Scale

: definitions

In my current project about calthemite (urban stalactite) in which I zoom in and out perceptively on mineral matter flows associated with chalk and cement, I find I am constantly coming in contact with different meanings of the word 'scale.' Which in the English language is used in wildly different ways and combines linguistic influences from many different peoples from this nation's diversely connected and distant past.

A Google search tells me that from Germanic 'scale' and Old French 'escale' is derived from the look of overlapping scales on a fish. Somewhat the same as flakes of secondary deposit of Calcium Carbonate, also known as Lime, on the surface of a leaf that has been dripped on by calthemites formed underneath a mid-century concrete building.

Inherited from Old Norse is 'scal' (bowl), Dutch Schaal, German 'schale' (bowl), and English 'schal' (dish). Further meaning is created around a pair of scales from ideas revolving around a pair of matched bowls, relating the bowl to the concave shape of a fish scale. From here a notion of balance, measurement and ideas of fair exchange ensue. Origins depart further from the measurement potential of the bowl when the word scale is applied to values, measurement, levels and notation with the idea of progression up, down and across a regularised set of values. 

It is in the use of scale as a verb, 'to scale', that has particular meaning to me, having read Robin Wall Kimmerer's account of her sensitisation to verbs in 'Braiding Sweetgrass', where 'to be bay' transported her into the lithic embrace of a warm breeze-swept beach.

It is where the meaning 'to climb, or clamber up' is found, where scale relates directly to an embodied interaction with the world that transports me. From Old French comes 'escaler' (climb), Medieval Latin 'scalare' (climb) and Latin 'scandere' (to climb). Like Kimmerer, I suddenly feel the knobbly texture of cold, wind-polished, unforgiving stone under my fingers, but this time it is not granular but solid and millimetres from my cheek. I flex my grip and use my legs to push myself up and over a boulder. In this embodied definition it seems that the meaning of scale puts the human body against a backdrop of the whole lithic world and diminishes it in a rather satisfying way.

Ref: Robin Wall Kimmerer 'Braiding Sweetgrass'

Attractor/Repellant sliding scale (circular)

Tuesday 28 May. Afternoon. Searching for pebble fossils on Penally Beach. 

In the straggly line of blue slate, flint and quartz drawn by the turning tide on the beach are blooms of insulation foam. They are the coloured the same yellow as rancid butter. They float in from nobody knows where; boat-yard, holed wall, old car, plumbed leak, bodge-job, loft.

They are hard to touch.  My daughter said, “Yuck.” 

"Hard as stone," I lied. To spite me she hammered away a fragment with her thin blue slate. 

Inside it was pure white. No knowing its age. No tree rings. No knots. No pearls. No doings at all.

Is any growth or gathering of minerals possible here? Can a thing repel all other things? 

I think about the insubstantiality of a flow gathering things within in it. How some things are sticky and some are not. Some things stay open yet others always seem closed. Some traces are plainly obvious and others take a huge amount of time and attention before they can be brought into the open.

So many thoughts have been achieved during my current masters and very little has been shared. I'm still trying to break out of that hermit phase.

 

Exploding day-to-day climate relations

Theorectical Archaeology Group Conference, University of East Anglia (UAE) December 2023.

As usual, and also having become a little hermit-like online over the last year, I'm behind on posting this. But I really wanted to share this fascinating insight into contemporary archaeological enquiry into how objects and matters continually assemble and reassemble. With huge gratefulness to Historic England archaeologist Dr Katy Whittaker, who brought together our small group of artists and archaeologists to Climate TAG in December 2023, by open invitation, asking: 'How did we get here'. We each selected an object associated with our travel to the conference and over several online meetings and one in-real-life morning, picked them apart by exploring (destroyed, observed, discussed) their matter, connections and complexities (which were compound and several), and also got to know each other's perspectives a bit. A fabulous bonus!

Session abstract:

I think it's apt to describe the findings of this small quick project as becoming exponentially more complex as we explored. This contributed to an adaptable and precarious assemblage of things and responses that were overlapping and confusing. A hotch-potch within which some responses were overt and extrovert, and some were very subtle, while others celebrated these differences by weaving the experience together. 

Assemblages of assemblages

Grounding

Thinking about archaeological tropes.

Blue Rec - production images

Thought I would share some extra images from the Blue Rec commission. Here's other blog post about the commission with all the various links. Blue Rec blog post.

This image is from the extraction of the brick guard. 

The following pictures are from putting together the fabric that is on the reverse of the Blue Rec hangings. The images on the front side was from scanning the ground in the months after extraction. One of these is currently on the background of this blog.

The backing took a long time to make because I decided to dye the fabric with dye plants located near the excavation site which took a while. And was also quite complicated to do because all the shaped pockets had to be in exactly the right place, with a couple of holes wandering off to give an idea of the plastic board maybe eventually breaking up. I really enjoyed the process, not least because the fabric took on the aroma of the plant dyes and it was just really pleasurable to handle. 

