This practice-led research investigates how an expanded drawing practice explores the intimate collaborative relationship progressively formed with two suburban vegetable gardens and the more-than-human vitalities progressively encountered. Parallel drawing and gardening processes have formed cyclical drawing sites, working simultaneously between labour-intensive graphite drawing work and garden compost drawings on the floor and calico substrates.
An ecological site-responsive approach has led to engagement with the garden as a materially active site. Developing homemade compost and soil as a regenerative drawing medium recycled throughout the project. This provided the potential to investigate the crucial acts of tending to often unseen labour and care, leading me to understand compost and garden soil as a complex accumulation of vitalities. This research fosters the ecological engagements occurring in/with soil and how these engagements provide a relational understanding of the fluctuating nature of my vegetable garden as an everyday environment and as a generator for drawing.
