2017-2019
Project Garage products come from a starting point of rejection.
Before I tell you about that let me digress a little. Several years ago I did a project called “Beautiful Things” where I took little things which had been thrown away by people and through artistic care gave them a new status. Each thing was carefully photographed and digitally manipulated into a limited print. The objects were then placed in boxes. The artist Joseph Cornell called his boxed art works “Poetic Theaters” and that name fitted these pieces. Through the boxing and arranging the story was told about how valuable this rejected item now was. People could acquire a box but not through cash. Rather they could propose a new use for the box and if their proposal was interesting enough to me they could have the art work. Few people proposed things, preferring to buy a print instead, simpler less commitment. One person did propose a use and that box went on to be the basis of piece of work for a whole class room of students who re-imagined it. One person took the box for a chip supper and it acquired a wooden fork, another pulled it all apart and represented ever bit, including blobs of glue in new boxes. Perhaps the start of my wondering about rejected objects,yet maybe it was way back when I put my foot through my brushed cotton sheet and my Mum threw it away. It was practical to do so but The thought of that object which had been so close, so comforting lying in land fill made me sad. I’ve always attributed a kind of consciousness to objects which I know they don’t have really.
So back to project garage. A large garage full of objects. Some donated, some grabbed from skips some left over little bits from other projects.
Architect Thomas Rau says that “Waste is simply material without an identity.”
My first project garage was a mission to turn all the lost materials in my Northwich garage into lovely new things and to find them homes where they could be loved again. I made jewelry, mirrors,signs, my son made the table where my laptop now rests. We made all sorts. I tried a project called 1% where 6 boxed recycled jewlery pieces were given to a friend financially richer than me. She took one and past the rest on to a richer friend. The aim was to reach the 1% but I knew that the further one goes from real relations the less obligation there would be to pass on. We got three pass on before the rest were lost. This side projects failure prooved its point. The richest 1% circulate their wealth amongst those they know. We probably all do that to some extent, employing those we know, buying from friends but nobody expects our wealth to form the backbone of a mythical trickle down economy. If makers can’t get their work to those with the money to pay the genuine price its tricky.
A lucky few bits found new homes through traditional selling techniques but most were still untethered when we had to downsize . A big bag of the jewels went to a “Gifting Day” we ran alongside Transition Northwich and a community hub where everything was given for free and taken for free. It was nice to see a group of teenage girls riffle through and take what they wanted.
2022-2025
Now I find myself with a new garage and a new set of suppliers.
Yesterday I carried back two planks from a local skip, I pay a regular visit to the church bric a brac stall and my hand often hoovers over the bin before throwing away off cuts. At present we make earrings from left over mount board which have been popular and take unloved pottery and decorate it. I grab inspiration for the pottery from thrown away books, cards and similar places too. I love books where illustrations had to be correct as without photography they were the source of many people’s knowledge.
We hope that there will be enough time and enough people with similar sensibilities to find each piece a new home. A lady in my village the other day said that she doesn’t buy new as there is already enough stuff in the world. I agree perhaps we could demand nothing new, dig no new resources from the earth just re-purpose, repair, re-love. Art allows one to try these theories with less jeopardy, to scale some of the bumps and showcase the results. For a long time my art has been about the systems and processes as much as the product.
Summer 2025
I went on a visit to Manchester. It hadn’t meant to be a day of urban exploring but it turned out that way. 
Manchester is my birth town. I explored it for the first 18 years of my life and came back to visit on a regular basis. I go Picadilly station, Northern Quarter and then usually Manchester Art Gallery. Within that I like to think I’m adventurous. Choosing a back alley over a more populated route. Between each visit things change and there is always enough to keep my usual derives interesting. On my last trip I had a different mission. To find a new arts venue called Aviva Studios. I wasn’t too fussed about getting there quickly and was open to interesting diversions. I was struck by many things as I walked along, got lost, found things, got lost again but the thing I want to consider here is around building and material use in our current climate. New builds shadowed the still solid but slipping brown brick buildings of Manchester’s industrial revolution past . These new places are tall enough that a strained neck is necessary to see their tops. Confusing angles and sensory overload is everywhere. Plush lobbies below with bored looking staff serving seemingly empty buildings. Polished signs pointing to “Riverside Walk” which when found are overgrown, dangerous and full of builders rubble. It struck me as a kind of insanity that alongside our conciousness about the end of raw materials and the environment costs involved in extracting and processing we close one old museum and build another from new concrete and rare metals. Another old building looses a roof, rots and takes on the air of a ruined castle whilst lifts powered by artificial energy shoot plastics up 20 floors to clad two grand a month apartments.
“The greenest building is the one which already exists.” says Will hurst from “Architects Journal” and “Retrofirst”.
