I HAVE DECIDED WHAT TO DO.

Thank you all for your input into my quandary.

ArtPropelled I love your stripes suggestion. But I cannot get the idea of stripy toothpaste put of my head now.

Anna thank you for making me feel not alone in my what would seem to be an illogical attraction to the cone.

Kathryn thank you for’ Give a cone a home’ and other ‘conical’ suggestions.

I have decided keep the cone on the windowsill of my work room along with my collection of interesting stones (do not ask). My cacti have accepted it and it seem to be happy. I am not going to paint it now; I am going for the natural concrete look.

But more importantly you all made me laugh, thank you for that.

Can Someone Tell Me What To Do With This Concrete Cone?

What shall I do with this small concrete cone? (playmobile figure added alongside for scale only)

Let me tell you the story before you tell me what to do with it.

I went to a ruby wedding celebration party at the weekend and had a good old time.  At the party there were about ten tables, each having at least two displays of balloons. Each display consisted of three or four helium filled balloons on long strings tied to some sort of weight. At the end of the party a guest next to me took two of the balloon for her young daughter. I assisted in the untying them from the weight. Normally the weight is a plastic bag filled with water. This weight felt different. We stripped away the decorative paper covering and to my surprise, we found this concrete cone.

Concrete is made using cement and some form of aggregate. Cement is made by grinding limestone and shale and calcifying in a massive rotary kiln. This is then ground in rotary mills to form the dusty cement that arrives in bags to the DIY store. Many moons ago a worked as a design engineer for a cement manufacturer. The efforts and energy to produce cement are enormous. The limestone is quarried; rocks the sizes of a small car are dumped into enormous crushers. The kilns are several hundred feet long. The Cement Works have their own high voltage power supplies.

To me all this makes cement a precious resource to be used wisely. Making balloon weights which will be binned after the party is not wise. I cannot see many people collecting these after the party and taking them to their local recycling centre for crushing and reuse as hard-core.

Now to “what shall I do with it part” of the post. I like the tactile smooth conic shape of the weight and I what to change the destiny of this weight. I am driven to painting it and having it as a decorative object. The problem is that I cannot decide whether to paint it shiny red or matt white.

In the famous words of the Big Brother. ‘You decide’

Intellectual Property Rights of an Image

Following on from my Rusty Bits post http://sparkartsquaresblogspotcom.blogspot.com/2011/06/rusty-bits.html I have now completed my picture. It took me a lot longer than I anticipated. Whilst painting this I was talking to a friend about the process of making the iron that was used to make the ship that inspired my picture. The iron ore would have to be mined and transported. The coal used to fuel the blast furnaces would have to be mined and transported and then converted into coke and probably be transported again. Limestone would also be required to form a flux for the process. This would have to be quarried and transported. All these material would be processed in a blast furnace and an iron billet produced. This billet would the hammered and rolled to form the iron plates. Steam hammers would probably be used. Again coal and a water supply required. The iron plates would need to be shaped, drill and hot riveted to form the ships hull. Just imagine how much of the earth’s resources and human effort was used to make the hull of this ship. It is highly probable that life was last in one of the stages. Most certainly some of the worker would become deaf from the hammering and some miners would have become ill because of the working conditions. My painting is homage to all these workers.

Now where does ‘Intellectual Property Rights of an Image‘ fit with all this.

First who owns the iron of the ship? It seems to me that as it is now rusting and forming iron oxide (which is what is mined in the first place), ‘Mother Earth’ is reclaiming what is hers. Dust to dust.  By this does ‘Mother Earth’ own all rust?

Who owns the image that I produced? Who has the ‘Intellectual Property Rights’ to it?

Consider the passage from ‘The Mirror of Reflection’ by St Francis of Assisi –

“ For in a picture of our Lord and the Blessed Virgin painted on wood, it is the Lord and the Blessed Virgin who receive honour, while the wood and the paint claim nothing for themselves; …..”

Applying this to a secular image, say my ‘The Rusty Bits’ picture, the image, the ‘Intellectual Property Rights‘,  must belongs to the rust its self. And therefore to ‘Mother Earth’

The paper and paint that I used were produced using the earth’s resources and as such must also belong to ‘Mother Earth’.

Thanks to Colin for the informing on the forming of iron.

Thanks to St Francis for his words.

Rust, Rust, Glorious Rust…

I like rust. I think it is eye-catching with its crumbly, crusty, flaky, earthy colours.  

Rust (Iron Oxide) is formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the presence of water or moisture. Any iron mass will eventually convert entirely to rust and disintegrate. Dust to dust.  

The colours of rust are fantastic, earthy colours. This is a photograph I took on holiday at the beach. Look how the colours of the rusty metal barrier are reflected in the earthy colours of the large flint type rock just behind it.

Rust and Rock

To see my daughters photographs of rust look at - http://kathrynashcroft-papermouse.blogspot.com/

‘A bug is a good as a hug’

I have just been away on a weeks holiday staying in a cottage on the north coast of Norfolk with the family. What a fantastic holiday. During the week my granddaughter made some furry bugs and we all thought no more about them. Except that my granddaughter did. As we were about finishing packing the cars she asked ‘where are my bugs’? When found she announced that she had made one for everyone as a present and handed them out, specific bugs for specific persons.

What a lovely gesture, the quote that came with them is ‘A bug is a good as a hug’



My Granddaughter's Bugs



Whilst still on the theme of bugs. My daughter never moves far without some sort of camera and my daughter decided that her and me (or should that be she and I) would go walk about down the cottage lane whilst the others prepared the evening meal. The lane was full of interesting things to photograph. One thing that was noticed was that there are lots of ladybirds around. Endearing  aren’t they. Here a snap of a couple that I spotted.



Two Ladybirds that I spotted



If you want to see the best ever photograph of a ladybird look at Kathryn’s post -

http://kathrynashcroft-papermouse.blogspot.com/2011/08/looking-anywhere-other-than-where-im.html