The Mohs hardness test in operation
Perhaps all a drawing really consists of are the traces left after one thing has touched another. I like this definition as it suggests a situation whereby a basic contact between things is the most important issue. The image above is of someone conducting a Mohs hardness test, if you check out how to do the test this is what it states; "...place the unknown specimen on a table top and firmly hold it in place with one hand. Then place a point of the reference specimen against a flat, unmarked surface of the unknown specimen. Press the reference specimen firmly against the unknown, and deliberately drag it across the flat surface while pressing firmly." If the reference specimen leaves a mark the unknown specimen is harder than the reference specimen. The drawing above tells a basic story about many of the drawings we come across, they are simply the result of a softer material coming into contact with a harder one. For instance, pencil on paper, or silverpoint on a gesso ground. We could however open out this concept and think about other types of contact, such as when we get a touch of the sun. If I leave a plank of wood out in a field, the area below it looses contact with the sun's rays and when I move the plank what is left is a drawing. A cat scratches a tree to make sure its claws don't grow too long, in doing so, it leaves a drawing. A dog runs through a muddy patch and its paw prints leave a long drawing. I take a bite out of an apple and leave a drawing of my teeth behind. Waves beat relentlessly upon the coast and draw it into new shapes, wind touches soft rock and shapes it into standing forms. These traces are not permanent, they are part of a continuous series of events, they can be seen as indications of what has happened. We can read or imagine events from traces and work out what might have happened to cause them. In this way time runs forwards and backwards, some traces are like fossils from the distant past and others are occurring now. As I type these words it is snowing outside, as the snow is falling it is gradually whiting out the landscape outside my window, working like an eraser, it is leaving the sharp dark lines of leafless trees, as dividing lines cutting through an image that gets softer and softer as more and more snow falls and covers the world beneath it. Soon the rains will come and wash the snow away, each change in conditions leaves its own traces and I read them, but in their own ways the rest of the world is reading them. The frozen ground and the creatures within it, the trees taking the strain of collected snow on their branches, slate roofs feeling the sliding of snow weight as it tests the strength of old wooden gutters, car tyres as they spin too fast and look for traction. There is constant change going on, as one surface meets another a dialogue of exchange takes place. One surface is softer or more pliant than another; the snow takes the shape of the postman's boot as he walks to the door to deliver today's letters. I notice as he goes back along the same path he came, that he puts his feet back into the impressions he left on his way here. What does this tell us about him? It is a story not unlike the channeling of water as the snow begins to melt, a channeling that often goes the same way, but not always. During the year workmen have dug up the pavement and replaced the old stone slabs, I noticed that water doesn't pool there anymore, the worn indentations of sandstone have disappeared, the tiny pools of water that would collect and freeze will no longer be there to slide under my shoes this year, but will this new surface be even more slippery? Its smooth covering of snow suggests that this might be the case. I will find out as soon as I walk out and tread my way through the snow, my own traces will also tell a story for others as I make my way, the long slip marks of feet sliding will perhaps soon be evident. All these things are observed as traces that can be seen as having a potential impact on the changing conditions that I survive within. The world is an infinite drawing that I and everything else, has learnt to read. Sometimes it is hard to see the traces because they are hidden behind a series of complex events or operations, sometimes the traces are also there for such a short period of time that they lie outside of our perceptual experience, but something will have experienced them. As the snow still falls I am typing about the experience of seeing it. Each letter as it appears on the screen is a trace of the event of my finger pressing a key. The electronic pulse that I trigger in pressing that key is invisible to me but it is real enough, real enough to make the letter appear on my computer screen, real enough for the letter at some future date to be printed in ink on paper. The coding that directs the shaping of each individual letter form and the how it is placed in line with all the other letter forms I have decided upon, is also invisible to me, but I am aware of its existence and the fact that it will be broken down into binary bits, on or off signals, that are read by the computer. As I look again at the screen I'm reminded of other elements that are also deeply involved in leaving traces, one's a lot harder to observe but which are nevertheless shaping the world I live in. For instance nitrogen trifluoride has probably been used in the construction of the liquid crystal display screen I'm looking at. As a chemical it is a very powerful greenhouse gas and when I am done with this computer I will have some sort of responsibility for the gas trapped inside it. My last post stated that I often think of the old idea of the Wyrd and the entangled thread of life; these material traces are within a wider view not separate. As I touch a thread that weaves its way through to me, a thread that I know little about but which I begin to sense is having an effect on things, I also become more and more aware of myself as simply another material conglomerate, that also touches and leaves traces.
The snow has triggered a response in me and at the same time in other animate and inanimate things, we are all woven into a complex pattern and perhaps what is most important is that this pattern is a wonderful one. The wonder helps me to have a better acceptance of things touching and shaping and causing change and hopefully to some extent also enables me to let go and release control of things I can't really control anyway. I can't control the snow, but I can experience it. As I step outside snowflakes fall on my dark coat, I look at them and even as they wet down, I have a glimpse of their structure, my eyes are just about good enough to see the quickly disappearing crystalline shape, a structure that is the result of each snowflake taking a totally unique path down to where I am. It will have experienced changes in moisture and temperature, changes in air pressure and wind speed, all working together to make a unique hexagonal form from its molecules of water. In the grander scale of things, I am very like that snowflake, my shape formed by all the random events I have experienced, my pattern established by complex chemistry, my final form shaped by various contacts with the other things that exist within the same spacetime frame as myself. All this too is drawing.
Earlier posts that also reflect on some of these issues:
Drawing maps (More thoughts on animal markings as boundary markers)
The imprint and the trace
How working with pencil and an eraser can be seen as an exploration of physical traces
Silverpoint drawing
Paper, mobile screens and fingertips
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