It's probably the least visible part of the installation but is my favourite bit. Partly because it remains hidden. But mainly because I didn't rinse the dye out so it physically holds remnants of the woodland. By the time installation came around the fabric still carried a faint aroma of the plant dyes. I like the idea of these still being in conflict with the board, which although I was once adamant wouldn't be in the installation at all ended up casting shade from a corner as the work didn't work without it.

 

Midwinter Potato Plate

Some time ago on a whim I purchased an old-style W. R. Midwinter cake plate. I think I might have only used it once for cakes and since then to keep unruly potatoes in order in their dark cupboard. I liked its decor, a brown landscape with vividly tinted figures from which there seemed to be a word-picture aching to emerge: 

...

It is a landscape drawn in the round. In the farthest distance are trees with bulbous foliage like succulent plants, drawn as if so many caterpillars were piled up and balanced on boughs, teeter-tottering poles which have tough elbow-like angles to them and have each been given a margin of punctuation marks. The trees stand under cumulonimbus that are made to have a grained texture like wood, but it might be that they are actually mountains topped with red volcanic clouds.

Next to the centre of the scene a faceless wig is balanced upon a pile of pancakes. They are perched on top of a four-pillared structure the same colour red as several loaf-roofed houses pictured in the distance. Near these, a construction consisting of further precariously balanced sections appears to be still standing despite having become half-smothered in volcanic dust.

Oblivious of the complete environmental breakdown oozing towards them as a flow of lava channeled underneath the arches of a bridge drawn with drastically swerving perspective, a couple walk towards us arm in arm. They are conversing, and it is quite obvious that we are meant to understand them as a courting couple. The male gestures derisively towards another figure leaning back on one elbow to their left, who is perched on top of a recumbent, green, many legged creature, as if to say, 'Hey, look at this lazy lout, he has subdued this beast but now doesn't know what to do with it'. But the lout ignores them to look beyond, not to the chaos unfolding, but two more people who have paused under an arch in a building to the far right. This couple are quite different in emotional tone. They are pictured as having happened upon the scene unfolding in their full moment of horror, corralled into the devastation by the wall to their left and backlit by the late afternoon sun which causes shadows to fall across the whole scene. We can see that the figure wearing a blue full-length robe has raised its hands to its face, perhaps to call out, or maybe wipe away tears. While the other holds out a short, thin stick, perhaps to indicate their vision, or possibly to attempt some defence, which seems to unlikely to succeed. 

The only other figure in the scene is pictured in the middle distance sitting on a kind of vehicle, preparing to pass over the bridge while driving in front of them a four-legged creature. We can see that a second creature of the same type has already passed over the bridge, possibly leading but perhaps being chased.

This soon to be destroyed Eden is captured within a circular net, crested with equally-spaced white crenellations, beyond which is a desert of lava and then a hedge of twisting roses. Situated beyond this point can only be the end-of-the-world, represented by a repeating pattern of blank-faced four-petalled, pimpernel blooms.

Some install images from Blue Rec.

Blue Rec is an installation about a brick guard that became embedded in local woodland after it came loose from housing development scaffolding during storms in 2017. The design of brick guards has since changed to allow stronger winds to pass through which reflects a greater frequency of stormy weather.

The excavation and subsequent installation at the Old Grammar School in Coventry of the brick guard with a video of the excavation and post-excavation scans of the ground was a commission - for which I am incredibly grateful because without it this project would not have happened - for Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art 2023 ...like a short cut through the brambles and can be viewed Thursday - Saturday October 5 2023 - January 14 2024. 

Photographing the brick guard becoming increasingly embedded into the woodland became part of my larger and still ongoing Silverhouses project studying greenbelt land (in the UK this term refers to agricultural land between towns, villages and cities) newly developed for housing, with subsequent activities expressed through the changing materiality of the site and around its margins. This is the Silverhouses project website page.

Here's a page on the Coventry Biennial website all about this commission, featuring a video by Tegan Kimbley made from the footage she took during the excavation, and of me chatting about it. Extraction

The images above show the installation at the Old Grammar School, in Coventry. There are further ones  on my website on the Blue Rec page.

 

Observation Station becomes Museum of St Mary's Allotments

 

This is the Observation Station in it's latest performance: pride of place next to the composting loo right next to the carpark at St Mary's Allotments in Leamington Spa :-) It is there with many thanks to wonderful concealed-curator Tammy Woodrow and allotmenteer poet Nigel Briggs.

I will post a bit more about the Museum of St Mary's in a few days to coincide with the opening of the Art Trail for Warwickshire Heritage Open Days. But just to say that I am really grateful for those who have come forward with more artefacts they have found in their allotments to feature in the museum. These are fascinating and I'm really looking forward to sharing them. 

Contact:
me: via this site or Instagram @anatomyofasmile
Tammy: https://tammywoodrow.jimdofree.com/ or Instagram: @tammywoodrow

Update: Just to say that sharing the museum was great, and that the art trail was a great success for Tammy and her team. With the artefacts safely tucked away the Observation Station is now over-wintering in my garden and awaits further plans.