Sunday 8 September 2013

Excellent results!

 Unfortunately half of the paper pieces I left outside on Wednesday have disappeared, I suspect this is due to strong winds. The weather was particularly bad last night, and I assume this accounts for the most recent disappearance. Using paper was a good idea as an experiment, but the material is just too weak to survive here. Only one paper piece is still outside now, I've taken one in this afternoon and I am so pleased with the results. The elements have had a big impact in the space of just four days, compared to months of leaving paper outside in London and having much milder results. This piece is so obviously weathered, and this is exactly the sort of result I've been hoping for all along. This makes me even more confident that bringing my work to Iceland was a good decision, and that the canvas pieces will work well.
The strong winds last night left me quite paranoid that the canvas I placed outside yesterday would have been blown away too. However, it is tied to a rock, and the rock is wedged in between others, so this anchors it, and the piece was thankfully still there this morning. The wind and rain was extremely heavy last night, so the chalk has almost completely washed off the surface. I'm looking forward to seeing how it continues to develop, and feel sure that the results will be more pleasing than they have been in England.
I'm planning to explore the area a bit further and find some new places where I can gain varied and dramatic results. I was going to do this today, but for much of the day the wind has been too strong, and walking in some places I was planning to go to could potentially be quite dangerous. I hope that I can do this in the next couple of days. Yesterday we walked up a mountain in order to see a sculpture/performance, and this really inspired me to look a bit further than my immediate surroundings at home and in the studio for places to leave the canvasses.

Further to this, for a while now I've been working on a series of cut-up texts, about moments of a particular day in July. I've nearly finished writing, and I'm so happy with what I've done that I'm planning to produce a number of artist's books of the cut ups once I get home. I've always been quite interested in book art, but it's not something I work with very often, so this will be a new challenge for me. The books will be produced by hand, and I'm planning to produce approximately five books, all with slight variations. This is something I'll explore further when I get back to England, but I'm forming a few ideas now about how to proceed.
I'm really pleased that being here has given me plenty of space to think and formulate new ideas and plans, as I feel I'm going to have quite a lot to work with when I get back to London.

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