lost

You are right to wonder at us being lost or at least digressing from off the beaten track. And yes our initial intention was to go places we dont normaly go and see what we find. Its that sometimes by taking small side steps I find things that relate to the post or at least make me ponder a current thought or make me want to put them up here, just cause they make me laugh or no one else would get it. perhaps we need a sub section called "finds on route" or something, which these small elements can be held in. I still think there is milage in doing proper 'off the beaten tracks' its just that i sometimes dont have the time and i come across stuff on regular known paths.
I like that our blog meanders and then rears a question and we rein it in or just let it go and see what happens. We i think thought by doing this blog we would find sites of study or interesting places , as a tool for us to look at places differently rather, to notice things because we are looking - a bit like your cat ice photo, you were open to looking differently at the world and found something. This for me is sometimes enough rather than always trying to find something big. I like my altered perception, my affected looking. Can or is this enough, or are we at a point to reflect, consider and alter. I suppose its a bit like the question of why 7 in seven sights, each network has to build, and not just keep repeating itself. Do you think we need another person who pokes and challenges and interjects in our blog? or should we make the effort to off road. I like that you started to make work or interventions in relation to the off roading. Perhaps we should explore this idea further?

I have no picture for this post but I do have title of a book A field guide to getting Lost, by Rebecca Solnit. I like it and it fits.

Cats and lambs

Your Christo post reminded me of the idea I had to author events as work. The idea for a the false rock in the peaks was sort of trying to do this - take a series of events and through doing your own continuation claim the previous events as art - or perhaps get people to look at the events differently.

It is hard to see the wrapped up sculpture as anything but art - it is a good tool to talk about intention and artists in the role of art making but I have a cold and cannot really be arsed. I'm not sure why pylons are a symbol of modernism but clearly your chopping them up in pylon field and making them into stairs is very post-modern but maybe again we need to talk about intention.

Ask your dad if he was making a post modern statement or just making do. We are straying off the beaten track in our intention to stray off the beaten track maybe the idea has run out of puff -needs to change into something else- or perhaps we needed to talk about different things which brings me to the cat and the lamb. There is something about things which look like something else which is funny and somehow important in terms of image and cognition. I am going to look and see if there is anything written about it anywhere- hedgehogs which look like yams and squirrils which look like potatoes. Here is ice melting which looked like a cat when I first walked past it then I circled around and it had melted to look like a lamb.

moore/christo/anti NF

As a further response to the 'response to modernism is this postmodernism' theme brought up by the pylons, i also wanted to post this image. Its not off the beaten track - just outside Leeds Art Gallery.
Its the Henry Moore reclining nude, wrapped, in a not trying to be christo but being christo way. I was working at the gallery and went out at lunch and the council had wrapped all the sculptures, some in white, some in blue and some others i saw as i drove home in green.



It was they said to protect them from the anti BNP march the following day. I got excited went back into the gallery saw one of the nice warden guys and said without knowing it a large scale public art intervention was occuring right outside, and that the council had unknowingly provided the gallery with a set of Christo wrappings. He replyed in an unexcitied manner- "Oh, its not as good as the fact they've sawn the xmas tree down, that they put up last week, a gift from sweden, so that next week when it goes back up it will be 2 foot shorter."

Also on the first photo youll see chalk drawings. the body outline on the right says katherine, the stick man says anorexic, both done by the jumpy boys and skaters - the gallery doesnt like that they do drawings ! For me the moore, christo, stickman combination is genius - the gallery didnt agree.

post-modernist pylons - perhaps

Well only on here could i reply with 4 chopped down pylons waiting for reconstruction into legs of a shed - does that mean these are potential post-modernist pylons?!
Also you'll be pleased to know my new stairs for the shed are made in part from a 5th pylon that was deconstructed for re-use.
What i really like is that these pylons come from field that is called pylon field, but now it has no pylons yet we still call it pylon field, which makes no sense to anyone new when you say - im off to pylon field -you know the field that had the pylons but doesnt anymore.
When they were taking them down i met one of the men working for the elec board who on seeing me driving a tractor after working in the field, decided i might be a good catch - farmers daughter, some acres, could be well off and no obvious sign of a wedding ring, asked if i was married, because if not he would be interested and that he had a few acres in ireland and wouldnt that be good? I said thanks for the offer it sounds ok but i was quite happy here, so he offered me the pylons as a goodwill gesture instead because he wasnt really meant to. Fair deal i say.

