I recommend this clumpy cakey foundation from Poundland. It gives great coverage and as it says on it's tube, it is Gorgeous Flawless. I couldn't 'make up' my mind on one product. Hence, I also used two bargain bin pressed powder products from Primark too. Together, these products combined will make your wall will feel like a princess. 

I took the drawings out on to the land today and set fire to them... ruining them, destroying the work I have produced so far on the Block Chain project. I have saved the ashes in a jar and want to use them somehow to progress this further. I documented the process and the resulting imagery offers beauty and perfection out of my control. As the flames engulf the drawings, the mundane A4 paper becomes a silky, sensuous material. Liberated by the non-existent artwork, there's no need to continue the quest for the perfect drawing on the golden section line. The ashes are beyond weightless.

I think maybelline, No7...actually would look super cute with some tinted moisturiser ..looking forward to my wall makeover tomorrow..I'll keep you guys posted #makewallsglamagain

After a Sunday morning of pointing old stone walls (filling in the cracks) here on the studio renovation, I spent the rest of the afternoon drawing from the photos of the 'found' cracks from the previous day.

These drawings are on A4 paper, folded to find the golden section line on each sheet, then creased along this line.

Then, using charcoal made from baking olive twigs here in the valley, I drew along the crease allowing the charcoal to stray away from the golden section line.

This was followed by a lot of spitting onto each drawing and rubbing the charcoal until the paper started to tear, split and ruin.

I repeated the process to create this series of 8 drawings.

I want to take these drawings back out onto the land and ruin them further somehow.

In response to Denise's idea of revisiting the wall that 'blemished' her face, I went wandering this morning to the local village and on my way took photos of all the sites of imperfection I encountered. Whilst Denise is intending to conceal/hide the blemish on the wall, I wanted to reveal the imperfections I found. I am enjoying the play with the fruitless attempts to perfect and the finding of beauty within the imperfect, reducing the quest to an obsolete, as Denise says. 

These cracks are, on first glance, surface 'faults, lines, imperfections'... in the dried soil and on my sun dried face, showing the damage of the strong sun here on the built environment, my body and the recent flood water cutting through the land.

However, looking closer, beneath the surface, these cracks simply do not exist. They are the 'space between', the void, the unknown, the horizon line, the 'far more intriguing than'... we can only see them due to the light hitting the two surfaces differently which surround the crack. The horizon does not exist, the cracks do not exist and therefore the lines on my face do not exist.

What does exist there though is the interesting, the perverse, the margin.

That's where the life is - in the cracks.

That's where the art is - in the cracks.

I am currently living and working 'off-grid'/outside the system, therefore am I in the crack? Am I a margin? Perverse, anti norm.

Further exploration is required of these unknown spaces/voids. The negative space, the zero of the female.

I spent today thinking about some ideas around perfection/imperfection. I considered some of Sarah's ideas of obsolete repair ( of the cracks of the mud). Taking some of her found imperfections as a starting point, I began consideting it from my point of view and perspective in Cambridge.

Today, I began with writing the word perfect which turned to perfecked to perfucked to fucked. I enjoy a good word play so I turned the word into its anthesis.

Then, I began thinking about Sarah's site images of the cracks. While trying to find the images again, my internet failed..the site would not load..i thought this was another imperfect site so I drew an image of my screen...

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Anyway, after that.. I eventually found some internet and sarah's blog post. I started thinking about cracks and sites. I started to think of my body as a site from a female cosmetic perspective.I recently had a cycling accident where I crashed into a wall and dented my nose. The experience made my hyper-aware of my own physicality. It made me feel reduced to a bunch of parts like a bicycle, an ikea table, a curry or a wall. I started to consider some of the physical 'cracks' i.e. blemishes, imperfections and dents this has caused my face.
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Since this wall objectified me ( reminded me of my physicality and made me reduce myself to meagre parts)
​,I think it could be interesting to humanise that wall...give it a make over with human makeup..try to cover its blemishes..I will visit that wall in the coming days and see what I can conjure up :).. I think this idea could feed into the unobtainable perfection sarah is interested in :)

Keen to know what your thoughts are! I like clay cracks alot :)

'Nature is us all in the end'... Olive trees, Fig trees, Skulls & Bones, Plants, Skin, Death, Decay, Growth...
This quest for an unattainable perfection... cleaning, scrubbing, improving, making, remaking, attempting, controlling, ruining, reflecting... 'we make things - in turn they remake us'...
Working in this environment: sculpting, constructing, plastering - recording the imperfections, cracks and decay. 

The photos above are taken in and around my studio - glass bottles, plaster, clay soil, dirt and dust, plants surviving with very little water, growing through cracks in the old, stone terraced walls, in contrast to the sharp, measured lines of drawing boards within a box like structure.

The clay soil is dry and cracking after a long dry winter and unusually warm temperatures, I started to wash the cracks and try to reattach the soil.

Yes, the performative images are interesting. The play of gender. Perhaps, we could play with stereotypically masculine ideas of perfection. 

In terms of the artist, this may be the traditional marble sculptor which is generally seen as male. Maybe there is some play in the idea of carving a marble cheesecake ( playing with typically feminine cooking )

I have attached an image of my 'studio' which is much less glamourous- a cramped room in a stuffy shared house in Cambridge. I thought it was kind of funny how you are operating from such a beautiful location while I'm in the old industrial ugly side of Cambridge in a dingy flatshare. 

Best,
Denise

An email I sent Denise yesterday (yes, we stole a march too!), wanted to post it here to start/continue discussing connections between my and Denise's work and taking inspiration from James' and Peter's imagery from Block_I. Since Sending this email, we have been given the 'handover' imagery from Susan, which could also provide a starting point - specifically 'girls' and 'performance'.

Going to leave the email below...

Hi Denise,
Yes, ‘perfection’ and the ‘unattainable quest’ for it (whatever ‘it’ is) and your ironic play with 'it' – that’s definitely our connection.
I have been having some ideas for specific works/images for this project exclusively – in an attempt to discipline myself and my practice for the 2 week period.
I want to ruin the work that I produce in some way – I guess I want to try to question my own quest for the perfection in the work.
I really like the idea of exchanging an image. Although, I also felt a real connection with one of the statements from James and Peter in Block_I, which was ‘nature is us all in the end’ - in the sense of not ‘giving a sh*t’ anymore and adopting your 'defeatist, more ironic' attitude towards my own work – hence the idea of ‘ruining' what I make over these next two weeks.
Maybe we could have this conversation in more depth on the blog as a starting point and we could attach images to the blog post if we feel it appropriate?
What do you think?
Sarah

(Below image - view from studio in the Catalan mountains)

Welcome to BLOCK_III Sarah and Denise, I am passing on some images resulting from BLOCK_I. You can choose to consider, reflect, or move on from them, the space is yours.

Susan Francis