The way things fit together......

I am fascinated by the way that things fit together.....I loved jigsaws as a child, and have always been good at anagrams..
At college my art project has been based around walls. I couldn't put my finger on what it was about walls that grabbed my attention. It wasn't their uniformity or their functionality. The kind of walls that I like are haphazard or unusual, walls that survive against the odds. For a while I was interested in the detail, the individual qualities that make each brick or stone unique and the parallels between bricks in the wall and human beings. (http://www.tnellen.com/ted/brick.html)

But I what I realised yeasterday was that it is none of these things that really do it for me it is simply how the shapes go together. Especially irregular shapes like in the walls you find in Greece. I once helped a friend to make a drystone wall in someones garden and it was that fitting together, finding just the right piece to fit each tiny hole that was so satisfying about it. I think that's why I enjoy collage and collograph. It's the taking of different shapes and colours that would not usually go together and making something unified from them.

There is an Austrailian artist called John Dahlson who makes beautiful art out of old junk that he finds washed up on the beach. He also makes funky things like a giant bottle made out of old flip-flops (thongs). www.johndahlson.com/ I find his work hugely inspiring. I am planning to make a wall out of old rubbish - things that we would normally throw away like plastic bottles but am not sure yet how I will hold it together (what the "cement" will be). Any ideas gratefully recieved.....