I’ve just found out about a great “art” project in the South east – Emsworth, Chichester harbour to be precise – that started today, The Boat Project. The project involves creating a 30 ft sailing boat out of bits of wood donated by the public. Each bit of wood has to have a story, so the finished product will be a “boat of stories”. Truly a boat of the people.
The project is a collaboration between artists Gregg Whelan and Gary Winters of Lone Twin, acclaimed sailor and boat builder Mark Covell, and international boat designer Simon Rogers. I was very excited to learn about it as I like any wood, boat, sea, art connection.
There’s a wood donation day in Brighton on 8th May and I thought I’d make a humble donation in the form of a piece of drift wood that I found when doing turtle monitoring for Archelon in 2004. Each day I made a knotch in the wood to count off the days til I would leave – a bit like Robinson Crusoe! I enjoyed the monitoring but was still keen to get home! Perhaps they’ll accept it, perhaps they won’t, I’ll see in May!
Sounds like a great project Alexi. Your piece of wood has a wonderful eco/environmental story attached to it. I am sure it will be accepted. I have heard of another great art project idea from America where visual art diaries were given out free to people and they had 6 months to fill them. Then all the diaries were displayed at an exhibition – some were filled with illustrations, some turned into stories, some were turned into paper sculptures, even 3D when you opened the page something would pop up or stand up, some had fold out pages where a small page in the diary had other pages added to it and it folded out into a really big page with artwork on it, some diaries had things stuck into it. It was quite amazing how the humble little book of blank pages was turned into so many amazing pieces of art/history. I love the whole concept of community art………..it really brings people together.
Won’t it be great to see this boat project when it is finished !