meet the underFOOTs

The Underfoots are a collection of creatures from various places around the world. They are all manifestations of the overlooked, mossy intricate worlds underfoot.

A Village of a Thousand Frozen Bricks – Part I

Winter has gone, and its spring. time to forget everything about the -20 cold snap and move on to planting gardens…..though i’d like to take a moment to look back to what we built this winter with some household objects, last year’s christmas trees and plant stalks, and a whole lotta water.

The cold brought us an opportunity. build a castle, a village, a pirate ship.

but not in the way that you fundraise, design, put to tender and build by experts.

the kind where we rebuild it in every moment, with every kid that comes by, and with every idea that crosses our path.

the following is the first steps of the ice village…over three months!

It turns out that if you pack damp snow into a milk crate and drop it upside down, a snow brick pops out. If you then Make walls to defend yourself in an oval shape and throw a few logs across it is ready for the pre-made willow roof. This particular roof was made with teens from royal st.george college into a coracle or willow boat and floated it in the pond! It then progressed into the garden where it transformed into a title by little kids. Now that your roof is in place grab some Garden tools and show the kids how to fill the kinks in the walls…..and in a day you have the turtle igloo. Somehow today in an odd cyclical turn, as it melts in this warm spell, the turtle igloo sprouted milk crates. Who knew?

the ice village is born!: it is heartening to see that this concept we co-created draws in all children’s attention naturally! we arranged and played with all the blocks we had made in previous weeks and arranged them into a wall (or turtle depending on who you ask:). the objects hidden inside the ice are, to some children, personal challenges to free. we took turns supporting this desire with tools and then trying to keep the blocks intact. we have filled many more containers (with h2o) and are moving away from the obvious milk crate (as the finished product has some plastic in it that is hard to remove).

These first experimentations were held back by a mental image of a castle informed by what others have built.

when we let go of these other options and started using the material and energy we have at hand, then each creative suggestion can be tried to allow a free evolution of the ice village. the opposite process would look like an idea by a single person, a grant which outlines the amount of time that can be contributed to facilitate it, and finally searching for the ideal audience.

By contrast this collaborative process is a statement of intent in the culture which promotes community resourced technology, especially sweet when it helps people enjoy the winter and stay warm by ‘experimenting.’

see the cumulative effort of our winter work in part II.

The shadow of a living sculpture

Following an impulse to sketch the shadow of a sculpture cast upon a piece of paper. Feels good to follow impulses which don’t have an obvious outcome sometimes.

Ice Storm Shelter Design

Surviving Memory ‘2005’

glasgow, scotland (2005)

this exhibition in Mono, Glasgow, was a very different setting t

at the end of this show i travelled to israel, and increasingly

these prints were an attempt to combine two different kinds of m

combined these two layers come to paint a picture of holocaust m

in one layer, underneath the oil paint, there lies photocopy tra

layered overtop of these transfers are individual images. throug

these large monotypes were much more mature than the previous pa

in the exhibition, there was a section with seating which held s

although it was very positive to have this exhibition, it felt s

Charcoal Birds. Vichy, France (2006).

early in the morning, near the culmanation of the Innovent project, Tilly Gifford and we set out on a creative adventure.

a public collaboration without permission decorates two trees in a cobbled park in the center of Vichy, in France.

we would draw on our respective trees until someone called out ‘switch.’

the imagery is born largely from the preceding weeks observing birds for Innovent (see: https://foolishnatureblawg.wordpress.com/2013/11/30/innovent-story/ ).

those people who observed us so early in the morning, covered in charcoal drawing on the trees, ignored us.

a comment on the lack of social interaction in cities, generally. whether borne of fear, or apathy, or disinterest, the lack of interaction remains.

these works on the trees can serve to bring an artistic injection into the city.

a grand stage to speak of urban ecology.

or simply, like many tracings of shadows on the city streets, a vehicle to draw peoples attention to what grows around them.

a public visual communication which, for me at least, far exceeds the potential to communicate of public and commercial gallery spaces.

though it does not have the interpretive guided representation of gallery spaces, it is possible that it is intriguing for lack of this.

or maybe no one gives these scribbles a second look, but regardless the attempt to communicate publicly and visually is made within an urban visual environment often bastardized and made superficial today through urban commercial persuits.

