5 mile sky

This was run one of a sequence of 5. The idea for this one was to focus on 'sky'. 
When I set up this stretchy-line drawing and then looked at it, the way it related to the horizon line and the sky, it made me wonder about the ancients' motivation to build and make stone circles and other material constructions in the environment. It appeared to me as a very  meaningful thing to do, to construct a drawing that visually corresponded to the sky, the horizon line, that connected me with the act of making to the surrounding environment. I wondered, if the willfull act of construction might have meant for ancients to gain a sense of control of the environment at whose mercy their lives depended. Or, if you can't control, you can at least 'communicate' which might create a feeling of control, at least....

Wall display: Alternative drawing arena?

This display was the result of a small project where I assembled the material artefacts and documents from five separate runs, undertaken on separate days. Each running journey had a particular, abstract focus. I thought such a project set-up might be a useful way to acquaint myself with the different aspects and features at play when undertaking and recording a sequence of running journeys. It raised essential question about how to design a project, what themes to focus on, how to present the find and documents and where is meaning being generated and carried. 

Here are the themes and titles of each run:

5 mile sky
4 minute surface
3 pace place
2 turn thoughts
1 tone stream


 

Alternative arena

Large drawing, like a long run. 
Working the physical surface of the paper roll felt like working on land, repetitively, straining my back and my hands, seeing a larger picture and pattern emerge from many small steps. Thoughts came to mind, about the detail of the particular 'area' where I was just drawing, but also there was this dimension of forgetting oneself in the process and being moved along by it. 

Video: Moving Lines

Taking line to the hills, inscribing into a situation, and allowing the environment to change the installation. This was the idea behind these experiments and installations. The sounds were unexpected 'windfall' by the process. 
I made the videos in the midst of winter in the area above Pott Shrigley in the Peak District of the UK. The wind was mostly ferocious and conditions in general were very hard to manage. Many times the wind blew over the tripod and the only way to record the videos, in the end, seemed to pin the camera to the ground with tent pegs. The process of making illustrated dramatically (for me dramatically that is) how we interact with the environment making exposure and vulnerability of our bodies a dominant theme. 

Image layers outside

How does an image taken on a journey, and changed through it, work with its changing surroundings?

Preparing the surface

Making this carry-round-with-me corsage felt like an endurance act: The repetitive pencil movements reminded me of raking grass or leaves, and slowly moving over a field. The compartments seemed to like fenced or walled in areas on land, defining ownership and use. 
A parallel arena in which drawing acts like moving over land?

Rising water levels

When water levels get to the record of a journey.....
Metaphor as the working tool here....?

Alternative ways ....

How else to use 'picturing' devices in the outdoors ....to allow the environment create its visual impact based on my view, my positioning of these mirrors?

Before and after

Taking the drawing for a run,....body and drawing becoming marked by each other. 

Three dimensional drawing

Having brought back some words from a run, I felt, the drawing to represent the running journey needed to have its own three-dimensionality to 'house' the words where they belonged. 
Is the paper surface with the drawing and the words like a second arena, like a parallel site or world where the experience is relived, but also transformed and 'moved on'?

Arranged text

How could I use the words, that come back with me after a running journey to craft some document that speaks of the past experience? Richard Long has used this kind of format,...so I tried it out myself. After I had made a little presentation to a group of people here in the village, about artist working with the environment, and showing them one of Richard Long's text arrangements....I feel very irrelevant with my humble attempts.....

Words to mark a run

Words have always been so important for all my work so far. I record quick 'notes' on my phone, rather than write them down. Trying to be brief and not water down their essence through saying too much. Are the words just aids for reflection? Do they become part of drawings or of what could be a performance? Are they already a picture? Or literature? 

Dung presence

The presence of the things close by...and how we attach relevance to them....
How dependent is this of a person running through or not?
Is the material agency of the direct foreground only activated through the presence of the subject running through?
I have read some of Paula Kramer's PhD thesis " Dancing Materiality', ...but she dances in the vicinity to the material scene that she has created...I am moving away from it, leaving it to the camera and it's not so clear role in it all, to 'define' things.

Field-marks

The pencil drawing is actually composed of two drawings: the one behind and below is the un-adulterated, non-creased version of a second drawing of the same kind, sitting on top of the first one. The second one went round with me, on a run, strapped to my skin with cling film. The first one stayed at home, to tell the difference. The drawing marked the skin and the movement marked and creased the drawing. 

Desintegration and new marks....Archeology?

I took this chalk dust covered corsage out with me on a run. I strapped it against my skin, wearing it underneath the t-shirt. In order to keep it in shape, I 'cling-filmed' to my torso, to make it stay in place. It did stay in place, and the heat, friction and body movement made it mark my skin's surface. The colour of the brown changed in places too....
This reminds me strangely of Archeology: Taking decay and the natural processes of desintegration as a mark making process. 
There is also this dimension about who marks what? Does the skin and body mark the drawing, or, does the drawing mark the body,....who is the agent here...or, how do the agents collaborate?

Tracemarks

Preparing a paper corsage to take out on a run, ....the drawing movements press down the paper's surface and brown pencil dust gets through the holes created by the sewing machine's needle. The marks on the surface remind me of fields....like the running going through areas of land. 

Paper, fat, protection, rain

Whilst staying at Dartington Hall, Devon for a Symposium organised by Art.dot.Earth, I went out early in the morning to draw, using my own brought wax-impregnated surfaces and the 'supports' (ground, bench,...fence) provided by the location.