Tin design

Now this is beginning to look how I want it to look. Progress has been made!

Tin and front cover of book:

Playing with Tins

I'm getting on really well with my initial ideas and sketches for the 30 pieces of work ; seem to be in my element. I've missed this method of working. 

When i studied for the Voyage of Discovery exhibition in 2008/9 I began by reading The Origin of Species and making notes. So that's how I started this project - reading Worms and Mould. I was a bit worried that the language might be a bit turgid, as I had found The Origin, but actually, it was fascinating, and even funny in places. 

In my last blog I mentioned that I will be documenting the work in this exhibition with an edition of 50 handmade artists books, and that they will be contained within A5 size tin boxes. Well the tin boxes arrived today! By courier - 72 of them. It was a very big and heavy cardboard box!!

I spent a very happy couple of hours this afternoon playing with the lids. Scratching, inking, sandpapering, drawing, printing and then putting them in the oven to fix the inks. I haven't come up with the final version yet, by any means, but I'm really enjoying getting there.

More playing tomorrow.

I'm glad I've given myself enough time to really be in control of this work. I'm really enjoying it, and having time to savour the experience. The stress will come, and the doubts and the challenges, but hopefully I'll be a way down the line by then, and more able to cope with inevitable problems.

Scribblings

Now that NEEDLE & FORGE is nearly launched, I have some time to really start concentrating on 'The Movement and Actions of Worms' exhibition. I've started making notes on each of the 30 pieces, and have decided to create small books (again) to accompany the exhibition. They will be presented in tin boxes, to represent opening up a 'can of worms'.  Excited by this new boost of activity.  Keep watching this space. 

Publicity for Coastival 2014 application

Friday 14th February until Sunday 23rd February

"The Movement and Action of Worms"

By Helen Birmingham

An exhibition of mixed media textiles and print, showing an artist’s unique visual interpretation of one of the world’s oldest ongoing scientific experiments. The images are playfully based on a Darwin’s book “Mould and Worms” (1881) in which he investigates how the action of worms can cause objects on the surface to become buried over time.

This exhibition is the long awaited “next evolutionary step” for Helen Birmingham’s work and shows the continuing inspiration she has found in Charles Darwin's studies. It follows her very successful 2009 exhibition in Cambridge “Voyage of Discovery” which was a visual interpretation of Darwin’s thinking behind “The Origin of Species”.

 

"The Movement and Action of Worms"  includes altered photographic images, together with textiles and quilting, etching and silkscreen printed images.

More detailed background studies for 30 works

1. Sites inhabited

Worms are seen in extraordinary numbers on commons and chalk-downs. I have seen worms in black peat in a boggy field; but they  are extremely rare, or quite absent in the drier, brown, fibrous peat. On grassy paths worm-castings may often be seen. On dry, sandy or gravelly tracks, hardly any worms can be found.

2. Nocturnal

At night worms may be seen, but usually with their tails still inserted into their burrows.

3. Wander from the burrow

On one occasion, five tracks were counted crossing a space of only an inch square.

4.Structure 

The body of a worm consists of 100 - 200 almost cylindrical rings or segments.

5. Senses

The whole body of a worm is sensitive to contact.

6. Mental qualities

They pass the winter either singly or rolled up with others into a ball at the bottom of their burrows.

7. Food and digestion

They will eat particles of sugar and liquorice.

8. Calciferous glands

When a gland is completely filled with a single large concretion, there are no free cells, as these have been all consumed in forming the concretion.

9. Manner of prehension

A vacuum is produced beneath the truncated slimy end of the body.

10. Protection of burrows

A leaf being dragged a little way into a cylindrical burrow is necessarily much folded or crumpled.

When worms cannot obtain leaves, they often protect them with little heaps of stones. Whatever the motive may be, it appears that worms much dislike leaving the mouths of their burrows open.

11. Intelligence 

The condition of 89 triangles (65 narrow and 24 broad ones) which had been drawn in by the apex was observed. The bases of only 7 of them were at all creased, being at the same time generally dirty. Of the 82 uncreased triangles, 14 were dirty at the base.

12. Excavation of the burrow 

This is effected in 2 ways: by pushing away the earth on all sides, and by swallowing it.

13. Earth swallowed as food

Why the worms should have burrowed into the chalk in some places and not in others, I am unable to conjecture.

14. Depth of the burrow

Worms usually live near the surface, yet they burrow to a considerable depth during long-continued dry weather and severe cold.

15. Construction of the burrow

The burrows run down perpendicularly, or more commonly a little obliquely.

16. Ejection of their castings

I have watched worms during the act of ejection, and when the earth was in a very liquid state it was ejected in little spurts, and when not so liquid by a slow peristaltic movement.

17. The collapse of old burrows

It is certain that old burrows collapse in the course of time.

18. Their wide distribution 

How they reach such isolated islands is at present quite unknown.

19. Brought up by worms

Objects of all kinds, left on the surface of pasture land, after a time disappear, or work themselves downwards.

20. Undermined by worms

The straightness and regularity of the lines formed by the embedded objects and their parallelism with the surface of the land, are the most striking features of the case.

21. Number of worms

There must exist 53,767 in an acre of garden.

22. Annually accumulated

Their chief work is to sift the finer from the coarser particles, to mingle the whole with vegetable debris, and to saturate it with their intestinal secretions.

23. Burial of the remains

Archaeologists are probably not aware how much they owe to worms for the preservation of many ancient objects.

24. Disintegration and denudation

Swallowed stones serve as millstones.

25. Aided by worms

A worm had bored through a flat circular disc of recently ejected castings, and heaped up a fresh vermiform mass in the centre.

26. Ledges on hillsides

If the accumulation of disintegrated and rolled worm-castings were to become confluent along horizontal lines, ledges would be formed.

27. Castings blown to leeward

Recent castings were found after a heavy gale blown up the slope.

28. Ancient mounds

A bed, even a vey thin bed, of fine earth is eminently favourable for worms.

29. Anciently ploughed fields

In attempts to ascertain how long crowns and furrows last, obstacles of many kinds were encountered.

30. Mould over the chalk

Castings ejected on chalk downs suffer some loss by the percolation of their finer matter into the chalk.