Paths and Slate, A New Experiment!

It is stuffy and humid this fine August morning! Blech.... Anyhow, this installment brings an experiment that I started about a week ago. As money is tight at this time of the year I looked around at available materials for printing. This brought me to a big pile of used slate tiles used for roofing! "What the hell!?" I thought, free and available. After some scrubbing they became usable. As what to screen onto them.... the usual and from the archives.

Pretty nifty, huh? I was not sure what to think at first but as the first 5 started to finish I came around and thought the same. A bit cheesy as well I suppose but I will deal with my own little art ethics at some other time. I've been spending a good bit of time this summer trying to figure out how to bring my fondness for gardening together with my art. Perhaps some gardening classes. Nope, way too much in student loans already. Then the idea of paths smacked me in the face. Now that is something I can spend some time on! Like below.

Now that is interesting! Not a bad place to start. And the bamboo likes it too.  After a bit of weatherproofing they became water proof. It took a bit of figuring out how to get the ink to adhere to the slate. Another interesting geeky aspect: Using the color and natural properties of the slate in conjunction with the printed images! An old lesson come back to haunt. Well the experiment expanded from 5 hunks of slate to 10 finished pieces. There are 6 more in process. Yup, it is getting bigger. See below.

One of these days I'll learn to take better pics. I think you pretty much get the idea. Yeah, paths literally and figuratively. My little love of Zen has started to creep in here. I suppose you can't keep from putting the more personal of interests totally out of your work. I won't expound upon it though. I am very much enjoying pushing them around though. Not really sculpture... not too sure what to call them, so "Paths" it is. Here are a couple of details.

Yup... slipped a dragon in there.

I have no idea how big or how many will be made. I suppose until the slate runs out. And then the more interesting question: WHAT DO I DO WITH THEM? As this is the third project I have worked on this summer the inventory is building up. A bunch of nobori and now this. Ideally, I would love to see them in some public garden. Guess some homework is in order. Perhaps some random places around town. Now that has potential as well. Maybe even let them exist as a commodity? Hmmmm. If anyone has suggestions or perhaps a garden for a temporary installment let me know.

Anyways that is all for now.