Untitled blog post from "Land art project"

Day 5

Jonathan and I head out in the car on another soil collection trip. The road winds through the rising and falling land in a charmingly indecisive manner. The views of the hills are lovely and we snap photos from the car window. We arrive at our destination and hastily shovel soil into shopping bags lest the authorities catch us digging up the landscape. I hadn’t realised quite how much earth I was going to need until I observed the rapidly growing mountain of original soil that I’d turfed out from my trenches.

Back at the chalet. another curious local stops by to enquire after my apparently pointless activities. I explain what Im doing, not really giving much away due to my limited vocabulary. He looks at me with a quizzical expression then asks tentatively, ‘c’est tout?’ Yep that’s all! There’s an almost apologetic note in my voice, and regretting that I am unable to conjure up some sort of elaborate gazebo to appease him, I busy myself with the trowel.

Whilst the current cold weather slows me down a little, I am working at a steady pace and I think I may be finished by the weekend. This will leave me a few days to experiment with some other materials. I discuss with Jonathan an idea I have had inspired by a passage in the novel I am reading, Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Set in a cholera ravaged Carribean island, the protagonist describes the family’s typical stone water filter that fail to purify drinking water and stop the spread of disease. There is a fair amount of sandstone in the area. I would like to experiment with the possibilities of ‘filtering’ or channelling water through slabs of the stone. It remains to be seen however whether this is possible or at all practical.

Rona Smith