The fundamental foundation of drawing is the line, the foundation of sculpture the form, the fundamentals of community the connections and lines between people, between families, between places. The unseen founder; the boundaries and lines inherent to the landscape, to place and to history.
I have been lucky recently, in applying for and winning a competitive tender for a public art commission in my adopted home city of Carlisle. Lucky in the sense that I am not an artist that constantly churns out variations on a theme of 'art in the public rhelm' for any old client with cash, I have an ongoing investigative practice and commitment to the conceptual explorations and articulation of that process.
As such, it is beyond lucky to have been at a point where my concepts, ideas, drawings and intentions chime with the public rhelm improvements in Castle Street, where I can render my ideas on permanence and boundaries in material choices usually beyond my normal scope;-Granite and Steel, Resin and Sand blasting. Where (fingers crossed) in doing so I can create a work that both maintains integrity and accessibility. Its all very fundamental in so many ways.
At present, I am taking some time considering the composition of the marks created in the community engagement workshops. Its all looking very petroglyphic, which suits me just fine, I have a minor obsession with fossilization, encrustation, accelerated aging and associated craft and methods. This work builds on those foundations, incorporating the naturally occurring lines that shape our community and our city, alongside the imprint and uninhibited mark making of a community of place.
I have interpreted the brief for the 9 monolithic stone benches as three distinct triptychs, each with a distinct line;
-One triptych of three benches will represent the mapped line of the river Eden using sandblasting and engraving to render the lines appropriately.
-One triptych will represent Hadrain's wall using concrete effect resin as a secondary material.
- One will represent the railway lines (all of them) using polished steel as an inlay.
By Triptych what I mean is that together as a set of three benches the designs form one whole 'image', the line from one is continued onto the next and the next. This suits the layout of the benches as agreed by the highways and council bods, and allows me a whopping 19.8 metres of surface space to draw designs for.
These designs will essentially represent the lines that have been important to Carlisle as well as the transport/economic lines which have been formative. The surface image and also the re-curated community work will also draw on maps and contours, cup and ring designs and the surrounding industry and heritage landscape.
They contextualise the historic quarter - mapping the arterial lines at the heart of our 2000 year history.
One of the nice aspects of the piece is the resonance and relevance of the lines featured goes beyond the potentially narrow focus of contemporary public art: One third of the work (one triptych) would have had resonance and looked familiar 150 years ago, marking the distinctive pathway of the (then many) railway companies. One third would have had relevance to the local and visiting community 1500 years ago- marking the distictive border line of hadrians wall, and the final line will have been familier to, and resonated with the community many thousands of years ago, marking the line of the river and its tributaries, an essential 'cultural waymarker' for any culture, in any time.
