Blue Topography

In George Mackay Browns Poem the SEal skin is shed from a man. White skinned against a sea. The Selkie some terrible melancholy a predicated predicted end to the Seal. The Man and wife have a child, but they must return to the sea, the womans new love shoots the man and his child with his gun... maybe thats the song..maybe thats not the poem. I'm making a skin. Blue skin out of the velvet. The Print isn't right yet. The ammonium and the velvet have not liked each other so well, so I need to make another print, to cast another form.. Where the print has taken the blue is beautiful and I love the quality, but I need to either pre_wash the fabric, or soak the velvet more thoroughly. Chemical skins/ will I want to get in the cave  with the sea anemone  and the  limpets the walls are cold and polished smooth. The water drips shockingly cold through the prehistoric sand, and through the cracks of the pressure glass rock. I forget the weight of the column, I think...

    Selkies and Black Swans Rainbow feathers like coal, like Starlings from Crows, not Swans.  Wind mills Water Sand/skulls/ seabirds/ Lying in the dunes. This times, flies, limbs ache and mosquitoes make this an uncomfortable exposure. No one is on the beach. the Sun is waining. Geese are still coming. Its a bit of a dance for Marek, watching people, recording sounds, making images. There is a fake stillness in the images. I love the collective action but miss the lone expedition. Maybe thats part of the stress. Previously the stress is my own. my decision to make a print or not, my time , my journey, here it is shared, we can't loose the weather,  the documentation of the event drives its own. I liked the print though. i like the location.  I like as ever the wild and the human/ the wind farms and the farms/ the coal dust in the sand.  I like basking. I like the gentle heat, of the sun. The comfort and familiarity of the san...

This area is under threat of open cast mining.  The location was so public and so hidden, Horse riders, families  dog walkers On one side of this reed bed we make this print,  on the other side, a couple sit on a bench in matching fleeces.   Geese are flying in from the artic and although the sun is warm there is an edge to the air and you can feel the turn in the season and the edge of the light shifts to wards that golden wash, Here I think of the animal wife. In folklore the husband steals her coat while she rests this forces her to stay on land  and have his children, in the tail of the Selkie she cant return to the sea, with the Swan she can not fly until her children return her coat to her and she leaves. The swan tale reached even to Japan, its a far traveled tale. I like the term animal wife. I feel like both of us are animal wives with our fleeces and our skins.  I like the marshy ground I like that it...

One of my first body prints was made up near Otterburn in North Northumberland. So I was keen to go back and make a print. The locations are remote compared to the coastal spots.  I've been there so many times before and we got completely lost. We had driven to Otterburn, but had meant to got to Harbottle, which is on  the far the edge of the Otterburn range, another 14 miles or so away. We watching our weather window blow away into  wild and damp cold autumn  Northumberland,  We re-routed over the moor, passing child soldiers in Hazmat masks with their guns hung out at the edge of the moor. The roads where slow.  Exposure anxiety returns hoping there is enough light, is it too cold, will there be too many people, have we come all this way for no returns. We stopped on the tops.. it was an amazing spot. We never would have come this way. We made out print here. And the guns started up.

To get to the beach you pass the tip, flames in from pipes, titanium oxides, seals, nature reserves.   In the car park is the hefty smell of Frutarom, the maker of fake smells. We have a relationship with this reactor.  It  was the end of our Nuclear family tour.  There are some neat and unusual links between the cyanotype process and the nuclear process. Prussian Blue is the colour and chemical created by the cyanotype process. It is also the chemical used to remove radiation from the body. It  sequesters the isotopes from the body. Honest  landscapes,  heavy with industry with the spoils  City dumps,  White paint makers Quorn smells Ponys  cows Sea breezes, seals and dragonflies. Starlings.  Twitchers looking for green warblers/ only finding brown dragonflies This plane flew in twice. maybe I looked like a corpse..  maybe they where checking in, Is everything ...

Chemical Beach in Seaburn just inside Co Durham. Colliery works, Oyster catchers, gulls  The wind was so strong (onshore), the carpark was so busy with walkers and brides and dogs.  Blast beach felt too busy, we could see a lush team of litter pickers and  although I am keen to come back to print there, especially in the reed beds, today wasn't the day. I worked through some vertigo ( always to the amusement of the print crew) to take a look at Chemical beach from the cliff edge. We decided to take a risk , no one seemed to go down to the beach. It was completely empty. There is a neat wee path down to the beach, it was so windy, but the sun was beautiful and it felt secluded enough to go for a print. I confess once I get started on the print I am always pretty comfortable doing it , but I was anxious/ stressed on the cliff top, a mixture of time pressures and body pressures.

Off the edge of Bollihope moor, in Weardale is this old Quarry. The soil heaps have created small grass covered mountains set agains the flat quarry cliff that is eaten out of the rock. On arrival two men are smoking and watching the view, there are a few walkers , a photographer Behind the false mountains is a pond, the edge is boggy with grass and spagnum, in the air a fizzing a trickle of water, the sound of dragonflies hitting the tops of the marsh grass. Its the lazy afternoon sun of September. I pick a spot that is sheltered from the the path. There are a few women walking their dogs , but I want to be close to the water and the marshy ground. I think the women seem nice and won't care that I am making this print. We set up and I settle into the sounds of the space. It is so quiet, not much wind, you can hear the dogs in the distance , no guns the shoot must be over. A destress call of a raptor has silenced the small birds, I think there is a water bi...