Phase two* of my art projects relating to my new home, my new garden, my new life is finished! Using a Seawhite of Brighton concertina sketchbook, as I love to do, I painted, drew, collaged a narrative of images from May to October. Starting with my grapevine in spring and ending with the same grapevine in fall, I chose highlights of the garden to include in the record, and with each spread, I chose whatever method and media I felt like . The result is 12', unfolded, of colors, shapes, movements, textures, and, since it is a pollinator garden, a few bugs and birds hover here and there.
The clip above was made in dim light and the resolution is not great, but you get an idea of the whole. Below are shots of half of the book unfolded in sunlight, in the very garden the book was made from and for. Below that are double spreads of a few key images, scanned to give a more accurate idea of the colors.
For years, I have loved accordion books to record travel images as well as my Caledonian Orogeny drawings made on site in Wales and Norway. Open these books up, and you find the very format for a story, moving from left to right. My blog's name is a clue to my love of the storyline, both visual and verbal, and these books give me a perfect springboard.
Here is one more example of my use of this format, my first record of the Caledonian Orogeny project, made on Whitesands Bay near St Davids, Wales, in 2017. Here you get a better sense of the spread, although this one is not completely extended either. It's hard to find a 12' long surface!
Now I can move to phase 3 of my new house and garden art project: paintings made with pigment from the red clay soil we live on here and/or new pieces working with house and memory imagery. I have started several of these and am eager to get back to them, now that the garden book is done!
*Phase one was the pair of portraits I made of the original owners of this 160 year-old house.
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