Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover (or Look at a Compost Heap)
“The problem is all inside your head”
She said to me
“The answer is easy if you
Take it logically
I’d like to help you in your struggle
To be free
There must be fifty ways
To leave your lover”
All this pondering about the compost pile and my brain is indeed having a little struggle. So taking a leaf out of the great Paul Simon’s book - see if I can come up with 50 ways to look at my compost heap.
Drawing the compost heap as is, figuratively, without prejudice
Make a painting of the above image, for example, exactly as it is - an exercise in empathy and understanding
Drawing small parts of the CH, deconstruction
Photographing it, close and far - portraits of the actual thing. A literal observation and testimony of existence, artist as witness. A bizarre still life of human remains, kitchen waste, garden tidying
Taking parts out of it and examining them
Drawing an impression of the CH - how does it feel, what are the marks around it
Drawing the little critters and power houses that orchestrate and carry out the alchemy that goes in in this factory of stink and magnificence
Painting the actual parts, branches, dipped into paint making them something else - self conscious art object
Recycling them into something new - paper, charcoal, humus paint
Repositioning the composite parts - out of context do the become something else?
Something indexical - taking a photo every day or draw it, see how it ages and decomposes over months
Using the sludge to print with - monoprinting onto paper
Make clay from the compost
Microscopic view through a microscope