11.01.22

The fire is too large for a test this early in the drawing process. Lacking a strong updraft, smoke pours from every unattended opening. An exhaust pipe that went unnoticed inside a kitchen cupboard, poorly blocked vents in the bedrooms upstairs – all of these unsealed orifices begin coughing up thick, gray clouds of smoke.


Testing the furnace in the first semester.

Fumes curl out of each joint in the make-shift ductwork we concocted last week but failed to tape at the seams. The heat begins to thaw the joists and shiplap, and water drips onto the floor like rain. Frost recedes up the stairway, melting away from the peeling paint and fir door whose inlaid panel has buckled and bulged after years of seasonal shifts in temperature.

The basement is hazy and choking, as though the house is fighting us off, pushing back against actions that will only incur increasing levels of decay. We open windows and run outside for fresh air. Adrenaline mixes with fear - of smoke inhalation, of the house burning down before we've finished, of the neighbours calling the fire department – and we share a cup of tea in the truck to calm our nerves.

The room we want to smoke is the furthest from the furnace, so we’re only hoping for small evidence of an imprinting effect. By the end of the day, the room is full of smoke but the rest of the house is still foggy. It’s hard to say if the paper laid out on the floor will carry any memory of the effort that went in to staining it.

11.01.23

We check the room as soon as we arrive. The smoke has had almost no impact on the paper. We debate whether it's better to move forward and assume the technique will succeed in other rooms, or devote another day to something that may prove to be ineffective.

In the end, we decide to push forward and see the process through to an end. Flipping the 3’ wide strips of building paper over, we staple them to the ceiling so the smoke has full access as it exhausts through the camera obscura openings.

While Jordy breaks down roof boards outside, I work in the basement feeding newspaper and small chips into the fire. The wood is damp and slow to catch, but once it takes the fire grows so hot that flames begin licking at the edges of the furnace. Dry roof boards broken down into kindling almost explode on contact with the coals. They burn down so quickly that the fire needs constant attention, but the intensity of the heat prevents me from opening the top door and I have to push boards in from the lower opening.

After unblocking an improperly closed vent in the laundry room, the updraft is strong and constant. Standing on the snow-packed lawn staring up at the roof, we watch smoke drift from the apertures and soffit vent in a steady stream against the cloudy sky.

11.01.24

During the night, condensation that built up while the fire smoldered in the furnace freezes in black rivulets on the drywall. The frost pattern in the window on the opposite wall echoes the pattern of heat descending into cold.





Beneath the tape, the original colour of the paper is noticeably lighter than the surfaces exposed to air. On the side that rested against the ceiling, the drawing has transferred through as a darker, smokier double.


Peeling tape off of the smoke drawing.

Standing inside a room that has come undone week by week, we listen to the wind rip through gaps invisible to the eye, conjuring something that sounds like a strange bird or large insect caught between two panes of glass. Voices are emerging in the house that were not there two weeks ago, that were trapped in the air space between strapping and shiplap, shiplap and framing.

The drawings are still damp, so we roll them into large paper bags and bring them back to the city in order to lay them out and determine an appropriate hanging method.