This doesn’t strike me as something the developers in this side of Manchester are taking much heed of. Nor do they seem to take much notice of solid facts like how much of our CO2 emmissions are down to the making of traditional concrete. Barnabas Calder in his book “Architecture From Prehistory to Climate Emergency” has concrete’s contribution from mining of lime to build at 18% with iron and steel at 24%.
A Few Days After
All of this has really stuck in my head. I’m not an architect, high up in a council or a policy maker with any clout. The challenge of challenging the big wigs is beyond my energy reserves these days. I am a story teller who tells stories through the medium of visual art which often slips onto the socially engaged and conceptual side of things. I try to find the little things which relate to bigger issues. The things I can do within my place and roles. With that in mind I’ve spent the last two days stripping an old matress.
The matress in the picture has been a bain of my life for two years. I moved it out of the garage where it was stored in the hope that I could find somebody to take it to the tip for me. Its been behind the garage out of sight, in sight near the bins. Its fabric has rotted, springs sagged, mould grown and I wondered if wildlife might have made it a home. A man I know with a van and a vested interest in seeing it gone refused to move it, then the local tip stopped taking matresses. Stories fed feelings of anger, hopelessness and shame. The matress grew burdened with all these stories and feelings. Then a change of perspective. In my research into building practice I became emboldened by the fact that some architects and developers were seeing exsisting buildings as mines for materials rather than waste obligations. Exploring the possibility that all the materials we need from here on in are already in the places we use ready to be repurposed. This was the same principle I was toying with back in my Northwich garage and it came across the same stumbling block. Like me the architects who took this idea to heart struggled to pass on the materials they mined from past buildings. The integrity of the materials couldn’t be verified safe in the same way as new materials and others wouldn’t take the risk or see the value of the old stuff. Demolished buildings are more often ground on mass into dust. A heady mix of brick, wood, plastics, peoples kitchens, teddy bears and odd socks all crushed. When just considering an immediate site its cheaper and easier to bulldoze and buy new rather than extracting materials to process and repurpose. The solution for “The Lendager Group” was to keep the circular process in house and set up a demolition and testing arm of their business to supply their new builds. How does that inform my old matress and help me get over the dissapointment I felt when takeup of the things I made in Project Garage mark 1 was slow? The answer might be to consder how the things I no longer need in their current form can be a mine of new materials which will come in useful for other things. The matress seen afresh is now:
1 A tattered piece of fabric with mould marks and stray fibres. Within my artwork I’ve tried several times to age and fray fabrics through artificial means. This weather worn piece is the real deal. It is currently flying about on the washing line as the edge of storm Floris plays out. I like the tag which tells of a luxury sleep contrasted with the broken dirty threads. That in itself seems to tell a story about our relationship with stuff. I’ll use this fabric in some painted collages.
2 A roll of foam. I actually have a bit of a fear of foam. The feel of it goes right through me but this excercise has desensitised me a bit.
3 A bag of felt. Between the foam and the springs there is a layer of felt. It turns out that the felt we lie on is made up of repurposed textiles. Stripping the felt back to reveal this layer is like an archeological dig. I wonder at a tiny square of viscose, yellow with black spots. It looks like a piece for a 1970’s dress. It still looks pretty and vibrant and I wonder where it was worn. Another piece is brown and fluffy, could it have been a teddy bear? I’ll use this as inspiration for some stories. Somehow it fits with the fairy tale “The Princess And The Pea”. Maybe somebody who lies on all these stories, dreams them back. I’m also going to use the felt to stop soil falling out of planters.
4 A bed of tightly interlaced wire which once the fabric is gone has less structure than one might think. It’s the tight pulling of soft fabric which gives the rigidity not just the coiled springs. There is something poetic in that somehow too. Less poetic is the practical use I’ve cooked up for it. I have a small garden and a love of plants. My partner says there is no room for more plants. Solution plant upwards in a living wall. The pockets of springs will provide the perfect little spaces for plants growing against a wall. As its rusty the metal will blend in better and be hardly visible once the plants grow. The felt will keep plants and soil in place and any wool in the mix will add nutrients to the soil as it rots (nitrogen, potassium, sulphur and phosphates).
As this mattess was pretty rusty and far gone its too perilous to subject the public to it. I’ve done a call out for another better kept matress to dissect. I have a project on the go on my village, taking cardboard packaging and making leaf sculptures. Its a record breaking thing. My call out saw seven matress offers. Unwanted matresses are a big problem to more than just me. I once saw a whole yard of the spring bits at a local charity with hundreds of bales of the felt looking for some bright ideas. I’m keen not to end up like that so I’ve accepted one offer and let folks know that I’ll be back for their matress if this first leaf installation works and we can find new community places to create and house another installation.
I’ll post some pictures of the cardboard leaf installation and the real life living wall once they are complete so do check back in from time to time.