March | 2014 | bootlace and lightning

if i’m going to truly show process then there is no better way than to have an open studio policy. anyone is welcome to come into the studio when i’m there working and quite a few people regularly do just that. the artist studio process of collecting and making is a 3D extension of the sketchbook process and this is where the real intuitive connections are made. these photos give a snapshot in time of where i’m at right now for the members of staff at battleby too shy to come over or too busy to leave the building. i’ve been working with texts and with printmaking techniques – all the prints have been made here with spraypaint and bootlace fungus on found materials in my spray shed by upper battleby. the shed is freezing but well ventilated and this means i work very fast and completely intuitively to produce these aurora prints which are far looser than i normally work when i draw or screenprint. initially i set myself one strict condition, that the work must be created within the natural boundaries of battleby with the creative tools at hand. it changed the work and my process and was a great experiment for me personally but now i can relax these rules to sharpen the finish the idea requires for the final structure i plan to create in the grounds – the tree church.

bootlace prints | aurora

welcome

bootlace print | black white gold

full studio interior

the collectors jars

roe deer skull

till | gold print

the studio

memory

combined prints

in the first month or two of the residency i was experimenting with polaroids while mapping the gardens during my walking phase. as the residency moved on the polaroids became less part of my focus until they simply faded back into sketchbook development. now that i am really focusing on my artwork and the permissions required to install it in the grounds at battleby its given me time to look back over some of these stages and reflect. the images here are a sample of some of the explorations i was making back at the beginning as i got to know the place and the people who inhabit it. notes accompanying the images state that maps are representations of theories and views of the universe, representing space and location and responding to the nuances not the totality of the environment. this work is only process but it still seems worth placing here among my other research. demystifying the artists process is as much my goal for the residency as creating a piece of work.