Is it time to break an old habit?

The sewing machine has been out on the table for a couple of weeks now, and I've used it to start some journal quilts. Having the laptop on the ironing board is working well -

During that time, papers seem to have built up into a few heaps. It's getting out of control.

Solution: simply consolidate the heaps -

 ... and deal with it "tomorrow".

Which dawned sunny and energising. I started sorting the papers -

Only to find there are still four heaps - how does that happen?!

Since doing the foundation art course (2009-10!) I've been saving all the explanatory bits of paper collected at exhibitions. Often they are useful in writing a blog post about the show ... but really, they serve no purpose beyond that. Why would I look at them again, unless to sort through and throw out?

Throwing them out can't be done wholesale. I'm in the habit of recording things, and have become lazy in not writing in my notebook, and not blogging every show I've seen. Some of these need to be pinned down. (Or ... do they ...)

Does it matter? Does all one's history need to be retrievable? something to ponder... At the moment it seems better to say less about more, eg one image and a link per exhibition, "for the record" - some, let's face it, are amusing for a moment but leave no other trace. Others, you tell yourself you'll visit them again and have a closer look and deeper think ... but you never do, somehow.

Lack of focus? Trying to do too much? Losing my way? Not sure ...

I love a clear desk and will be tackling those papers again today. Perhaps by sweeping them all into the bin, after all. Because I'd like to get the sewing machine back onto the table - this has caught my eye, or rather I've suddenly looked at it afresh ... it's been sitting right there beside the screen all the while -

Is this the final JQ for 2016? It's nearly the right size, just needs a nice border to get to 8"x10". It has orange and green bits, and can easily acquire purple. It's almost ready to go.

It's time to clear off not just the table, but that design board. If not now, when?

Drawing Tuesday - Natural History Museum

The Blue Zone at the Natural History Museum includes this gallery of mammals, especially whales -

It could certainly do with a good dusting! Just look at that grey layer on the head of the sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus). What makes the big head on this whale are the containers; the case holds spermaceti, which hardens to wax when cold, and below it is "a tissue-filled chamber that also contains high grade spermaceti oil.  The tissue and oil in this chamber are collectively called junk, but that name is unfortunate because of the high quality of oil that is rendered from the contents of the chamber" (via). For the whale, what does spermaceti do? - scientists still don't know; maybe it alters buoyancy. (A sperm whale eats, literally, a ton of food a day - 907kg of fish and squid.)

"Sperm whales were mainstays of whaling's 18th and 19th century heyday. A mythical albino sperm whale was immortalized in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, though Ahab's nemesis was apparently based on a real animal whalers called Mocha Dick. The animals were targeted for oil and ambergris, a substance that forms around squid beaks in a whale's stomach. Ambergris was (and remains) a very valuable substance once used in perfumes." (via)

But I digress; back to drawing. First, swimming with dolphins -

Then, skeleton of the right whale -

The North Atlantic right whales are very rare, only about 450 left in the whole world. Their big mouths are filled with plates of baleen, up to 8 feet long, which act as filters. The whale lifts its tongue, opens its mouth, fills it with water, closes its mouth, drops its tongue, and expels the water through the baleen, leaving the plankton and krill behind. Scientists don't know how the whale swallows. During breeding season they eat over a ton a day - 2600 pounds.

I didn't know that when drawing -

Didn't quite manage to get the entire whale on the page ... but Janet K showed how to overcome the page-size limitation with her grey whale (another endangered species) -

and Carol tackled the grey whale too -

Joyce, Sue and Mags drew a huge coral (thanks to Najlaa for the photo) -

Joyce

Sue

Mags writes about hers here

 Finally, elsewhere in the museum, Najlaa found a Red Powder Puff by the Bauer Brothers -

Afterwards I wandered around the museum and had some "close encounters of the bird kind" -

and noticed that only one of the old-style display cases was left in the Birds gallery; is it, too, doomed? -

Recent exhibitions

Stumbled on Maria Nepomuceno at Victoria Miro in town - floor and wall based sculptural works incorporating clay vessels and straw braid weaving. The artist is Brazilian. It's on till 7 January (and the way the gallery's door opens is ... interesting ...) -

Really exciting - the colour, the shapes, the materials all working together - we stood in the middle of the room and whipped out our sketchbooks! In all the other exhibitions visited, I took no photos, reckoning they're likely to be on the gallery's website, or elsewhere online.

Abstract Expressionism at the RA - rather a lot of it, and not my favourite art movement ever. The "Violent Mark" room was great, Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell, and some artists new to me, Jack Tworkov and Conrad Marca-Relli (known for collage). Two huge Sam Francis paintings in another room caught my eye - well, they dominated the wall space, and were vivid orange and blue! Revelation of the day was David Smith's early sculptures, before all the 3D boys had to use big sheets of thick metal to be taken seriously.

Franz Kline, Vawdavitch, 1955

Robert Motherwell, Wall Painting No.III, 1953

Conrad Marco-Relli, The Passage (L-L-12-61), 1961

David Smith, Blackburn, Song of an Irish Blacksmith, 1949-50

Not sure if this one was in the show -
Hudson River Landscape, 1951

Richard Serra's drawings at Gagosian Davies Street, till Dec 17th (his sculptures are at the bigger space near King's Cross, till Feb 25th). The use of etching ink gives them a low-level rugged texture.

