split/mountain

Probably one of the websites I visit most is a blog called BLDBLG , by Geoff Manaugh. He writes about architecture and the built environment on topics related to geology, archeology, acoustics, subterranean spaces, science fiction, history etc etc

My paintings are mostly of mountains ive hiked to and visited, mostly South Africa and a bit of Europe. While mainly pretty rigorous Geoff’s writing often has a speculative angle and casts far out questions into landscape futures which I find particularly thrilling.

"...but it would be some new form of plowing in which the furrows you produce are not for seeds but for data. An entirely new landscape design process results; a fragment of earth formatted to store encrypted files. data gardens can even be read by satellite. planet as archive."

Planet as archive is not such a far out idea though, im more interested in stone as archive.

I grew up going to a place called Adams calendar not far from where I lived. If you try ignore the name and sensation around 'South Africa's Stonehenge' the stones felt different there, or I willed them to be different. Either way, these willful human projections are interesting to me

I like visiting standing stones, neolithic sites. Places where stones have been chosen and placed with what seems to be some specific intention. resonant properties of certain stone, astronomical alignment, vibes. In 2021 I attended a talk at the Akademie der Kunst in Berlin, where artist Natasha Tontey spoke about a piece called The Epoch of Mapalucene . Its a work I think about often, which explores native Indonesian cosmology through the stone-revering Minahasan peoples, bringing together in an alternate geological timescale, animate and inanimate realms.

On the note of seasonal observations and experiences of a life lived awake, my friend Steve Shapiro writes beautifuil Haiku