Author: Kay McCrann

June 2022: iPhone alongside drawing of human-grasshopper encounter

Whilst the dining room was being re-plastered, a grasshopper was ’rescued’ from the dining room wall slightly covered in plaster dust, and relocated to a plant in the garden. This meeting of human and grasshopper marked a shared journey from house to plant, creating an invisible line across the garden, marking the traces of our two bodies together, with me carrying the grasshopper as passenger on one hand and the iphone in the other. This line of walking can be overlain by smaller individual lines – careful movements steps from the grasshoppers legs as it rotates on my hand and circular lines from the antennae, which thrash around to sense the changes in environment. There is a feeling of satisfaction and happiness from me as the grasshopper successfully transitions to the plant, which mitigates the guilty feelings on discovering the grasshopper covered in plaster dust. Together these human feelings, movements and bodies, within a domestic setting, against the backdrop of radio music, birdsong, wind and human breath, form an alongside drawing, using the iphone camera as the drawing material.

April 2022: iPhone alongside drawing of human-beetle encounter

Using an iphone as a drawing tool, this video drawing simultaneously captures the unseen traces of the beetle which landed on my skin, as well as both my hands in space: one hand holds my phone, the other twists and turns creating a landscape which the beetle navigates and explores, pausing to eat the dead skin around my nail. Within an everyday domestic setting, with sounds of children playing at a nearby playpark, a multispecies encounter begins, creating overlapping invisible threads emerging and converging within time and space, creating a drawing.