arrived back at lunchtime today, Friday October 13th to Milford house, Tipp, for my second trip. As mentioned previously, I am breaking down this residency into short stays, and doing as much as I can within them.

I spent this morning running around trying to get everything ready this morning, and get my training done, and meet all my  stringent morning stipulations :)

Finally got car packed with food, sleeping bag, pillow, cage of clothes, toiletry stuff, laptop, chargers, peat moss, ultrasound gel, back clothes, and the list goes on.

I’d emailed Mark, the artist Mark Leahy, who is currently on residency in Milford, the day before to ask if he would be interested in doing a work swop- if he would be willing to help me with some work documentation I would do the same for him. Wonderfully, he generously agreed. I arrived, and got unpacked. the sun was shining. No rain. It was a sign, to go for it.

I armed myself with my peat moss and ultraound gel and started slathering on the gel, and patting handfuls of peat moss onto my legs. I had, as usual, a very strong image of how it wanted it to look. It didn’t quite turn out this way, unsurprisingly. My plan was to coat myself with a layer of peat moss, all over, so as to become a human shaped soil creature. However I was having technical issues with my vision, in that the peat moss kept falling off. I had to really slap on the ultraound gel to get sufficient stickage.

We had planned to go to the field and to various locations but it was too cold- I started shivering quite soon and could not stay still. I had thought, hilariously and naively, that the peat moss would keep me warm. Mark took some brilliant shots and art directed everything which I was hugely thankful for as I was not able to think clearly as I was too cold.

probably my favourite of the shots might be this one above:

Mark came out with me again after we finished this work and I tried another piece- an experimental movement session in a field that had been recently cut- so it was all stubbly yellow. More to follow on this. Basically Mark was the reason this all happened today.