                         Above left: Stone drawing detail. Natural stones of Porth Ysgo. Above right: Acrobatic documentation process. Dan and Matt below. Photographer Pete on top, held by friend from the beach. Beneath: Finished stone drawing, Porth Ysgo. The sub-title of this post probably should be “Hey Kids! Don’t try this at home”. Photographing the stone drawing really was as precarious as it looks, but sometimes you just have it to do… It made me realise that it’s worth thinking about pre-selecting a good spot from which to record the work ‐ maybe a handy rock. Big news is: the launch of WORLD BEACH PROJECT is imminent!! Sometimes (well mostly, I find) things take a little longer than you expect, but this is going to be worth waiting for. Web wizzes Toby and Mark have done amazing things with the site. We are to have a fabulous world map, which you can fly around and zoom right in to any beach, anywhere. You’ll be able to plant your marker in an exact spot to upload images, and browse through the continents to see who’s been doing what, where. I am really excited about this. It’s eighteen months since that first speck of a thought planted itself in my mind. Normally, as an artist, whether a project works or not, is up to you. The scary thing here is that success/failure is out of my control. Once the project is launched it takes on its own momentum ‐ it becomes itself. When a whole bunch of us made the stone drawing above, the evening tide was soft and slow. It gently pushed sand over one corner and that’s how we left it. We hadn’t planned to return, but later the following afternoon, we found ourselves scampering the 20mins down past the old mine workings back to the beach. And we found this. 
               Above: 2nd stone drawing, Porth Ysgo, made by person unknown. Someone inspired by the remnants of ours. There are places where this happens a lot. Neist Point in NW Skye in Scotland, where the rock forms natural ink black building bricks, is a changing landscape of sculpture and anonymous artistry. It bears witness to direct human responses to the land ‐ a kind of creative chain letter. This is exciting. So please ‘DO DO THIS AT HOME ‐ well, on the beach. Go to World Beach Project to read how it works. Click on the thumbnails below for larger versions. 
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