The Building Carries On

This building thing does get tiring. The excitement is soon replaced by the realisation that no matter how good your builders are they always want to cut corners and you always have to keep on top of things to make sure it is going the way you want it to. Above the beam is finally in place. You can see the bricks that have been knocked out above the beam to fit the beam in. Here you see the gaps have been filled with whatever size block fits. It is bolted at all four corners. (Didn't anyone check the angles with a square?) The bottom of the beam drops into the floor. The beam in the floor is surrounded by blue plastic damp proofing and ready for cement. And here it is all cemented! Now we have the roof rafters framed and the 3 skylights outlined. Oh, it is going to be nice. I am really still excited when I look at these things. The skylights sit waiting. Tomorrow the roofers arrive to put the Spanish slate roof on. All was going well until someone connected the bathroom fan with the kitchen extractor fan. Uh, boys? I want to smell pooh when I cook as much as I want to smell curry when I pooh. (That's an original Michal quote if you think I got it from somewhere else. Ha!). I found myself up in the middle of the night brushing up on my ducting. Then I just called my dad to ask him. They are starting to box in the beam and pipe work too. The panel with all the piping will have a removable panel so that we can access it when we redo the upstairs bathroom. Drainage pipes run along the outside of the brick wall and then down the large grey sewage exterior that you can see above. (notice the kitchen and bathroom hoses have been separated now) And because I like the builders and do really think they are good (and maybe even softies at heart), here is a picture of the two cement window sills that they got to correct my mistake on the window order.

Sash Windows, French Doors, and Steel: Sorted!

Today was such a crazy day with different trades coming that I couldn't go into the studio. The windows installers tiptoed around the builder's all day in order to install our French doors and triple sash kitchen window. The builders were busy installing the steel box frame and tiptoeing around the window installers, careful not to damage the windows. I was following the builder around asking him constant questions in order to clarify what I wanted, what he was doing, and at what point to call in the other trades. One mistake I made along the line was in ordering the above window. The window company asked me if they were to include seals or not. I had no idea. I asked the builder who didn't know what I was talking about. I went back to the window company and said I didn't know...but that the builders just gave me the dimensions of the opening and this is what they were. And this is the resulting mistake. Note the bottom of the window. No SILLS! In the British accent I obviously can't tell if someone is saying "seal" or "sill". It never occurred to me to think "sill" because I have never installed windows before. I guess the window company just decided on no sills on the window on my behalf. This is the sill that comes with the window if you don't have one on the house. These are the concrete sills that are original and previously built in. We ended up with no sills on anything. So what happens now? Well, we either get new windows or have the bricklayer painstakingly chip out a layer of bricks and put in a concrete sill. A costly mistake. The builders told me if ever I was unsure again to call them any time to ask a question. "It is better to take a bit more time and make sure to do it right the first time," they told me. Yeah, but I was sure they said "seal". And here is the box frame steel in white that was finished being installed today. It goes down both side walls through the floor and above to hold up the back brick wall. A view of the other side of the steel. All in all, the results are looking pretty good. To recap, this is how it started... And this is where we are at so far. This next week going in is a natural black slate roof with 3 skylights that will slant up to under the upper windows. It should look beautiful! Stay tuned...

Preparations for the Steel

The back wall is supported and will be winched up a bit for the new steel box frame to be put in. The supports hold up the back brick wall. You can see the supports jutting through the holes that were made in the bricks. More of the trench has been dug for the bottom beam to sit in. Still no roof (but we received a bill for its completion for this Friday. Hmmm. Not sure that is going to happen by then). Things have suddenly slowed down a bit since the wall was completed. No one is showing up at 7:30am any more. Hmmm.

The Back Wall is Finished

The back brick wall has slowly been emerging over the last two weeks. Above you can see where the window will go. The lintels are brought in to hold the brick up above the door and window. From the interior of the house it looks like it is going to be a nice space. Above the doors and window is built a red layer of "soldiers" (as they stand up right). These match the original look in the windows above. The interior is beginning to not feel so open. This is as high as the back wall will go before the roof is added. These are the steels that have been brought in. There are four steels that will be bolted together to create a frame. The frame will be placed in the side walls, in the floor (you can see the trench being jackhammered out above) and across the ceiling to hold up the back wall of the house. The steel will allow the middle white post you see above to be removed. Another back view of the finished wall from inside. And from the upstairs window.

Exhibition: War and the Body

I was invited to include 3 of my Liberia portraits from The Human Rights Series in an exhibition called War and the Body in London. The exhibition explores the intertwining of war and the body through drawing, painting, photography, and installation work. Click here for the exhibition website. During the opening we (the artists) gave a brief talk and introduction about ourselves, our work and how it relates to the theme of the show before being part of a discussion forum on the topic of the exhibition. The artists were quite a diverse and an international crew. At least half of the artists were war veterans. One from Israel who served his duty in Palestine, One from the US who spent a year in Afghanistan, two from the UK. Others were from war countries (an Iraqi citizen) while others had gone into war zones (like myself) and documented. Two artists had photographed and filmed the catastrophic effects of cluster bombs on civilians in war zones. It became evident at one point, even before one of the members of the audience pointed it out, that not a single artist seemed to have made their particular art for a gallery or commercial audience. It was often as a means of therapy (most often for the war vets) or a means of searching for meaning in the chaos of war for the victims or artists themselves (as in my case). The war vets talked about how no one could really understand what they had gone through apart from another war vet. I spoke to two of the artists who had been soldiers after and each had expressed a complete inability to understand why the rest of us had gone into a war zone to document on our own accord. They thought that was a far greater thing. I couldn't get my head around them telling me that. These are my three pieces hanging in exhibition. Nigel couldn't make it because he is currently in Togo volunteering again on the Mercy Ship. Next year the ship sails to Sierra Leone and it would be great to be there and do another art project. Somehow being part of this show boosted me out of the slump of "what is art for" that I get caught in. It was so nice that not a single artist was aiming at furthering their career when they made the work, but just trying to make sense out of the chaos and tragedy of war.