Creative Corner (7): Seth Apter's DisCo Project

Buried Treasure - of a kind!

• Coastcard (7): Time to reveal... the Owl and his friend - Cloth Paper Scissors

• Coastcard (5): Buried Treasure! - Cloth Paper Scissors

Do take a look at our recycled project work by clicking the links above to the 'Cloth Paper Scissors' magazine site.

You can read more about Seth Apter's Disintegration Collaboration art project here.

Creative Corner (6): Kreativ Blogger Award

My sincere thanks to fellow poet and blogger, Susan Richardson, for nominating me for the Kreativ Blogger Award. What a red letter day!

I am particularly delighted since this affords me the opportunity of nominating seven other bloggers for the award, and of linking back to Susan. These are the stipulated conditions:

1. List 7 things that I love
2. Link back to the blog that awarded it to me
3. Choose 7 blogs to award as ‘Kreativ Bloggers’
4. Comment at each blog to let them know they’ve been chosen

1. I have chosen to interpret this as things I love about the blogosphere.

When it comes to blogging, I love the...

• all-embracing cosmopolitan community
• generosity shown in the sharing of knowledge
• platform for collaborative ideas
• opportunity of networking with other writers
• opportunity of engaging with other wildlife enthusiasts
• tip-offs for interesting reading material and publication opportunities
• breath-taking photography and amazing art

2. Do visit Susan Richardson's blog which revolves around her life as a writer and eco-poet. Susan is the author of 'Creatures of the Intertidal Zones', published by Cinnamon Press.

3. In turn, it gives me great pleasure to nominate the following 7 blogs (in alphabetical order) for the Kreativ Blogger Award:

• desktopsallye (of Poetry Scotland)
  
• East Anglian Skies
• Faith, Fabric and Photos
• Polyolbion
  
• Raph's Ramblings
• The Golden Fish
• Wildlife on Wheels

For other favourite blogs, please see my list here! I noticed that a number of fellow bloggers had already been nominated, so I tried to choose blogs that were not showing the award.

4. I'm just off to visit my nominated blogs... Do take a look, too.

Creative Corner (5): Revelation of Seth Apter's DisCo Project

(1)
Pizza-&-Pistachio Art
The composition.

Part of The Altered Page
DisCo Project
under Seth Apter

(2)
Detail of the cat

(3)
Detail of the owl's head

'PIZZA-&-PISTACHIO'

(4)
The guitar...


(5)
Detail of the sheep (or hedgehogs?)


(6)
Treasures!


(7)
Blue owl
(courtesy of a Photoshop filter)

This piece of digital art can be interpreted in a way that suits the viewer. This viewer (who is also the maker) likes to think that she has created a couple of virtual pizzas. They are perhaps two-season pizzas rather than quattro staggione, for the bundle of components was only allowed to 'cook' in the open air for the duration of six months. This viewer hope that her picture may cause a smile. If it makes you think about the possibilities of re-using cast-off materials, well, so much the better. These pizzas are purely decorative. Enjoy!

Items re-used from the bundle:

1. lavender sprigs (for glints in the sea and grey flecks in the owl).
2. newspaper words (see 'treasures' in the sea).
3. snail shell (which I tinted with glitter-glue to make it show up).
4. buddleia flowers (for brown flecks in the owl)
5. pistachios (for just about everything - the owl's guitar, the boat, sheep faces...)
6. twigs (for the boat's mast and the neck and headstock of the guitar)
7. kitchen towel (for flecks in the sea)
8. moulted pet fur (for the owl's soft feathers and for the cat)
   

Items that vanished:

1. stone
2. piece of fence post
3. kitchen towel roll
4. palm leaves

Items added in to final picture:

1. acrylic paint
2. glitter-glue
3. cardstock
4. typed captions
5. discarded sheep's wool
6. a white polystyrene take-away box (which had contained my 'one weakness', chocolate cake!).
7. two polystyrene pizza bases
   

'My collaborator is nature'

Seth Apter

Seth of The Altered Page has been hosting the DisCo Project (aka the 'Disintegration Collaboration' Project) over a period of months, and many of us worldwide have enjoyed taking part. This is the culmination of months of work and weathering. This is the day when we reveal not only what the weather has done to our bundles but also how we have recreated something new from the remains of the items that we abandoned earlier on.

• 16 February 2009: By this time I was (almost) one of 50 artists preparing a bundle of bits and pieces to expose to the elements. I only heard about the project rather late in the day, but I soon caught up with my fellow DisCo goers. It was my hope that the Welsh wind and rain would work wonders on my discarded treasure. Paul Valéry said that 'a poem is never finished, only abandoned', and I found this thought quite reassuring as I hung my bundle on our hydrangea bush, leaving it at the mercy of the elements. You can read about my original bundle here. Suffice to say it contained an assortment of bits and pieces from my garden that I felt would be fun to recycle - including a stone (which vanished), some sprigs of lavender, an empty snail shell and a piece of rotting fence post. I also included some moulted pet fur and some newspaper clippings of words that annoyed me or appealed e.g. 'risk', 'diet' (no prizes for guessing which camp this one fell into!) and - of course - 'treasures'.

• 1 May 2009 (and here and here): we were invited to take a look at our bundles on May Day. You can read about my altered bundle here. My bundle had fallen apart and turned into two smaller ones. It was probably at this stage that the wood and the stone fell out. We were encouraged to decide for ourselves whether we left our remaining bundles outside a bit longer or whether we chose to bring them indoors. I left mine for a while, but decided fairly soon that if I was to have some items left with which to make the final piece of art, it would be best to do my salvage work while there was still time.
  

