to be made again

to be made again

ABI FRECKLETON

The puddle

You lie feigning passive but your waters run with places far away and lives passed close by, and lives close pass by

The crowns and buzzards come soaring down, their energy with the sun’s constantly buzzing at your surface

Her welly breaches your meniscus ripples peeling back slices of her image a pink-brown oscillating wake reverberating like an oil slick

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A stick is used to draw a line in the sand. The line traces the edge of the shiny mark left on the sand by the last wave that has broken. The line is made from one end of the beach to the other. Waves wash in as the line is being made, so the line traces not one wave but several parts of several waves.

Wet sand

The waves come in over the line, erasing it almost as soon as it is made. Some parts of the line remain for longer than others.

I am not sure if the tide is going in or coming out. The stick is approximately 40 centimetres long. I have to bend down. This is uncomfortable, but I don’t stop and stand up. I feel like it is necessary to make the line continuously. My feet walk a parallel line, tracing their own line that mirrors the shape of the wet wave light. I am not tracing the water but the wet marks the shining sunrise light reflects on the sand.

After I finish the line I walk back along the beach and see that almost all the line has already been washed out. My footprints have been washed over too.

But they linger as softened holes, unrecognizable as footprints except for their foot size and pace spacing.

The tide is coming in.

The reflections on the sand are a continuation of the reflection on the ocean surface. They are an abstracted image of the sky. The tide is going out.

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A pale dirty green

I went to B&Q and took a print of the image with me. I asked the guy to colour match each of the 4 colours. “just tester pots please”

The computer was telling him they were not a very good match. “because they’re printed outthe pixels confuse the computer” I take the closest match the computer can give me for each colour. I mix these four colours together into a new colour.

< a pale dirty green >

That night I dreamt of a tsunami It rushed towards us below Just as we marvelled at the beauty of the islands they were washed over.

The next day I saw waves

Waves in all of it, but mostly in that central green figure I suddenly needed to make this wave Its lift and dump, its weight and poise - and mine and the sky’s all reflected inside.

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All my photos of sea

The algorithm decides. I wonder but I do not know which parts, which pixels it will use to choose the images that are sea and those that are not.

Viewed at max zoom out screen grab and print - a grid of minute photos stretches back in time across four and half pages of A4.

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Paper waits

All the waste paper from the home studio from the home school from the home work failed paintings discarded spellings protective newspaper cardboard armatures finished worksheets forgotten scribbles preparatory sketches notes on scraps hapee brthdai granee practice kiln schedule scrawls soak mulch down disintegrate into amalgamous pulp spread dry a brand new sheet this paper waits. always already about to start again without image before image after image

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Two determined greens

A green we see but is not there A green unseeable at which we stare

A green we seek to remove from view 1

A green we strive to see but never do A green uncontainable in pixels and frames

dulled by the zoom, brightened by the flame

In 16 millimetre not on view 2

Again and again then instead on youtube

Screen-grab, print, dissolve the CMYK

A4 times 4, stir and spray

A pair of mirages?

over-stimulated pixels?

Internal reflection of the sapphire crystal 3

She does not scatter like the sky’s blue

nor sink like gold in the ocean’s dew

She curls around the horizon line intent to meet the gaze of time

Evading the silver halide and celluloid frames 4

blemishing the i-view-finderpane

The long atmosphere prism cises her off

She floats on a puddle’s meniscus

Not an after-image or figment of your perception

just an artefact of the sun’s reflection

But I prefer to think of these two sisters dodging the filters and spot-heal deleters. Smirking the naysayers in a momentary gleam escaping the turn of the earth - two determined greens

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Summer thunderstorm video

The brightness of the sun squeezed into a slow motion downpour.

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The last slice

You throw an orange yellow out across the wall pools of meniscus glow seep from your long edge.

I stand vigil. The clouds scatter you into a spectral hazenot as you were yesterday

I wait again. You graze under but shadowed by the rooftops - are not what you were.

I wait for the fourth day. But I know It is too late.

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Tracing the sun

On a bright day the sun catches this corner from about 3.12pm.

She makes steady progress undistracted by my shadow as I stoop to trace her outline.

Her clarity like a mirage fleeing the touch of my pencil’s tip she goes on drawing her arc caressing my failing hand.

