its a strange scene .. 

dilapidation and urban blight reminiscent of the rust belt or ex- coal-mining towns in the Appalachians 

spooky - a perfect place to dwell in the gap between growth and decline… the creative forces of life’s perennial becoming and the dissipative forces of entropy and decay..  

what remained of the high street after the mines closed and the forestry industry collapsed was wiped out by the arrival of out-of-town supermarkets, 

drive-in restaurants and massive pinball parlours.. distending the city limits and leaving a haunted city centre -  silent but for the electronic chirping of the redundant green men  

flat-lines of shuttered storefronts echo 

redlines of iron 

encrusted corrugated steel .  

slack telegraph strings of ravens 

crowd carpark perimeters like wire-black barbs

convenience stores hold corners down, dealers 

carrying coffee and sugar-wrapped polystyrene and plastic promises

hollow “doughnut effects”

leave high-street houses vacant and empty 

shop window displays long gone and forlorn 

pot-plants, long dead 

shaddows on dirty glass reflect 

the gang  gathering in kerbside communities unnamed, untamed 

unashamed of their vibrant greens, triumphantly

colonising every crack

tarmac, like 

branching black lightning 

trace past traumas, 

concrete, like old skin

cracks and stretches 

erupting as spiky pioneers press-on while grasses suture the wounds

vines wend and squat cold homes 

pulling curtains through window cracks and torn screen doors.. 

its an uncanny world where the outside is becoming the inside and the inside becoming the outside … 

abandoned coal mines and lumber yards are now unofficial nature reserves while the massive ceder forrests that surround the city on all sides are, on closer inspection vast ecologically barren industrial landscapes

plantation cedar is no longer competitive in a global market so the trees have become “stranded assets” .. though small pockets of the original species mix remain - 

maples and copper beech hiding out in the cracks  and slopes - and with the autumn chill they are beginning to turn gold and red against the dark evergreen of the ceders…  functionally extinct,  ghosts of the forests former glory.. 

so in an attempt at poetic representation i’ve been using a traditional wood-bending process with a the help of local canoe maker to make a large cedar loop which i will paint with a traditional paint made from fermented green persimmon fruit called kaki-Shibu which darkens over time.