Beginning of Term 2 teaching in Queensland, no students only the staff on campus, all online delivery. Teaching a practical skills based learning subject online has many challenges which I’ve never done it before, so I’ll just jump straight in… I’ve got this, it’s in the can!!
I just have to keep moving.
“Take time to be kind to yourself“
I am so grateful I am a Teaching Artist and have an income and a creative mind to explore this new ‘living’ landscape we have found ourselves in. I am stronger, innovative and more resilient than I thought I was.
Initially when Covid first started I came down with the Flu, I couldn’t get tested because I didn’t meet the criteria. Who could sure, so I isolated myself and stayed home for the next 14 days teaching and the next 14 days preparing term 2 teaching as an online program ready for schools return.
During this time I couldn’t walk far, for long or intensely and ran out of paper so I started to cut up and use old brochures, magazine and disused books to draw on. I kept the Billycan close and moved it as I moved…
I documented the paper before I used it to draw on and then after for 28 days before returning to teach on campus. Except the first day as I was so anxious of the entire situation the world was no in and how it made me feel was completely reflected in the first drawing. From a plumbing brochure of a woman washing her hands, after the drawing it seemed they were bleeding from all the washing.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
The image taken in the can
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Places I couldn’t go
The Maroochy River Golf Course brochure
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Festivals that weren’t going to happen
Day 16
Day 17
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Day 21
Forgot this day to document the initial image from the Horizon Festival Program.
Day 22
Day 23
The Refinery Program brochure for its images of meeting places, people and happy gatherings
Day 24
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Day 28
Forgot to take an image of the day before returning to the school campus
Dalby Billycan Project is an ALL age and ability activity, it works when you’re moving, skipping, slow walking, line dancing, shuffling, from a wheel chair and even moments of stillness creates a ‘SELFIE’ drawing. Each individual carries while walking/moving, a ‘Billycan’! Yes the iconic Australian boil a BILLYCAN – can, is especially kitted out to become a drawing machine. HOW? Inside there is a weighted pen suspended over paper that records the simplest of movements, even moments of stillness, capturing your swagger, your own personal drawing of how you move within the world creating a drawing as unique as your finger print.
Artistically speaking this process is a cataloguing of impressions as cartographical, narratives of direct marks resulting from sequenced events that is your experience of walking in the landscape.
Thanks to this method of creating, the drawing is an artwork which emulsifies location and experience together into an inextricable whole. It also records a period of time, personal exertion that produces a narrative conveying physically the drawings relationship with them, who they are and how they move.
These seemingly symmetrical but uneven drawings cannot be separated from the walk, the travel, the effort of self. Encouraging the community to engage in their own landscape to create drawings of their everyday in Dalby.
Now, scientifically, walking/moving increases the size of the brain regions linked to planning and memory and enhances creativity. From walking Walkers come away from the experience with an altered perception of place, having created a subjective map, people see things anew notice and reflect on their own algorithms which translates into art and strengthens their relationship with where they are in the world. A wondrous mind and body connection.
Dalby Billycan Project challenged the face of standard exercise and makes it a gentle creative pursuit – with wellness on the side. ‘My challenge everyday now is not the calories I lose or how far I walk but the drawing I create today, and how to better it tomorrow.’ Annette Wegg
M.A.D.E Walking changes a persons experience of their everyday!
Thanks to this method of creating, the drawing is an artwork which emulsifies location and experience together into an inextricable whole. It records a period of time, our personal exertion with site, producing a narrative that conveys physically the drawings relationship with the walker, who they are and where they walk. Taking a group of Artists for a walk within the LANDscape of which they will be developing a concept for a large commission.
Below: are the resulting generative drawings each unique to the artist/walker, their engagement of the place they’re walking and how they move through the world.
TREE AS MONUMENT is a temporary (inflatable) MUSEUM all about the TREE.
Above: 40m high Cyprus Tree on the LORNE foreshore, part of the sculpture trail LSB 2018.
Bio security at the door, magnifying glasses on request aiding you to get up close and personal with this OLD beautiful pine. Maybe for some the first time they really stopped and looked at a tree as for many it blends in with the rest of the woods. So I ask, do we take trees for granted?
Above: ‘What’s Left’ LANDscan residue along Parramater Road Sydney, 2017
LANDscanning: is the secondary sequence and residue capture while WALK-ing between trees asking the YARRA line, mapping, this is a personal and public performance, visible and invisible.
Walking leaves little traces, little is left behind after the experience except tracks of thoughts so the idea of simple photographs or drawings during such a walk is clearly not enough: an object cannot compete with an experience. This is why this subjective experience uses the process of the LANDscanning.
LANDscanning collects the experience of the walk, the tactile meeting of the tree as a sensuous engagement, collecting the mirco residue of the past of all types of engagement: the fallen leaves, the dying flowers, the scared bark of graffiti and even when you think you have left nothing!! LANDscanning captures this engagement to become a visually true semiotic reading of place.
LANDscans are captured using a hand held scanner, an instrument that has become an extension of myself, as a natural and familiar process. Just like extending your hand to touch and engage with the rich textures of a new environment, in this case, I can scan. So when my hand moves over these vastly different surfaces, my scanner effortlessly records this engagement, even my staggered movements or my digital dirt as I call it are permanently stored as textural memories of the engagement of place. The images captured are created by factors both intentional and unintentional which are strongly influenced by the moment of capture, discreet segments of place, points in time, samples of the surrounding environment which later revealed layered records of the impact of occupation, motion and time.
Every interaction leaves its mark including my own LANDscans captures the stuff we overlook.
Above: Scans of organic residue, while walking in Sydney 2017
Above: Scans of man-made items / residue while walking, Sydney 2017
Above: Night time in the museum
Generative LANDscape Artist 