England, quite close to the M1.

This then is a little more sustainable that.

Other peoples skills, equipment and resources are seemingly available to me. This includes specialist organisation outside the trust.

This looks like it might actually be really exiting.

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A Fork in the Road.

Now that funding for this…….whatever it is……..artist residency position….. project based learning opportunity…..community engagement programme or is it just something I wanted to do, has got sponsors, stakeholders and other peoples agendas and money interwoven, I am standing at a fork in the road…..deciding to turn left or right.

Left or right?

Right is the path I have to take.

Along this path lies workshops with people who dont know I am coming their way yet. Along this this path lies public seating, a path which is specific for wheelchair users to experince the woods, with interative features (art) along it. These features will stimulate the senses and target not just wheelchair users, but everyone with a disability or not. Running along this path has to be a blog documenting how these goals/targets and outputs are achieved. A valuable piece of evidence based documentation with feed back built in.

I dont think that blog will be on this site, as what is documented here is not altogether relevant. The new blog (for which I will be paid some relatively modest sum) will be linked to the men who count butterflies website.

Left is the path where the creation myths lay, waiting to be discovered. The Blean men are down there, as well as a woollen calender! Other unknown things are down that pathway. There is no light at the end of that path, no sunny clearings in view. I know ‘pylons’ are down that path somewhere? Giants carrying power. I want to find some stories about these giants down that path.

But I have to turn right.

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