Milk thistle

Today I spent all of my time drawing a milk thistle. The plant wilted very quickly. Sometimes plants do that when they are not allowed to keep growing, I almost finished the drawing but not quite, there's one empty stem at the top.

The flowers from onionweed and dock. Dismantled from their roots and blown up on the photocopier to 330%.

Where this is going

This drawing I'm working on at Signal is less about questions of where
to go (the last project at north fitzroy library was very responsive to
the library environment - engaging in questions, research and dialogue as the
subject for the work), and more about playing out an idea. Composing
and constructing something in a more specific way. The brief for this work was to
create an unexpected environment and I have chosen to highlight
'weeds', I am very interested in what it means to be a weed and for
weeds to grow, peoples intense reactions towards them by ripping them
out and labeling as bad. Weeds are part of evolution, they grow really
well in cities and don't require tending or sympathy, they are autonomous. I am also
inspired by the incredible nutrition of the so called 'wild edibles'
and interested in them as not only valid and cheap but a super nutritious food
source. I explore weeds as food on a daily basis and I think that it
raises some interesting questions. In this work I am exploring

Weed walk before drawing

On my way into Signal, all the weeds seem to be flowering at the moment. So many great specimens.

Today is Wednesday

Worked more on the dandelion drawing, drew a fully opened flower and a slightly spent one and more leaves. I am enjoying playing with abstracting the form slightly by separating the parts of the plant. The drawing becoming more a botanical study rather than purely representational. The dandelion flower is shown in different stages of flowering and seeding.

I wrote the whole of chapter one from the Green Smoothie Revolution by Victoria Boutenko on the glass. It is titled The Miracle of Greens, and talks about the magic of photosynthesis and why plants do it and why eating greens is so vital for our health.

Patch of dandy-lions

Testing the thickness of lines. My posca's are a little flat, may need
some new ones.

The dandelions I picked on the way here, blown up to 330% in the
photocopier.

The building

New project * * * at SIGNAL

Today I'm starting a new window drawing project at Signal (amazing centre for youth art, located in the old signal box behind Flinders St Station, on Northbank). The breif is to create an unexpected world on the window portals. I'm thinking about gardens and in particular weeds and wild edibles. Let's see where this goes.

Shadow onto the sunshine protector

Today, I removed more of the ideas that had collected on the glass
that I didn't need anymore. And I wrote more big big text with my new
rather thick marker. Pip filmed awhile, but I didn't feel very
interesting to watch, limboing in indecisiveness and considering how
much to remove and where to go from here. I'm still a bit unsure, so
I'm sitting down for a moment.

Yesterday I got lots of great comments and had some thoughtful discussions with people.
Some with people looking at my work from the street and coming in to meet me - like the footy player who suggested I draw a third leg on the stilt bird to keep the kids guessing and the architects who thought my drawings were an exciting edition to the drab building and were suprised to learn I was using ordinary materials to create 'etching like effects'.
Some with the library manager Jill, discussing logistics, erasure and bringing it together with what I would like to leave up (I erased quite a bit yesterday and was considering more).
and I initiated some dialogue with other artists/ friends through emails, who supported and offered insight into artistic process.
A friend that works at Loafer around the corner said she had been tempted to buy some textas and write me notes on the glass.
Thankyou for your feedback, I love hearing it and having these conversations. I also like getting dirty (paint covered fingers) and actually drawing.
Will probably only do a another session or two of drawing, I reccomend passing by and seeing how it is as things are always changing.

Comment from Antonia:
such an interesting process. amazing documentation.. i feel like the
work and blog is quite transparent, which being glass is appropriate i
suppose, but it is very open and present and itself

"My body is an instrument."
This is what I worked on all day, there's more words to come. I'll
have to finish it next time.
I love the moody clouds and hints of sunshine type.

Colors, no 75, page 70

Colors magazine, number 75, page 60.
"the war on terror hops into our shopping carts"

I've just been told the panel on the library door has to be removed so they can replace the tinting. It might be removed as early as tomorrow, come down and have a look before it's gone forever, it's pretty good, I worked hard on it.

A tessellation or tiling of the plane is a collection of plane figures that fills the plane with no overlaps and no gaps.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki?search=Tessellation

"cuter polluters - make us for grim greenies" from the book Knitting
MochiMochi by Anna Hrachovec

Wow, just found this (collectable technology by Pepe Tozzo), such
amazing type design

Working while the library is open is fun. There is a child singing away at the other end of the library. An accidental sound byte leaking from the public Internet terminal of football premiership singing, people coming in to meet me...

I'm texting, flying into big block letters. On a mission now.
How good is the child on the side of the background truck?

I've got my books and my "Teamstep" this is going to get serious now.

From Colors magazine number 72

Was thinking about people - faces - form - found yoga magazine, then
went hunting for books, thought about treating a yoga pose as a shape
for tessalating an image.
The armenian architecture comes back into my head, repetition,
patterning...

I have no qualms with erasure. It feels easier to destroy, remove, rub out than it does to rush headlong, or line first, into the unknown, to create. I like a blank page more than anything and rejoice in any opportunity to return to emptiness, which is fuller than anything I could say. And so in a moment of erasing, I have to practise some discernment and sensibility of leaving something of this drawing still on the glass. Which bit? How much? And who am I leaving it for if I don't need it?

All orange is coming off.