Aga's take on the art thingy.
I am Polish amateur artist, based in Scotland since 2005. My day job is work for water industry. Art is subject of free time. Many years' laboratory work and scientific background had influence on the outlook on life, the universe and the rest of it.
The artwork ideas are as interesting to me as art materials and technical side of creation.
The word Art brings to mind the Chinese concept of Tao - the Way; being on correct path, flowing with natural flow of the universe, and Te - integrity, being exactly who one can and should be.
Collage/assemblage materials
Tools for the job...
Assemblage or collage is to a degree tri-dimensional. It can also have many dimensional storylines.
You will come across clock dials, to evocate relation to time. The o-rings tell the stories of seemingly insignificant but crucial elements of the systems like reactors, spacecraft or analytical instruments. It could also be story about single point of failure. Plastic netting used for fruits and vegetables could show how easy it is to get entangled. Electronic motherboards, resistors, diodes could mean constant flow of ideas from dawn of invention through short lived popularity, to dusk of obsolescence when invention is replaced with something else. Nail polish, pine cones, stones, copper wire and dried plants - each of them is hooked up in a story. These are things we take for granted, don't pay attention to, discard.
Other stories
Once upon a time Rab and i we had a house and a small garden. The soil there was clay-ish and waterlogged. Attempts to grow things, were mediocre at best. For few years I worked relentlessly adding: coarse sand, several bags of calcified seaweed, green manure: alfa alfa and red clover sewn in autumns to be dug into the soil soon after sprouting. We kept two big composters containing grass cuts, twigs and needles clippings of the conifer tree, egg shells, nut shells, tea and coffee grinds, raw vegetable peelings etc. The contents of these composters were worked into the soil after few years. All these activities brought some effect after couple of years. Our wildlife friendly attempts began to pay off with sunflowers, verbena, peppermint, rosemary, lavender, wild strawberry, mustard, calendulas. Happy days.
The photographs below show an unexpected "side effect" of our gardening activities - we were visited by the full swarm of honey bees. They tried to start a new life in one of our composters. (It was almost full, and the top contents were dry twigs) Probably the type of plants around also helped - we always took care to grow wildlife friendly species, and avoid the F1 varieties with less or no pollen. Unfortunately once I unknowingly disturbed them by opening the composter cover, they decided, enough is enough and moved out. Rab called local beekeeper who arrived in time to see them swarming in the alnus tree...
