Out the window

Daytimes, as I sit at my table, there's life on the street - pushchairs aplenty, and a variety of dogs being taken to and from the park -

 At night, a glimpse of nearby lives in lit windows; and to hand, that window-on-the-world, the computer  -

Poetry Thursday - Bees, by Carol Ann Duffy

Bees

Here are my bees,

brazen, blurs on paper,

besotted; buzzwords, dancing

their flawless, airy maps.

Been deep, my poet bees,

in the parts of flowers,

in daffodil, thistle, rose, even

the golden lotus; so glide,

gilded, glad, golden, thus –

wise – and know of us:

how your scent pervades

my shadowed, busy heart,

and honey is art.

Carol Ann Duffy (via)

This is the first poem in the 2011 book "The Bees". "Weaving through the book is its presiding spirit, the bee, symbolizing what we have left of grace in the world and what is most precious for us to protect.Winner of the 2011 Costa Poetry Award."

The illustration is from the blog of Jasna Guy, who has been working with beeswax and stamping.

Pooch in a pouch

Yes it's a real, live dog ... seen on the Victoria Line. Thanks to Tom Cooter for the photo of the "mama" and the "little man".

Drawing Tuesday - World Ikat Textiles

One of the 200+ items from all over the world

The exhibition of ikat textiles is at the Brunei Gallery until 25 June. I missed the session but we're due to revisit in June.

Jo's creatures from a divination manual ...

... and her kimonos and kaftans

Janet B's imono...

... and her study of Michelle drawing

Pages from Michelle's sketchbook

Three by Joyce - 

Sue's standing Buddha

Janet 's ikat patterning

My quick attempts, at home, with a biro -

Newspaper reader ... and bluebell bouquet

Thoughts on "home"

My drawing project on the theme of Home might start with identifying significant objects in my home, and might include writing about them. Some of the research might involve delving into my memories of childhood home that included favourite places and objects.

Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space might be useful. Here are a couple of quotes:

“We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images. Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.” 
― Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

“I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” 
― Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Is home where you hang your coat?

To a child, home signals safety and security ... it is a whole world. At any age, home can be a place for repose of the soul.

Is where you hang your bathrobe "home"?

You have the key to the door, the key that lets you in and shuts others out. In combination with the (planned) space beyond the door, the key defines the place that is home.

Memories live in the objects within the home - or do they? Would a photograph, rather than the actual object, hold that same memory?

Often photographs of home include the environment only as incidental to what is happening within it -  celebrations, usually.

A meal at home

Before and after photos show home improvements. When does a home need improving?

A well-stocked pantry and wine cellar make for home security

Bluebell time

"The Cabin" on Rosslyn Hill is a sort of cabbies' pit-stop for tea, frequented by van-drivers working in the building trades, or at least it was as we passed by. Returning later in the day I preferred the view from the rear -

At the corner of the patch of grass (it's not quite a bluebell wood...) you get the view of the church and the trees coming into leaf - 

A tiny glimpse of the countryside in the middle of the city.

Spring rain

On the way to Wembley in a race against time, 4.20 pm, traffic at a standstill on a Friday afternoon ... because it's raining, of course!

Somewhere in Willesden, on the return journey, mission accomplished; a salvage yard, worth a closer look sometime.

In Greenwich

Up the hill, past the church, at the corner of Stockwell St and Nevada St

is a cafe / restaurant called Al Pancino, which has a secluded little garden, or rather, courtyard -

and does yummy salads

Do the maths and buy it anyway

... if you want just the one, not "any 2".

Poetry Thursday - "let me not to the marriage of true minds" by William Shakespeare

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, 
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle's compass come; 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

(via)

Reader, I married him ... at home, and at last

(Almost) wordless Wednesday

The long hallway is gloomy unless the sun is bright, but probably needs only two lights instead of three. On the left, Tony framed some of my early journal quilts; on the right, photos by Mary Pritchard, including a pinhole shot taken on the narrowboat Forget-Me-Not.

