I used to think my arts practice was more about process and practice than creating a project. Yet on reflection I can see that the two are essentially intertwined.
To design a project, you need to have a creative practice. You need to have the discipline to see a project through from conception to resolution. Some projects are short term, others require huge leaps of faith into an unknown future. That’s where you have to hold your vision, even if that vision is still evolving with the project itself.
Having newly returned from a short artist residency with The Corridor Project in central west NSW, I have had to put away all the drawings and experimental works I made there in order to focus on my upcoming environmental project Dear World (see last month’s blogpost).
I have shelved the ink drawings out of sight so I can focus on my paper world making project for September and October. These drawings await their time in the sun, reminding me that I loved the process of mark making out in a pastoral landscape, one where the studio is based in a hundred year old shearing shed.
All the undulating landscape lines contrasting with the verticals and horizontals of human construction. An imposition of linear design over contours; becoming monuments to human endeavour, while never forgetting that underneath is an ancient land with its own stories to tell.
To have reached this point of ‘being’ in a new landscape, I first needed to have a practice. It doesn’t mean I have a ‘drawing’ practice per se; although for this project I used drawing as a method of site interrogation, a bodily exploration of charcoal and ink.
I crawled over huge boulders and broke many sticks of charcoal as I rubbed the carbonised wood sticks over paper and stone, then brought them back to the studio to solidify the marks with ink. Along the way I discovered how lines could be overlaid and through that a residency project developed out of the chaos.
Of course I applied for this residency with an outlined project which was about “the way humans, landscapes and the environment are in relationship with each other”. I didn’t know how this would look until I got there and discovered the monumental status of the human structures in the landscape.
In a couple of months I will come back to this tentatively titled Landscape, Interrupted project and see how I can resolve the unfinished drawings I have brought home with me. For now, I must return to my Dear World project which finishes in November.
Transcribing rock drawing lines onto recycled acetate sheets for making ‘sun prints’.
Argyrotype print of original rock drawing on handmade paper. The yellowish marks still need to be washed away.