• 1st August 2009: this is the day when all is revealed! The project has come full circle and our chosen items have been suitably weathered by the atmosphere, gathered in by human Wombles (us!) and turned into something new.

So what I have I gained from taking part? It has been fascinating to see how others have approached this exercise, and to visit blogs from the other side of the Atlantic (not forgetting the blog of the Weaver of Grass, closer to home). It has challenged my thinking about the value of detritus and has made me test out a theory that discarded pistachio shells can have a use after all! I went through a phase of throwing them on the garden as compost (like cocoa shells), but began to feel that they might entice rats. Seth's project has made me think again about the age-old question, 'what is art?'. Is it about beauty or worth or self expression? Do we paint - or write or sing or act or take photographs - to please others or to please ourselves? What compels us to exercise our creative instincts? How can these benefit society - and should they (or is it art for art's sake?). One of the good things about this DisCo project was that although we were collaborating with one another, we were not in competition because our real collaborator was nature itself.

Thank you, Seth, for inviting us to join the dance; and for opening our eyes to new possibilities, techniques and means of expression. Diolch yn fawr!

Creative Corner (4): Seth's Bundle for May Day

1 May 2009: Reveal Time
Stage 2 in Seth's Bundle Project!
Above: two for the price of one ... my bundle has come adrift.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May...
Sonnet 18, Shakespeare

Welcome to my corner of Seth Apter's (Disintegration Art Project) DisCo - and if you would like to know more, do take a look at Seth's blog, The Altered Page.

Some weeks ago I read about an unusual project on Weaver's blog. I followed the link, and asked Seth if I could join in the fun. I followed his instructions, and set up a bundle of odds and ends in my garden. I went into 'Womble' mode, and tried to re-use 'eco-friendly' materials such as lavender and moulted animal hair. I decided to dilute some turmeric powder for a splash of colour, rather than paint, because it seemed more garden-friendly. I made two handles out of palm fronds, and hung the bundle on a branch of my hydrangea, and waited for the elements to do their worst (or perhaps I should say their best).

We have a prevailing south-westerly wind in South Wales; and sure enough, it was not long before my bundle was blown in two. We usually have heavy rain - and we have had a few heavy showers - but after a very cold winter, we have actually had a beautiful late spring. I now have two bundles instead of one, but other than that, there has not been as much disintegration as I had expected. The turmeric dye has turned from a cheerful hot-sun yellow to a dilute murky brown. The leaves, of course, have grown a lot on the hydrangea: when the dew is not so heavy, I will have to go exploring to see whether there are any earthworms, snails or woodlice under the part that has fallen to the ground.

When I was growing up in Kent (the Garden of England), we used to go to school in an excited frame of mind on May Day. Our teachers led us out to the flowering cherry tree, where we would wash our faces in the dew and dance round the Maypole (I don't think it was quite as long ago as the picture implies!). Speaking of Seth's (Disintegration Art Project) DisCo, I can assure you that our jaunty Maypole steps were a far cry from a student dance! Did you know that St Andrew Undershaft in the City of London is named after the maypole that was kept under its eaves? It was brought out each spring until the student riots of 1517.

At school on May Day we would recite that evocative poem about the loveliest of trees, 'The Cherry Tree' by A. E. Housman. The poem deals with the subject of growing old and the passing of time. Little did I imagine that two-score years later (as opposed to the three-score and ten of the poem), I would be celebrating 1 May with a disintegrating bundle of art! Thank you, Weaver, for the tip-off.

• Seth Apter's blog, The Altered Page
• My original bundle
• Lavinia Greenlaw: The Housman Lecture at the 2009 Guardian Hay Festival in May.
• Do take a look at Matt Merritt's blog, Polyolbion, and his book, Troy Town (I hope to post more comments on this soon).
• Crafty Green Poet tells me it is Decorative Dumpster Day!
• Make sure that you are Seeing the Changes with Professor P. Brain in South Wales.
  

Creative Corner (2): Small is Beautiful?

An early honey bee at the National Botanic Garden of Wales
February 2009

Yes, small can be beautiful according to Schumacher, but was he the first to coin this phrase and why did it catch on? Poets have long been known for their sweeping epics and their pithy epigrams. At the end of the day, the main challenge is not about quantity (or lack of it) but quality in all its rainbow manifestations. For Edward Thomas, no subject was too small for a poem: it was the large topics, he felt, that could pose problems. These days we are bombarded with the soundbite and with the tweet of Twitter. I went to a class yesterday and began to appreciate just how much material (in terms of what was shown, heard and hinted at) could be fitted in to a two-minute digital story.

Bylines and straplines are part of our zeitgeist; and although we live in an age that does not often lean towards formal poetry, short forms like the haiku and the tanka remain popular. Just a Minute on BBC Radio 4 has always had its followers, and there are blogs offering short writing memes. If the thought of drafting a complete poem a day is a bridge too far, just think how many ideas we might amass in our poetic honey pots if we set aside a minute every twenty-four hours for organic writing. Time check: the moment has come to stop blogging and set the timer ... Why not join me in one of the exercises below? Let me know how you get on!

• The One-Minute Writer (plus timer)
• Susurrus: a writing exercise. You might find the Word-a-day site helpful.
  
• Allen Ginsberg's American Sentences

• Six Word Memoirs
  
• Four and Twenty call for submission (max. 4 lines, 20 words)
• Short Poems at OpenMicro

• Minute Memes Video Project on copyright
• Meme Trackers: How to Start a Meme (I was pleased to see that one of the writers, Dane Morgan, was keen to use memes that were going to 'contribute to a growing education or increasing awareness of a subject').