The dress is 66% copper, from a charity shop - irresistible - bought for the fabric, of course. But it remains a dress for the moment, to be cut up later, much later. What a wonderful shimmer it has.

Drawing Tuesday - Geffrye Museum

"Swept under the carpet" is the current exhibition (till September) - servants in London households, 1600-2000. This is a 1630 hall on washing day - men would leave the house to escape the chaos, lucky them. "So home" wrote Samuel Pepys in the 1660s, "the house full with the washing and quite out of order."

I started with the basket and knew the first drawing didn't have things in the right place, so tried again -

And then I noticed the upturned stools in the gloom under the table -

The negative space beckoned, but drawing them seemed impossible, so I got out the ipad and "explored" -

A photo layer and a drawing layer (tracing round the edges)

Photo layer disappears

What the camera does to the perspective is interesting.

Elsewhere ...

The fantasy mural, by Jonathan Early, 1992

Janet has found a horse! but what a strange one...

Janet's large vase

Carol drew the vase too - and used colour sparingly

Joyce combined elements from house and garden
(rather like the mural does, I thought)

Also in the garden, Jo caught  the shadows of leaves between gusts of wind

Sue found birdfeeders and pots of tulips

The gardens are done in rooms according to designs from different centuries, as are the rooms inside the museum -

Extended drawing resumes

Unless you write the blog post right away, I've found, it probably won't get done at all. So it is with the final module from last term - I was gathering up all the photos for the three classes, and now it seems so long ago that it's next to impossible to revisit.

During the break I did absolutely no drawing apart from on Tuesdays, and a few chairs ... When you're waiting around, there's usually a chair to draw. (Except that people kept on sitting down in them, and I didn't want to draw any people...)

Last week I had to miss the drawing class, but we had been given a topic for this term and at least I got my thoughts together on that, a bit.

The theme is Territories. Territory in terms of: a physical territory, interior territory, conceptual territory. Aha, my project fits all three: HOME.

The project proposal, distributed before the Easter break, is meant to help our thinking. It asks for:

• Theme (subject, ideas) -  the objects and conditions that make a home
• My plans; methods of working - experimentation and process - research (archive, gathering information, reading, drawing, exploring methods of experimentation) ....blank.......but gradually thoughts accumulate; a nice poem has come my way; and with my computer in place, I feel more "at home"; house plans, a theme from my childhood
• Artist reference/influences (I've been influenced, or hope to be, by the drawing of Lucy Skaer, Sian Bowen, Tania Kovats (and her book Drawing Water), and Sue Lawty)

One of the handouts in the class was this list of research methods (listening to the traffic passing, I'm intrigued by item 4; juxtaposing (item 5) also conjurs up possibilities...) -

1          Drawing  from observation

Drawing as visualisation or from imagination

Drawing as process

2          Constructing:  thinking and responding to ideas in structural form

            Haptic or touch-based response to materials

Constructing models as proposals for drawings

3          Text: as inspiration, text as image, as journal or documentation, as research information

4          Image and sound: still or moving image-based research, plus emotional and/or structural responses to sound

5          Transformation: manual and digital deconstruction techniques

 Changing scale, angle and aspects of content, collaging, juxtaposing

6          Conceptual: testing a pre-selected idea or proposal

            Working with chance or random developments

And this "guiding thought" -

“Drawing is the most direct form of expression yet asserts a very subtle power; it is often an art of absence, a whisper as opposed to a declaration; a suggestion rather than a certitude."

Dr Janet MacKenzie / Jerwood Drawing Prize 2015

Treats

At the cafe ... which pipes its name, Sable d'Or, onto its lemon tarts ... I had only coffee, knowing that my son would be making a curry later -

White blossom

Kenwood, such a pleasure in spring

A little front garden in NW3

Paint it black

Queens Park, NW6

Stroud Green, N19/N4

WC1 (via)

They're everywhere, the black buildings with their white writing. Why, why, why? This article hit the nail on the head when it called the refurbished Euston Station a necropolis.

Worse is to come at Euston - a sweeping gold roof. there's a picture of the proposal in the article. See it and weep; maybe black is preferable after all.