Compost Stories

An update on my larger compost story or whatever I am calling it. It’s been so dry but that’s integral to the process, doing whatever the garden is doing anyway.

Day 5 or 6 - very dry, not sure there’s much to see

Day 9-ish, too wet after lots of rain over the past two days. Paper in danger of disintegrating.

I am thinking the next stage will be to completely dry out the piece and shake off all the debris and create a moment of pause to see what the paper has taken in so far. I am imagining some areas being subtle and beautiful but there are whole sections of muddy goo and I am insecure that the whole thing is going to look like a rather enormous toilet roll. I am wondering about making more compost goo (eek running low) and drawing back into the existing marks and lines as a collaborative element, as I feel Verity is owed most of the credit so far. I will check in with the paper tonight after a sunny day and perhaps bring it in to completely dry.

The paper is incredibly dry and brittle and ripping everywhere. At the moment it’s fragile rather than a total disaster so I have left it to sit quietly on the dining table with the door shut where I hope the kittens stop attacking it. The weather forecast is lots of rain for the next week so I am now confined to keeping the piece inside and possibly continuing work on it at the Village Hall.

I got my daughter to take loads of photos just to document. I am learning it’s best to have too many as you don’t always know what you’ll need them for in the future… Kaiser is so annoying and keeps attacking the paper and almost tore it into two, which would not be good. It is badly ripping, which I don’t mind but I want it to stay as one piece. The debris is so stuck on it will probably need a dry scouring brush or something to get it cleaned up before I work into it again. I am wondering about rolling loads of gesso or size on the back to give it a bit of substance for transportation but it isn’t in keeping with the project, it would be more authentic to just present it however it ends up, fragile, torn, incomplete, unpredictable. We are now looking at days of rain so I may have to spend next week clearing out the garage and work in there in stages, as it won’t be big enough to roll the whole drawing out at once.