Making borscht

Onion, leek, celery, carrot - and of course beetroot. The "perfect" recipe - of which this is a variation - is here. A wonderful soup - we have it with full-fat greek-style yogurt, rather than sour cream.

Yet more sewing kits

Another made with "tape  measure" outer fabric; in the other one, fabric from Australia is used to bind the pockets as well as on the outside, and it closes with a bead from Kenya.

From magazines

Letting go of magazines - or rather, not letting go - is one of my besetting sins. This morning, as it's not raining, I'm putting a mere four on the front wall, with a "please take" sign (it's a start!). First I flipped through them and found one item to "save" from each.

Cellular structure of wood - the kind of thing I loved drawing in high-school biology

David Nash's cutting and shaping of wood is astonishing

There's something about this charred forest in Chile that grabs me

And some facts about coffee, from an article about the threat to coffee production - and especially to wild trees - brought by climate change:

"...about 100 million people around the world depend on coffee for their livelihoods. Approximately 70 countries produce coffee, from the Americas to Australasia and the Pacific. It seems hard to believe, but coffee is the second most traded commodity after oil, and the world's most important agricultural commodity. In 2009, when some 93.4 million (60kg) bags were shipped,  coffee accounted for xports worth an estimaged US$15.4 billion." (Kew magazine, spring 2013)

What do the numbers mean?

Do you keep an eye on your stats in Blogger?

How does this, from the Posts page (views of separate posts) -

The left column is Comments and the middle column is referred to as "View count"

relate to this, from the Overview page (pageviews during the past month)? -

Undoubtedly the pageviews, which are much higher than the number of views of posts, as far as I can see, include bots and spammers and suchlike - what can we believe about traffic to a site?

Perhaps the View Count is people who go directly to a particular post, rather than landing on the blog itself and being able to scroll down to see many posts?

I haven't been able to find clarification - have been using the wrong search terms, no doubt!

Art I like - "Shell"

"Shell" was made for Pallant House in 2007 by Susie MacMurray, and consists of mussel shells lined with, or perhaps it's more accurate to say emitting, red velvet. It was shown on the landing walls of the grand stair, and I wish I could have seen it then -

image from here

What remains is a small panel inside a cupboard, the door half open, the inside gloomy - and beside it, the poem written by Ros Barber -

Getting out

After an excursion to Cambridge earlier this week to visit the anthropology museum with its many wonderful objects, yesterday's trip was to Chichester. By train of course - past Arundel with its castle -

and once in town, going first to Pallant House for the exhibitions by Kitaj (finishes 16 June) -

The captions were really helpful - so much going on in (and behind) the paintings

and Barbara Hepworth (the hospital drawings) -

Drawn onto panels covered with a sort of gesso - not just lines added, but surface scraped away

Many interesting works in the main collection, including Hearthstone by Andy Goldsworthy -

The weathering on the chalk boulder  was scraped away with a flint

In a cupboard, the mussel shells and velvet, remnants of Susie MacMurray's 2007 installation "Shell" -

After a nice lunch in the restaurant - not in the courtyard alas, because of the intermittent showers - 

a walk through the charming streets to the cathedral -

Daisies furled and unfurled line the path

Inside the north tower

a look round, and home again ... on the slow train.

Poetry Thursday - One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

"One Art" - a "tree-assisted readymade" by Anya Gallaccio (read about it here)

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. 

Elizabeth Bishop 

(via www.poetryfoundation.org. If you're thinking you've read this poem on this blog already, you're right (and I envy your astute memory!) - this is one of my favourite poems, and it's my birthday, so please indulge me in the repetition.)

Elizabeth Bishop published only 101 poems during her lifetime. "Her verse is marked by precise descriptions of the physical world and an air of poetic serenity, but her underlying themes include the struggle to find a sense of belonging, and the human experiences of grief and longing. ... Bishop worked as a painter as well as a poet, and her verse, like visual art, is known for its ability to capture significant scenes. Though she was independently wealthy and thus enjoyed a life of some privilege, much of her poetry celebrates working-class settings."  

Drawing class, week 4 - visual rhythm

My view of this week's still life.  Which area to choose?
(Keep your eye on the duck...)

The demo was done on my piece of paper - maybe
because last week I didn't have any rubbed out marks?
Also I rubbed out the first area I chose

After check of relationships with the help of the handle of the paintbrush,
the objects at top  right moved further right, which also
made for a better visual rhythm

A bit of doodling in an "empty" part of the paper
while waiting to move on to the next step

More "looking" at an object outside "my" area
(then rubbed out, of course)

The demo of the next step - adding ink washes to the
darkest areas

After four or five washes, each gradually darker, the drawing
achieves a different quality

Although the effort isn't visible in the drawing - despite all the scrubbed-out lines! - I worked hard at getting objects in the right relation to each other. It's the angles of things that defeat me; ah well, practice, practice, practice - it's all in the looking, especially in the looking again.

Two new Binders Keepers

Started some time ago, actually, and now finally finished.

More sewing kits - and a note on pricing

The tape-measure fabric seems totally appropriate!

Trying out the pieced-cover idea used in the Binders Keepers

Pricing is always a problem, isn't it - not too high or no-one will buy, not too low either - the low "perceived value" will make people not want it either, it's just not desirable if it's not "worth something". So, you need some good marketing talk to make the item desirable and worth buying. As for affordable, people will convince themselves they can afford something if they want it badly enough ... they will convince themselves they "need" it. 

