Drawing Tuesday - Horniman Museum

The Horniman Museum, commissioned in 1898 and opened in 1901, is built in arts and crafts style and is a short walk up the hill from Forest Hill station.

It has an amazing collection of musical instruments from around the world, including these concertinas -

 But it was the convoluted, visceral tubing of the brass instruments that hooked me in -

The notes are mainly questions about how this instrument works

 The room filled with an excited hubbub when a school group arrived -

And when they left, perfect peace returned -

 After drawing the ... what was it, a small tuba? ... and watching some short films on how the instruments are made, there was time for a clarinet, from the top down - it didn't quite fit on the page -

Other musical finds -

Najlaa's Iranian lute

Janet K's valveless horn

 And from elsewhere in the museum -

Joyce's ammonite

Sue's sea urchins

... and one she didn't attempt, the Gorgon's Head Brittlestar

Janet B's cruciform crab, Charybdis crucifera, aka Charybdis feriatus

It came from the Sea of Bengal

Finally, some specimens from The Teapot, where we lunched -

Seen in Salisbury

I went to visit Threads - Contemporary Textiles Open show at the Salisbury Arts Centre ... wanted to see my "Daily Round" in context ... and here it is -

 right next to a gorgeous piece by Denise Jones, whose work I love, love, love -

 That's ink on the border, and the rest filled in with dense, luminous silk thread. So simple, but so intense and so effective. It was displayed with the rear part runkled up, so the light hit the silk in satisfying sensual ways.

 A chance encounter with Liz Hewitt

 whose beautifully rust-dyed piece also found a congenial neighbour, Karen Skeates's oak gall shibori -

The converted church space made for some incidental juxtapositions with the colourful windows -

 Closeup of the double piece - screenprint by Lubna Din -

 Work by Rosie James, and Ruth Singer's "Criminal Quilt Patchwork" -

 Screen print and hand embroidery by Tanya Fryer -

Detail of "Chelsea, London"

Jane Ponsford uses twisted handmade paper, coloured with ink and/or graphite dust (the colour is a reflection from the stained glass windows) -

Many more pieces are on view, until 12 November. 

Renovations

Underfoot - this is the underlay for the wood floor and soon will be hidden

"How's the flat coming along?" is the question.

"Oh, we're making some real progress now" is my usual answer - I live in hope of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But I know it won't be "finished" in 2016. If the living room floor is in, and skirting boards up, before the end of November, I will be So Happy. Then all the books can be piled up along the wall that will eventually be filled by bookshelves. The plans for these shelves haven't been finalised yet. 

Once the stairs are clear of books, once that horrible plastic is removed from my beloved pale-grey stair carpet (and the carpet cleaned) ... and once the furniture is back in the living room, things will feel like they're getting back to "normal". Back to how they were, which is another step forward on the way they can be.

Here, chronologically, is the renovation sequence, starting with that first big job, the bathroom -

http://margaret-cooter.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/bathroom-nostalgia.html

Moving into the current phase -

http://margaret-cooter.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/upheaval.html

http://margaret-cooter.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/upheaval-ps.html

http://margaret-cooter.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/upheaval-continuing.html

http://margaret-cooter.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/meanwhile-back-at-flat_20.html

http://margaret-cooter.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/meanwhile-back-at-flat_20.html

http://margaret-cooter.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-task-was-to-hang-few-pictures-and.html

http://margaret-cooter.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/on-home-front.html

Some recent panoramas are at 

http://margaret-cooter.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/panoramamania.html

Overhead -- sanding and lick of paint, then my pots can go back on their shelves

"Visually similar results"

As if pinterest wasn't already a black hole where time disappears into, here's a feature that will keep you amused for even longer!

From a google search [on Sessai Hattori, more of which later perhaps] I opened the page and found myself in pinterest. Often I add "-pinterest" when searching, so as to get straight to the source of images, but this time...

Thinking it would enlarge the picture, I clicked on the little icon at top right of the image - and this is what it did -

 It brought up oodles of "visually similar results" for the highlighted area.

Moving the highlighted area gets you other results -

 It's a bit magical. Well, no - it's all done be algorithms or other programming, but it does feel like magic.

And you can change the size of the area, could be useful?

Endlessly fascinating... yet more time disappears into that black hole ...

Out of the kiln

The fired pots from the short course at Morely were waiting in a dark cupboard. I photographed them on the spot, in case of breakage on the way home.

Here they are, in the order they appeared. Some toppled over in the kiln, or collapsed altogether - which makes for some "interesting" objects!

The blue "glaze" is melted glass beads

Another "self-fused" group

Holes!

Three puddles of metallic fabric, with chunky stitching and a few beads

Not everything came to this sad state - I'll be doing a "before and after" of those, sometime soon.

Poetry Thursday - A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walt Whitman

(via)

A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER

A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres, to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

by Walt Whitman (1819-1892) (via)


Largely self-taught, Whitman was one of nine children and worked in New York as a printer and teacher until 1841, when he turned to journalism. Leaves of Grass was self-published in 1855 and enlarged in 1856 and in further editions throughout his lifetime. During the Civil War he moved to Washington DC to nurse his wounded brother and stayed for 11 years, working in hospitals. He struggled to survive until the 1882 publication of Leaves of Grass gave him enough money to buy a small house in Camden, New Jersey.

Avoiding the studio (again)

A lovely morning - brilliant sunshine and a little nip in the air. I took myself out early for a nice coffee and decided to have a little walk down the canal, in the opposite direction from last time - ie, into town.

Queens Park Library, on the Harrow Road

The iconic Trellick Tower

Bus route 28 crosses the canal via this bridge

Graffiti everywhere, really

My route crossed the canal here

I never did find the towpath again, and turned around upon seeing this misplaced postbox

Big houses on Randolph Avenue, on the way to get the No 6 bus back to Kensal Rise

Back home before 10, and since then I've been watching the leaves on the plane tree in front of the window change colour - there has definitely been increased yellow over the course of the day.

No attempt has been made to "do art". Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day. Meanwhile I'm pondering the meaning of "make hay while the sun shines".

Venetian floors

Guest blogger Erika took these photos in Venice -

Just one example of their uses in art -

San Sebastiano tra i SS Liberale e Gregorio, Francesco e Rocco
by Giovanni Mansueti

Drawing Tuesday - British Museum

The British Museum has several Greek galleries - to the point where it's hard to know which is which - so we were scattered among several rooms. I had arrived early and had a coffee and had done some warm-up by drawing with my non-dominant hand, very liberating!

The frieze of birds has always been a favourite of mine, as well as the Harpy Tomb which is in the same room (room 15). 

I used a pen with ink that would bleed, and gold pencil crayon -

and while writing this post, converted the hatching lines into ink wash -

Bolder, but not better! The wash around the biro sketches of motifs from vases does help ... makes for a more interesting page -

Joyce too drew the birds -

And the others found other things in other rooms -

Sue S

Sue M

Janet K

Janet B

Carol