New blog link

I've started a new blog ...

This is the link to the Degrees Unedited blog page on Artist' Newsletter website.

Theo Wood Degrees Unedited

The end of this blog

It's New Year's Eve and been thinking about the past year and the year to come (as you do) and decided to close this particular blog at this point. My 2011 residency at the Botanic Garden is complete and in 2012 I will be concentrating on other matters (such as completing the final year of the MA). 

I can only call it Botanic Dreaming...staying local and exploring the wonders of a Botanical Garden has meant my memories of the year of full of the sights, scents and colours there. It's been inspiring  as well as providing a chance to learn more about the evolution of plants.

I've really enjoyed writing the blog...it's addictive...

tomorrow ...

Dug out of the soil

The plaques are now out of the garden and looking a little frazzled. A sad day for me as now it is November and the end of the season. I'm wondering where I can take the water theme...

Thinking about the need for water – what comes up?

-       a glass shelf, with a glass turned upside down on it

-       with the title

‘This is not an oak tree’.

Thank you Michael Craig Martin, thank you Renee Magritte.

How far?

I've been experimenting with mark making to see how far an image can deteriorate before it becomes illegible.

From sketchbook etching 12 x16cm to screen print 70 x 48cms. 

Wrapping up

Looking back on the blog I can see there have not been many photos of the garden...the light was amazing the other day..slanting through the garden.  Plants are being wrapped up/prepared  for the winter.

The monkey puzzles, ferns etc in the evolutionary dell lead me to think of dinosaurs. The recent BBC programme on the latest discoveries about dinosaurs kept me dreaming awake at night, their size, their terrible jaws, their millions of years existence all over the planet.

At the exhibition

Secret life of pots (one of the sketchbook etchings) now has a life beyond the studio...selected for the Royal West of England Academy (RWA) Autumn Open Exhibition. RWA location and opening times

I like to think of them in their shed though.

Putting them all together

Botanic dream...I've produced this as a digital print but it forces me to think..is this statement art? Probably. Does including words automatically mean a statement/narrative? Yet artists that I admire such as Jenny Holzer and, for different reasons, Bob and Roberta Smith, and artists such as Tracey Emin, all use words that imply narrative and statement. So...busy planning screen prints and lithographs with layers of concealment. I shall curl up and hide behind them and not say a word. Although took part in a workshop this weekend on writing the object. I now have attained enlightenment about the haikus in the garden. Writing the haikus was a performative act in response to the phenomenological event of the garden.