The Binders Keepers sold at the book fair for £15, and at the open studio they and the sewing kits will be the same price. If/when I do the Etsy thing, it will be £20, to take into account the extra costs.

Is this an adequate pay-per-hour return? If I could get quicker at selecting fabrics, it would be! The sewing part goes very quickly now that I've had some practice. It's the fabric selection - the "creative" part - that takes the time, especially as it includes so many fabrics, some of which are scarp-sized, from my stash. 

But I don't look on making these small items as "work" in the drudgery sense - it give me a chance to catch up with radio and tv via the bbc iplayer, in the background, without feeling I'm totally wasting time. Also they are a project and even perhaps an example of structured procrastination - something to do while my subconscious is incubating the inclination to get on with a Proper Art Project.

All this may ignore the important issues of market value, income maximization, recognition of the value of craft-directed labour, and probably one or two other things I'm ignorant of.

As we were

Sorting things out for the Turn The Page book fair - now some weeks ago! - made me realise I'd not produced any books since "The Seeing I" (aka Three Generations), quite a few months ago. Which got me back to thinking about this matter of "who was that person in the photograph" - especially as some old family photos serendipitously surfaced, some of them evocatively faded -

Brother Steve in his first self-built boat

My first car (a photo that survived the house fire - only just)

Brother and me with cousin Martin, in the house that burned down a decade or so later

The Oma and Opa of the cousins

Their son Paul (later the father of Martin), leaving Gersfeld for Canada - whereby hangs a tale... 

Art I like - Guiseppi Capogrossi

A chunky new book in the library introduced me to Capagrossi (1900-1972). He studied law before turning to painting, and went to Paris in 1927, the first of several trips there. His postwar "renewal of language" is an excursion into abstract painting - paintings mostly entitled "Surface", with a numeral added.

The Guggenheim had a major retrospective of his work in 2012 to "explore Capogrossi’s unique contribution to 20th-century art, tracing the evolution of his signature abstract style of grandiose orchestrations of mark and color, and its numerous variations over the subsequent decades. With his endlessly inventive deployment of his fork-like symbol, Capogrossi became synonymous with the Italian boom of the 50s and 60s, a period of optimism and rapid economic expansion."

About that distinctive symbol: "Capogrossi first exhibited works in his fully realized abstract idiom at the Galleria del Secolo in Rome in 1950. Two paintings from that show, Surface 021 (1949) and Surface 678 (Carthage, 1950), marked the emergence of the glyph which became essential to his style: a serrated arc, sometimes assembled in sequences and series, sometimes painted with a single dominant color. The originality of this formal syntax earned Capogrossi membership in the brief but impassioned Gruppo Origine, which promoted his glyphs as a primordial language that stood in contrast to the decorative tendency of abstraction. "

"Grandiose orchestrations of mark and colour" - indeed. See more here and here.

Pigeons keep away!

In the back garden (soon the grapevine will cover it)

In Norwich (look closely at the swan)

And then there's this, seen from the windows of City Lit

man and hawk

Going camping?

Inviting and ... cosy

It even has a wee kitchen (spider plant optional)

Art I like - Dorothy Napangardi

One of the most memorable moments of my visit to Australia (or rather, Melbourne and vicinity) was seeing paintings by Dorothy Napangardi in the art gallery. Seeing them in a book or on screen is simply not the same - you have to stand beside them and let them dwarf you - they are huge!

I was thrilled to find a book about her work to bring home with me, and today I'm thrilled to find this article. This image is from that article -

"Mina Mina" 2006

Be aware that the painting measures 168cm x 244cm. 

"Napangardi is noted for visually spectacular canvases of Karntakurlangu Jukurrpa, which focus on a number of Women's Dreamings passed down to her from sisters on her fathers side. They are paintings informed by her ancestral relationship to the land and her conceptual geographic view of its most prominent ceremonial sites," says the article at the start ... and at the end, emphasises that these works " are, of course, conceptual views of Napangardi's country and to see them outside of this context would be to lose an important cultural dimension."

And now, quotes within a quote: "According to European art historian Bernice Murphy, this work expresses a form of cultural coexistence. 'It shows both the depth of its cultural background (emerging from a continuing observance of spiritual connections to the artist's own land), and a powerful demonstration of capacities to express those connections in new ways. It extends tradition itself through experimentation and reaches out into the broad domain of visual language in abstract painting; a rich seam of continuing cultural production in the wider world of art.'
"From an indigenous perspective the work reflected a more experiential approach. Valerie Martin Napaljarri, Chairperson of Desart in Alice Springs, remarked: 'To me, Dorothy's work is like nganayi, like Yapa, running through the country, traversing their tracks on journeys over the land. That's what it reminds me of - Yapa crossing one another's pathways as they go travelling.' As Ms Nicholls points out, part of the appeal of Napangardi's work is that it can be appreciated on multiple levels."

The next painting isn't in my book - one of the "aerial views" of surface patterning on the cracked beds of dry salt lakes -

Dorothy Napangardi was introduced to painting in 1987 and started exhibiting in 1991, with naturalistic paintings that show the undulating movement that has become a hallmark of her style. She established her reputation with the "Digging Stick Dreaming" series; when she received custodial rights to paint Mina Mina, her style lost the figurative elements, exploring the visual dynamics of multiple, overlaid grids.

She has been making prints since 2001, often with master American printmakers, for example with Crown Point Press in San Francisco.

Watch her painting here -