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Aurora aura

Gold of sunshine in her hair

Up the dark cavernous stair

Follow the green ray as it dies One gift….and it beguiles

Like Aurora I cannot resist My fingertip …. tap If only I could touch the light

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The hoard

I have found clay

The walls of this cave are made of it Its soft shine tugs me into the darkness

Brown black matter

- the guilty pleasure of cutting it outdries under my fingernails

Later I pick out these shards of dirt thinking about my hoard

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The dance

At the start the mesh takes the lead, her structure directing where the liquid can move. As the clay solidifies, the steel disintegratesin the heat of the kiln, she takes over their dance against gravity.

Their cracked skin and rust-stained sleeves, scars of an impassioned duelfrozen between protection and death like a canary in a coal mine.

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The beetle

She watches and pities me as she owns her own resplendent iridescence flips onto her back and even in death her twilight glow glows

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Potion I am picking flowers to make a potion can I have some flour and sun lotion?

No! not that peony I stare growing in the sun because it looks so lovely there and there is only one

But why? In this battered sandy pan than your glass vase any less. is it different better than there in my sticky mess?

Well! There is gritty slugs and sticky mud… It is a perfume for you I just need some glue …fine *sigh*

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Sweet isolation paper

Spring equinox constellations map

Guardian hot cross bun recipe

Star and moon drawing

Paper boats with stones in photo

Crossed out ‘when’

Light blue sugar paper

Black, purple and yellow scribble on sugar paper (tipex stars on reverse)

Veg patch planting plan

Three blue paintings

Brown sugar paper

Strawberry smoothie photo

Biro circles

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Maryam’s drawing

Can I help you with your drawing mummy?

I ask Maryam if she could draw me a puddle

What else mummy? Can you draw you?

(She draws herself)

What are these bits Maryam?

Wings Oh

I’m a fairy Lovely.

What else mummy?

I think that’s everything (she points to her drawings one by one)

Rain, leaf, puddle, tree, pine cone, puddle, welly, me

What about the ground?

Yes ok you can draw the ground, thank you

And what about the sky mummy?

Yes I had forgotten about the sky

And the sun?

Yes the sun is that finished?

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Notes

A pale dirty green - was written as part of a response to another artist’s work. It was commissioned by The NewBridge Project and was originally published as part of the exhibition Red+Green=Yellow in Nov 2020.

Two determined greens - was written during a research and making project that explored the green ray (the last ray of the dying sun) and the green dot (the camera lens-flare artefact that appears when taking digital photographs in bright sunlight). Research sources referenced in the text are as follows:

1. seek to remove from view - A google search for ‘what is the green dot in my iphone photo?’ yields mostly results for how to remove it, not explain what it is.1

2. not on view - Tacita Dean’s work The Green Ray is held in the Moma Collection but is not on display in the museum or viewable online. In the online archive web page the work is marked ‘not on view’.2

3. sapphire crystal is the terminology Apple use to describe their liquid crystal screen technology.3

4. evading silver halide and celluloid frames is adapted from Tacita Dean’s words ‘defying solid representation on a single frame of celluloid’ in her voice over description of the film work The Green Ray.4

Aurora aura - the first line is taken from the lyrics of the song ‘One Gift’ from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty in which the good fairies bestow gifts on the baby princess. The full lyrics for the first fairy’s gift are:

One gift, beauty rare Gold of sunshine in her hair Lips that shame the red, red rose She’ll walk in springtime wherever she goes.5

1 Sebastian Page, ‘How to remove the green dot that sometimes appears in your iphone photos 26 Dec 2016’, www. idownloadblog.com, < https://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/12/26/how-to-remove-green-dot-iphone-photos/> [accessed January 2020].

2 ‘Tacita Dean, ‘The Sun Quartet, 16mm film (color, silent) 2001’, Museum of Modern Art NY, <https://www.moma.org/ collection/works/143617 > [accessed March 2020].

3 ‘Apple iPhone camera specifications’, Apple.com, <www.apple.com/uk/iphone-12-pro/specs/> [accessed March 2020].

4 ‘Tacita Dean on the Green Ray 31 Jan 2019’, Parkett Art, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9meDXPhKIo [accessed March 2020].

5 ‘One Gift’, Song lyrics by Tom Adair and George Bruns in Sleeping Beauty, Dir by Les Clark, Eric Larson, and Wolfgang Reitherman (Walt Disney, 1959).

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