Creative & dance journal – By Andrew Wood

Sea ice and mass flow

I travelled from Stockholm to Helsinki on February 5 across the Baltic sea by ship to the Skiing on Skin 2026 dance festival. This year is much colder than last year, and the sea ice is more extensive. This mass flow of ice on sea, makes me think of movement and dance. Here’s photographs and the beginning of ideas for dance.

Poster! ‘Integrate Your Practice’ for ECSA 2026 conference, Oulu, Finland

This poster for the European Citizen Science Association conference in Oulu, Finland (3-6 March) shows how the co-created art practice (‘Residuals’ series) was integrated with the science practice of co-created crop trials – both of which used charcoal/biochar. The A1 poster included an ontology of human and more-than-human-expression. See the poster (PDF 3 MBytes).

Situating an Integrated Research Practice: charcoal and expression as a mediating material and practice

I came across the idea of more-than-human-expression. To aid my understanding, I draw this diagram which seeks to reconcile the Residuals art series (drawing with charcoal) and crop trials of potato plants and charcoal (wood biochar) which I produced. The unifying concept of expression in human and non-human actors (potato plants) through charcoal, shows the material, practice and conceptual integration in an ontology.

Feeling and Sensation Diptychs Studley Woods

In December 2025, I photographed a set of trees at Studley Woods near Oxford – which is actually a copse. These trees are set beside a ditch in a hedgerow, creating a boundary. They are various ages but some are older – perhaps being repeatedly coppiced. Coppice – often Hazel, might be cut and harvested after 14 years, and the stump allowed to regrow, to be repeatedly harvested again. One use of coppiced wood is to make charcoal – biochar from wood.

Colourfields Gallery 3

The photographic art presented here is part of the Colourfields series, made from September to December 2025.

Colourfields Gallery 2

The photographic art presented here is part of the Colourfields series, made from September to December 2025.

Colourfields Gallery 1

The photographic art presented here is part of the Colourfields series, made from September to December 2025.

Colourfields

Colourfields is a series of photographic artworks which create expanses of colour, light and dark: usurping the conventional photographic notions of foreground and background such that there is only surface. Or simply put ‘abstract photography’.

Crop trials with biochar and the residuals art series

The residuals series of art works/performances used biochar granules that were re-purposed as artists charcoal for drawing. The series ran parallel to crop trials of potatoes with biochar – which acts as a plant fertiliser. The abstract for a scientific paper about these trials in 2024 is presented here which was developed with my collaborator Karl Wallendszus in 2025.

Suspending Residuals #7

Residuals #7 was the longest of the Residuals series: an 8 metre long charcoal drawing which was intended to be suspended upside down so that you could move underneath it and experience the sensation of ‘flying over its surface’. In spring and summer 2025, Theo Hopkins – who is a designer and wood craftsman, worked with me in designing a wooden hanging frame to suspend the Residuals #7 drawing.