Urban sites

The foxes stick is so rural I wanted to come up with an urban equivalence but I could not find one maybe I need to keep it in mind and I suppose my posting is sort of about things been buried in the snow.

I had a forced digression this week as I can't get my car out so I had to go to a school on the bus. I rang them and found out I had to catch a 69 outside the wicker chemists which is an all nighter and the place of choice for people to get their methadone.

I slipped down the road in the ice and ended up talking to a bloke at the bus stop for about 25 minutes. he kept shouting "I'm waiting for a bloody 69" he seemed to be vocalising for the whole bus queu- the buses were all running late. He told me his really sad life story in a disjointed drug riddled way but there had been love and family and a life that he had lost. I don't think he was really telling me his life story he was just talking and I was there. Anyway I got on the bus and chose not to sit with him and he asked an old lady how much it was to stay in a b and b and she said she had a house and didn't know.

After the school I had to walk home as the buses had all stopped and I had to cross a massive roundabout near meadowhall. There were loads of underpasses but all the paths were covered in snow and there were no footprints - it felt very un-pedestrian. it felt weird so I took a picture and the whole afternoon felt like a forced digression so I thought I should post it. When I emerged from the underpass I tried to find something to photograph and Kate Pahl had told me that pylons were a symbol of modernism so I took a picture of one. I suppose it is something we take for granted and the snow reminds us that perhaps we need to be careful what we take for granted and how quickly things can change.

taxonomy of mince pies and inivisiblity

Following on from your lobster pot image taken on a phone, this is a taxonomy of mince pies taken on a phone. It made me think of the irons in artemis. From the left is a brandy, brandy butter, normal, iced and then puff. Yes i know its not an archive but a shop, but it is a site and i was interested in a site that was affected by time - in that its contents were shaped by the time of the year - a bit like the jobs on the farm - so a site that was affected by the calendar / seasons rather than a persons decisions to do something that relates to a concept, rather it relates to a time or a ritual. Never before had i seen so many choices in a small bakers. I suppose it goes back to an interest in the everyday but i like the fact you dont get mince pies all year and then when you do there are too many to pick from! In the end i had normal - not sure what that says other than theres no need to mess with perfection.
It wasnt quite off the beaten track the mince pies but just a sandwich shop lunch stop while in huddersfield, so today i went for a walk off the beaten track and saw this....




which relates to the mince pies in that its a winter thing, well perhaps an xmas thing, and that made me think about how we dont normally get snow at xmas but as with mince pies it means xmas........cultural contructs...and related to a concept.. but they make me think about the farm none the less.
But what i really wanted to show was the footprints to the post and how the post is a site - a site for the fox...you can see how it walked there, scented and then walked round and then on..and again later for a second visit.
The marker is in the middle of a field marking for us where the seed wheat is planted. I suppose what i really liked was the foxes movement made visible, it must pass everyday but we wouldnt know it. Never before has it been a place i considered beyond its purpose as a marker so in a sense its an invisible site


well a winter themed blog from me with festive thoughts

Filey digression

Went to Filey and my Nephew Danial showed us around he lives there. I saw the sign for the museum and the one way sign. He had never been to the museum but said it was probably crap and the side street which led there was certainly off the beaten track and suggested it may be crap - but could be a gem. Anyway like all museums on this website so far it was closed so we will never know. The lobster pots are stacked all over in front of peoples council houses. Which is probably normal but looks funny as you expect them to be on a romantised sea front. Regeneration bods have probably made all the fishermen take them home every night to improve the sea view. Like your comments and think that things are evolving - the blog may be the be all and end all of this train of joint thought with spin offs - it feels like work and it has thought spin off it's a bit like a conceptional experience based immaculate corpse process - perhaps we could think about this - a thread through like linkages - my lobster pots trigger your next digression - this sounds rude and I notice from past post that your just sort of doing it naturally so for you it has evolved and for me I have contrived it - although I did do it with the skiing on the first blog. Maybe the dogma link is it has to be visual and personal and binary fluffing is ok.

Speaking of which the pictures off the phone could be this but as I've already told you I could not get them off my phone it's a function to meaning thing.