Monday miscellany

Crow's nest - One Monday morning I returned home to see this tree half pruned - with the section with the nest left untouched. Some days later, the entire tree was pruned, and some time after that, I happened to be looking out the window and saw the crow come to feed the wee birds. Better than watching it on tv!

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You can always tell an embroiderer - they turn the work over to see the back. And what about quilt judges who make a fuss about the neatness of the back of the quilt? Yet no-one expects the back of a painting to be of any interest whatsoever. Yet here's an exhibition by Luc Fuller, "Standing Paintings", which makes much of their backs ... the care taken with the stretchers (frames?) and fitments for the stands suggest that this concept was well thought out from the start.

The show is on till 7 June at Rod Barton, 41-45 Consort Road, London SE15 3SS.

Did you pick up on the Wu-Tang symbol, "one of the most recognizable, coded icons of the last few decades"? From the gallery's website:
"It is in this circulation exchange, the removal of the symbol from its origin and its proliferation in multiple variable forms, that the paintings themselves run parallel. The works, standing in the center of the room, are removed from the walls. Quite literally rejecting the wall's support, and the associated historical lineage of painting as a window on a wall, the standing paintings occupy the floor and become architectural in and of themselves. As a labyrinth of symbols demarcating potential paths through the space, interrupting views of one another, and revealing themselves in the round, the standing objects, perhaps like members of Wu-Tang, are simultaneously singular, and nevertheless always positioned within a network of reference."

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Contentious quote? This is from Antony Gormley - "Art that makes you feel comfortable is likely to be craft, not art."

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Useful for people who knit while they read - keeps the book open - this is "book on book". Useful for cookbooks too?