The Beaver Lodge (l.e.e.d. platinum 2009)

This shelter housed the adventurous play of many hundreds of children at the evergreen brick works in the don valley from 2009-2011. This idea is not unique, to look to the beavers for how to build shelters that kids and adults can be inspired by. In this process, there was first about a month of material collection. Continue reading →

Furtle: the fiery fertile [bread oven] turtle (2008)

Since, the bread oven and cart were forcibly dismantled. one day an intern filled the oven full of wood, lit it, and subsequently in the inferno the base of the oven cracked, and continued to burn a hole through the night. It was not until the next day that someone noticed and put it out. By then the hole was so significant, and in an impossible to reach place below the cooking plate. Continue reading →

Public Resonance: Massada, Isreal (2005)

massada is located near the southern end of the dead sea, in Israel, and holds a story from the history of the Jewish people. a story told from a number of perspectives over time.

if you were to go there today, you would hear about the Jewish martyrs who held the Romans at bay.

having plenty of water and supplies, they threw stones and ceramic containers of water onto the romans below who were trying to invade the mountaintop fortress.

the romans had no water, and were dying from thirst.

it seemed that the Jews atop the mountain of massada could hold out forever, if it were not for a certain change in the tactics of the romans.

instead of building their access ramp themselves, the romans began using Jews from other parts of the country that they had captured.

these people atop the mountain are represented as the last holding out against the roman invasion.

the Jews no longer would throw stones down on their brethren and conquer was inevitable.

as the modern story goes, the people atop the mountain had to make a decision.

would they submit and become slaves and ‘have to renounce their god?’

or was there another option?

it is said that, from historical evidence, that there was a decision made to make mass suicide.

the men killed their wives and children, and then themselves. the last man committing suicide.

this is cited as a heroic act, and that these people would rather give up their lives than their faith.

a friend of mine who was studying modern israeli politics was doing a project on massada.

he told me another story.

that this religious and zionist story was created as a political and religious myth to support the acquisition of Israel in the 20th century.

we all create and tell stories, and we am fascinated how the same story can be told for very opposing opinions.

this is the beauty and vulnerability of stories, and these tales are the foundation for almost all of our activity.

this project was enacted from my memory of this story, and its coloring through this site being absolutely covered in a thin dust of tourists today.

with a certain story in mind, anything within the site is a piece of evidence.

at every turn in the snake trails progression up the mountain there was made a quick ink drawing in brown ink, which absorbed into the stone, and soon would fade in the hot desert sunlight.

the progression of these drawings is like the progression of the story in the mind and through time.

images of the romans,

of jews holding out on top of the mountain,

of suicide

and of tourists with camera’s documenting suicide.

eventually we gained the top, and met my father who took the gondola, which makes this mountaintop tourist site accessable to a larger number of people.

all of the works are labelled in roman numerals.

we wonder what sites similar to this around the world were to record the versions of the stories that people walk away with,

and incorporate them into the representation of the site, a living story, unselfconsciously repeating its function and meaning through time.

we wonder how this story that we tell of my interaction with this place will change by the next time we visit this site, or the next time we read this story here.

in one of the exhibition atop the mountain, in the ruins of one of the buildings, where they have traced the line of where it was rebuilt, there still exists some element of the paintings on the inside, like some mournful and faded flag of culture, in a site now rebuilt with religious and political stories.

if indeed you hold a story of this site, or of a similar progression of meaning within a ‘historical site’ we would love to hear it. click on the comment button below.

these works form a part of the series ‘pubic resonance’ where different public works are installed to interpret and otherwise change the surroundings. this work was done while walking the ‘snake trail’ a part of the historical route to the summit of Massada.

see other public resonance works here:

http://www.foolishnature.org/homely/cultural/public%20resonance/public%20resonance.html

Contours of History: 2005

The contours of history were traced by me, in the history of art, with a pencil. The dates are those of the dead artist. Many of these are studies from life (drawn while viewing the master works they depict) in the UK, France and Italy in 2005. the constant motion of the contour line wraps around the forms in the drawing as it evolves, like history, rewriting-drawing over-until an approximation of the original is attained. many of these i have yet to paint, though i like the bold simplicity of the line drawings.