Crafts from Scotland

Seen at Craft Central (where Hooked in London - a group of rugmakers! - meets every month), the Summer Show of some of the excellent craftspeople who happen to live in Scotland; these were my favourites -

Mixed media sculptures by Cheryl Smith 

Jewel-like mosaics by Line Mortensen

The show, featuring 31 makers, will be in Edinburgh in August, on the second floor of White Stuff on George Street.

Degree shows - Chelsea fine arts and textiles

A whistle-stop look-round the Chelsea show, before attending "an event" there last week. (This week, the Royal College of Art show is on my to-see list, along with New Designers.)

Marie Kaus's painting nicely represents its situation

Stitched textiles - in resin - by Estee Gledhill

Cross-stitch taken to new lengths and depths - Niamh Cunningham

Khaitee Mills - work rooted in "Nan's hair"

Imam B's scarves/snoods - I see them as a cloud of "dust" capturing jewels

Chloe Griffin - new uses for denim

Emily Buckman's "sensory textiles", wonderful textures

Only after taking the photo did I realize the fascination of the scene - the setting looks
like the loom that the scarves (sorry, maker not noted) were woven on

Found art, floor art

The even was Richard di Marco talking about his encounters with Joseph Beuys

...followed by drinks in The Green Room, which has a terrible acoustic

... with its high ceilings etc.  Nice view of the river, though, and over the fireplace, an early painting by Chris Ofilli

"Feet on floors"

... on Regent Street, which had been closed off for the Bus Cavalcade.

Imagine my delight to find the word FRIDGE written on the street, part of the planning for this or some other event no doubt, and people wandering into and out of it. Or standing "in the fridge".

Later I found a seat on one of the chairs set out on the raised islands in the middle of the street; my photos of passing feet turned into a fascination with the bags people carried - this is a shopping street, after all -

What interests me in both these sequences is that people are walking in the road, rather than keeping to the pavement, as they usually would be ... this "dislocation" isn't recognised at first, if at all, because so much else is going on in the photo sequence. It would be more obvious in a film sequence than in a static photo, as film and still need to be looked at in different ways (how these differ, I'm not exactly sure, but someone somewhere has probably written about it...).

On the buses

The Bus Cavalcade on Regent Street - what a jolly thing that was, 50 or so buses of all eras all down the street, starting with the oldest at Piccadilly Circus, ending with some of the new Routemasters at Oxford Circus, volunteers welcoming visitors and giving information, and people of all ages and sorts taking photos and wandering about. In the lovely weather! It was hard not to take photos of everything all the time.

Omnibuses used to be pulled by horses, and the two in the horse-box were gorgeous -

For many people, it was all about the photo opps -

Kids got to sit in cabs and be bus drivers -

 ...and on police motorbikes, for further photo opps -

A lot of window-winding went on, here and there -

These Chelsea Pensioners passed by -

 and slowly made their way up the street, patiently posing with "just one more" -

You could sit in many of the buses, like this 1930s Green Line -

It had been beautifully restored, with the fresh upholstery particularly noticeable -

Top decks were particularly popular (note the grips on the stairs) -

In that bus the upholstery was in original condition, and the smell - brought out by warmth and sun - was incredibly nostalgic -

Seats on the upper deck of the "low level" bus held four people, and you stepped up to them from the dropped aisle, rather awkward and probably not popular -

From the top decks you got good views down the street -

Not all buses were red or green - this one served Heathrow before there was a tube line out there. It was in service till 1973 so may have been the one we travelled on when we arrived in this country -

Not sure what to say about these bus-print dresses ...

Monday miscellany

"Dream mapping" by Susan Hiller - part of an article, or rather a series of pictures, on how artists are reinventing the atlas (here).

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Bronagh Kennedy's hand-drawn map of London is based on 1914 maps (via)

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The Rubbish Collection is the new interactive exhibition at the Science Museum. Artist Joshua Sofaer invites you to participate in collecting, sorting, photographing and documenting one month’s worth of rubbish produced by the Science Museum, in order to create a visual day-to-day archive of rubbish. Free, until 14 September.

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What is a happy building? Here are 10 such... including "Hortus conclusus" (2009 - an enclosed garden), imo the best of the Serpentine's annual pavilions.

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Lovely sequence of photos of an old couple in their garden is here. The photos were taken by Ken Griffiths of the Sunday Times, starting in 1973.

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Quilt of the week is by Benedicte Caneill - this is a detail -

See the entire quilt (Units 32: Jazzy Blues) here.

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Sad sign (via)

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Lego sign, Regent Street (via) - it'll be up till 15 July as part of "year of the bus"

A sidelight to "year of the bus" is a podcast by Joe Kerr,  a historian and tutor at the Royal College of Art - it's about why arts education should be viewed on an equal footing as other, more traditional subjects. Joe is also a bus driver, and he talks about which London bus routes he most enjoys driving and why London is bucking the trend of bus travel becoming less popular. Get the podcast here. (Interesting info about student loans and debts, too.)

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The inventor of Kevlar, the lightweight fibre used in bulletproof vests and body armour, has died aged 90. Stephanie Kwolek was a chemist at the DuPont company in Wilmington, Delaware, when she invented the stronger-than-steel fibre in 1965. It was initially intended to be used in automobile tyres.

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It costs £53 to fix a pothole. £168m will help to fix some three million potholes in England by March 2015. "A drop in the bucket" says the Local Government Association.