Woodblock Wednesday - light, colour, towers

This week is half term at Morley - no class - and I've not done anything during the week, apart from following #mokuhanga and #woodblockprinting on Instagram. And keeping an eye out for likely subjects...

For instance, the illuminated tower at Imperial College has given me some colour ideas -

But what form would the tower take (and would it even be a tower...)? Another illuminated tower encountered recently was this one in Amiens in October -

... and of course there are thousands of images here.

Which brings to mind the tower that Yoko Ono designed for an island in Rejkyavik, in memory of John Lennon. This work of "land art"  was opened on 9 October 2007, John's 67th birthday. It's a simple upward beam of white light, modified only by Iceland's atmosphere and weather conditions. It's visible every year from 9 October till 8 December (the date of John's death), and from Winter Solstice (21 December) and into the morning of the New Year (1 January) as well as the first week of spring (20-27 March), the dates of John and Yoko’s wedding and honeymoon. The phrase "Imagine Peace" appears on it in 24 languages. You can add your wish via the Imagine Peace Tower website.

But I digress.

No glaciers were harmed in the harvesting

24 blocks of ice,  brought from Greenland by artist Olafur Eliasson, are situated outside Tate Modern, gently melting, their water trickling into the Thames.

A little ice-cubelet seems to have been left behind on the foreshore

 The ice looks lovely behind the birches, but "t'aint natural"...

... the ice is real, but its situation is unreal. It's meant to get people thinking. And looking - so many of us have never seen a glacier, let alone been able to touch an iceberg.

"Eliasson worked with geologist Minik Rosing to transport over 100 tonnes of free-floating, glacial ice from the waters of the Nuup Kangerlua fjord in Greenland. The ice had separated from its sheets and was discovered melting into the ocean." (via)

Elaisson recommends putting an ear to the ice, to hear the little crackles and pops of released air bubbles and splitting as the ice melts.

Another six blocks of ice are deposited about a 10-minute walk away in the City of London, reflected on the rainy pavement -

Les Hortillonnages, Amiens

In Amiens, I stumbled upon the Hortillonnages. In fact when I looked at the map to see where Amiens might be, it was the configuration of blue that caught my eye - it turned out to be the river Somme, and what a lot of lakes etc...

You can walk for 7km along a riverside path ... but on the day my feet took me towards the park, and an instinct sent the feet along a different path, the sun was low in the sky. 

Les Hortillonnages are the area at top left - here's the satellite view, closer up -

An area of drainage canals and small islands containing gardens and summer cottages, accessible only by small boats. It's been like this for about 800 years; originally the area covered 10,000 hectares, now only 300 hectares are left, of which 25 hectares or so are used by a dozen of the remaining market gardeners.

A short way along the road was a sign indicating an art display -

 Over the bridge (the passerelle) we go, to check it out -

 What a lovely peaceful place.

 Part of Sheena Seek's installation -

Hopefully the text will be legible if you click on the image -

 The next one didn't work so well for me -

 This was hard to photograph -

 One part of the larger whole - it had a really good feeling to it -

 Not art, just someone's hidey-hole....

 Back to the installations - a hop yard -

 These lovely white branches, a skeleton that might be walking around in the forest -

 Some things that were there became part of "the art" ...

 A distant view of something jolly -

 More glimpses over the canals -

 Back to the art - this one was large and you only "got it" after walking around for a while -

 A view into the city, and this strange monster crawling out of the swamp...

 Back to the riverside and the calm reflections of evening -

 But it was the anarchic area of old cottages and leaping spans (high enough to pole a boat underneath) that was so interesting -