With Redwood Vortex outside, all three of these works made connections between movements of Fluids in the body and movement of water on the planet, with particular reference to the way sap flows up the Redwood trees, here situated right behind the gallery.

Fingerprints was comprised of 24 squared fingerprints donated and sponsored by friends of the galley. These were put on acetate and projected onto the walls then transcribed in two tones of red earth collected at Villa Montalvo. The whorls of a fingerprint reflect the way messages from touch are relayed to the brain through liquids in vortex movements.
A Giclee print in matching colours on artist’s paper was made of all the fingerprints in an addition of 35 (see works for sale)

Sequoia Whirlpool measuring 16’ x 8 x 10” was made from Redwood sticks on a bed of strong smelling Bay, merging to redwood needles at the edges. The pattern of the double vortex around the stone is taken from a Cardiac Twist; the pattern of tissue at the apex of the heart.

A 12-minute film of the project was made for Spark TV.

'Heart of Stone'  Aberystwyth art gallery and Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno, Wales. Stephen Lacey Gallery, London.

28 x 16x 12 made from welsh cut slate surround and three grades of slate - drain filling laid on edge in the pattern of a cross section through the apex of a human heart.

While on a flight to Japan in the autumn of 1996,  I came across a photograph in a magazine of a whirlpool. The image was taken from the book Sensitive Chaos, a study of flow forms in water and air by Theodore Schwenk. The book hinted at but predated chaos and complexity theories. Later, in the mountains of Shikoku Island I came across a small waterfall and was reminded of that whirlpool image, prompting me to make a work there and then, using small flattened river stones:  a whirlpool in stone (Stone Whirlpool).

Two years later I was collaborating with an architect on a design for a new Library  for March, Cambridgeshire. My brief was to design a garden around the building and because it bordered a river, I had an idea to make a wave garden. I turned again to Sensitive Chaos where I found the diagram of a cross section through the human heart. Here was the same whirlpool pattern, but in this case it was a double vortex.

The tissue of the heart is formed by  the spiralling flow of blood which is pulled in from the periphery and pushed out again. You can find these same patterns in the macrocosm, in weather systems on the planet and in the formation of galaxies. One of the aspects of complexity theory is that as systems become more complex, instead of degenerating into chaos, they tend to form coherent patterns. So although life systems are in a state of ever changing dynamic flux, the patterns of interconnected relationships are a constant, even though these may change and evolve. This is the pattern of life on earth.

In the end the garden was never built due to lack of finance, but the ideas generated laid the foundation for a number of other works. For example: Edge Of Chaos, where weather systems are linked to the movement of ocean currents, and in Lewes I have used this double vortex in Heart of Reed (see current projects).

Since the making of Stone Whirlpool in Japan,  (washed out the following year in a typhoon), I have wanted to remake this piece as a double vortex and in a more formal way, perhaps with echoes of the Zen stone gardens of Kyoto. To be able to make it in slate in the heart of the Welsh slate mining region has been a gift.

DESTROYING ANGEL*

Digitally printed mushroom spore prints and hand written words in white ink and pencil on canvas.

In three parts, each 170 x 170 cm 2002 - 2003 I have a continuing fascination with mushrooms and their spore prints. Up until this summer (2003) when I saw two Destroying Angels (Amanita virosa) growing in the forests of Ontario, I had never seen one. Because of this I had to use its colourful relative, Amanita muscaria for the central spore print.

If you cut off the stem of a mushroom and place it on a piece of paper overnight, covered with a bowl, it will drop its spores onto the paper in the pattern of the gills. The spore print here is digitally scanned and printed in three versions and altered by changing the contrast in Photoshop. The prints are glued and ironed onto the canvas which is built up in layers of gesso to form a surface for writing.

This radiating pattern of spore lines draws you in as a mandala would, but if you take a magnifying glass and follow one line from the centre out to the periphery then you will notice that each line branches and branches again like the limb of a tree. In making these densely written works this is in fact what I do: I follow the principle of the line that branches, only in densely hand-written words, in inks of different tones, with reed pens of different thickness, gathered from the banks of the river (everything flows here) and which have to be constantly sharpened and dried.

The written words are repeated and hypnotic, like a mantra. The words cease to have meaning, the concentration is on the sound. A word that has a good sound is easy to write. It flows on to the canvas. The concentration is on the sound, the shape, the size, the colour, the tone, the branches. The words are the mantra that shape the mandala.

The mushroom Amanita virosa - Destroying Angel - is pure white and utterly deadly if you are foolish enough to eat it. Symptoms of poisoning may take 24 hours to appear by which time it is too late to do anything. Severe vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal pains may last a day or more and are then followed by a period of recovery. The patient may think his ordeal is over and may be released from hospital only to die in agony within a few days from liver and kidney failure.

The name Destroying Angel has a strange pull and I have long wanted to make a work with this mushroom. With the events of September 11th and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it seemed like now was the right time. The mushroom is symbolically paradoxical: mushrooms are agents of decay, but by breaking down organic matter into soil they create the foundation of life on our planet. I like this duality; the image of a destroying angel brings to mind the fearsome sword-wielding Shinto deity, Fudo Myoo, who by cutting through the ego, liberates rather than destroys.

* This work is available for purchase. See works for sale.

De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, Sussex UK

A 20’ high fingerprint drawing in ochre earth and peat on the wall.

Five metre square digital prints, from 1 cm magic mushroom sporeprint on glass slides, fitted onto the five windows high on the gallery walls.

Plus the works ‘Edge Of Chaos’ and ‘Ceylon downstairs, while upstairs was the map work ‘Four Scottish Mountains’ and Suilven as a digital duratrans in a light box.

Foldout Catalogue with an interview with Kay Syrad available