Ed Rusha's paintings at Gagosian Grosvenor Hill (till 17 Dec) are about form and size - the form of a word is fixed, but its scale is not - but this doesn't hold when words are arranged in a system, when they observe a scale in which the size of the word-as-image corresponds imperfectly to the size of the word-as-concept.

(via)

The camera came out again for the fun paintings by Holly Frean at Paul Smith's shop on Albermarle Street -

Sheep, dogs, baboons - go to her website for more images of her work

A detail

Two towers

Last week I had a chance of going to the top of the Gherkin, and it would have been silly to turn it down. the event was a private view of an exhibition of art from Cuba, a fundraiser for the Music Fund for Cuba, which is also supplying art materials to artist students there. 

From the 36th floor, London is a-twinkle with lights -

The Cheesgrater

Tower Bridge!

This week, having seen and taken a chance to book tickets (in May!) to go up the Post Office Tower, I went, with son, to spend 45 minutes looking at the view. The charity involved was RedR, "people and skills for disaster relief".

The weather was brilliant and we arrived early for our 1pm "flight". Cupcakes were to be served -

 Champagne goes quite well with cupcakes, in the right setting -

Splendid views, in the brilliant sunshine -

 The Shard in the background, the British Museum nearer to hand -

Looking northwest, past Regent's Park -

And you try to get "unusual" photos -

Suddenly, the un-hoped-for happened and the viewing area started revolving - that really was the icing on the cake -

On the way out everyone got a certificate of achievement! -

The charity raised over £40,000 with ticket sales and raffle.

Hospital art

While sitting in Moorfields Eye Hospital's 24-hour A&E, I spotted some art on the wall -

No information about whose work it might be, and it does look rather dull on that institutionally bare wall. There was a companion piece on another wall (try to ignore the reflections) -

I liked the wavy lines making different kinds of nets - or looking like an electromagnetic force field.

A day later, I'm in the vitreoretineal clinic, finding the pleasant surprise of prints by Albert Irvin (again, please overlook the reflections) -

black on black

Concordia II, 1997

Although there is a platemark (as with an etching plate), the marks go outside the embossed area; the flat areas of colour are the primary clue that these are screenprints, a surmise confirmed by a little research: he "had a short-lived foray into lithography in 1975. He then began a screenprinting career in 1980 with Advanced Graphics London. The collaborative approach of screenprinting, although a new and very different outlet from painting, still allowed Irvin to display many of his characteristic traits as an artist."

Art on the walls give something to think about while fretting about possible nasty outcomes. Fortunately for me, all the fretting turned out to have been wasted energy - thank goodness!

And thank goodness for the NHS and wonderful facilities like Moorfields.

Poetry Thursday - House for Sale by André Frénaud

House for sale
(André Frénaud)

So many have lived here, who loved
to love, to wake, dust, sweep the floor.
The moon’s in the well and can’t be seen,
the previous owners have disappeared,
taking nothing with them.
The ivy swells in yesterday’s sun,
the coffee stains and soot are staying put.
I fasten myself to mouldy dreams
and embrace the grime of others' souls,
that mix of lace and plans gone wrong.
Concierge of failure, I’ll buy the dump –
if it poisons me so be it, but never fear:
open the windows, put the sign on the lawn,
someone else will come in, sniff the air, begin again.

(via The Cat Flap, where you can read the original)

André Frénaud (1907-93) was born in France. In 1940 he joined the army and was captured, escaping from a German POW camp in 1942 to join the Resistance. House for Sale was written in captivity (scribbled on scraps of paper from cement bags), as were most of the poems in his first book, Les Rois Mages (1943), through the success of which he came into contact with the rising artists of the day, some of whom became collaborators on illustrated texts of his poems. His subjects were mainly everyday objects and refined spiritual and emotional reactions to small events in an ordered, conventional life.

CQ London

To Contemporary Quilt's 15 regional/local groups, another has been added. It will meet in London at 6-week intervals.

CQ London was born in a cafe at the Royal Festival Hall, attended by beverages and mince pies.

We'd been asked to bring along some work to show, so that we'd all get a sense of what the others were "about". These 6"-square, moody landscapes happened to be on my design board - I quickly added the final stitches -

Drawing Tuesday - Wallace Collection

In the exhibition space at the Wallace Collection (till 27 November), The Middle by Tom Ellis - paintings after Daniel Teniers "A Shoemaker in his Workshop" (1671), differently rendered, mixed with furniture - tippy-up tables with painted-canvas tops. And an "environment" of loosely-papered walls created, and everything carefully placed. (Under this table is a bit of floor that lifts up, probably an electrical outlet.)

In this video the artist reflects on painting and furniture making and the relation between the two in his work.

Wandering through the collection I found a little 14th century reliquary made in northern France; intrigued by the text, I drew it several times. It attained something like its true shape on the third attempt.

Janet had done the "draw your hand" homework - four drawings taking 5 minutes each - and had another go at the back of the horse - her first drawing of it was in May 2015 -

 Sue's fully articulated gauntlet - German, 1460-65 -

 Najlaa found patterning in the glassed areas of the ceiling -

 Joyce was held up by train problems but made an impressive start, using the mid-tone of the paper and adding white highlight -

(Must try that sometime...)