Poetry Thursday - Thomas A. Clark

A lovely book of (camera-less) photographs by Susan Derges and text by Thomas A. Clark.

the children are building
a raft to drift
gently down the stream
pale faces blossoming
briefly among
marsh marigolds

one who walks alone
in a water meadow
in late afternoon
wants only the same
to go on walking
in a water meadow
in late afternoon 

Some more of my favourite photos from the book -

click to enlarge

Woodblock Wednesday - "begin afresh"

New year, new term of woodblock printing at Morley starts next week ... something new is needed.  One possibility was to outright steal an image from somewhere, and this not only looked appealing but would have been "interesting" to make into a woodblock print -

But I want to use "my own stuff". So I looked through various A4-sized sketchbooks for possibilities... either for direct use, or to spark an idea...

After thought and discussion I narrowed it down to four, including one from an exhibition seen yesterday - Leo Villareal at Pace Gallery - or rather a photo obtained from consecutive blowups from a photo taken there -

The rejects

The group of pots are from the first gallery visited on the first day of Lucinda Oestreicher's "East End gallery visits" course; the pots were made by Nicola Tassie, and the year was 2014. The drawing needed a bit of tweaking -

 The tracing paper starts to show differences from the original -

And after about a million tweaks, quite a few differences - removals, shifts in position, and tiny rearrangements -

Haven't figured out how many blocks are needed, but they'll definitely fit on this nice bit of shina ply -

It'll be a day or two before I can start carving. Better to let it lie for a while and have a fresh look ... but I do want it to be ready to go, rather than need reworking!

Like my own pots, which I see as personalities that relate to each other in mysterious ways (just like people do!), these drawn pots are stand-ins for some of the strange relationships we encounter in everyday life. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it, much as people do with their pets?

The plan is to have an outline and think about adding colour later - rather like an earlier project, not yet finished...

The "Korean dolls", carved in August,
still awaiting a satisfactory print
(these are coloured-in rubbings)

Drawing Tuesday - still lives

We met at Janet K's in the week before Christmas, where she had set up several still lives of interesting objects. I was drawn by the fox pincushion to this arrangement - but it never did appear in the final drawing. Nor did I realise my intention of adding colour or some sort of contrast to my drawing ....

Joyce added the woodgrain to the jointed reindeer -

 Jo's several drawings included flowers...

... and the understairs view -

Judith took many view of a coffee pot from India -

 Sue liked the red-on-red effect of my jumper behind the tomato teapot -

 Carol had a blue approach to a teapot and that reindeer -

Janet K had a different view -

 Janet B couldn't resist the chair ....

 ... and then the infinite-regression of her own foot -

No-one could resist the Nanaimo Bars (classic Canadian recipe) - this is the leftovers of the second round -

 And to follow - a selection of books wrapped furoshiki-style -

 ... and needle-felted tree ornaments made by Carol, using a cookie cutter and adding sparkle -

The next official Drawing Tuesday is 7 January 2020, in fact the day that this post will appear.

Dora Maar at Tate Modern

Because my packet of museum cards and memberships dropped out of my bag last week, I'm going round to various places to get replacement cards. Today, to Tate Modern.

Once there, new card in hand, what to go see, to make the journey worthwhile? If you're feeling a bit listless, the Dora Maar exhibition (to 15 March)is perhaps not the best choice. Or I just wasn't in the mood for lots of monochrome photographs, and did not find much that grabbed me, even among her later paintings.

She worked as a photographer in the 1930s (she was born in 1907) and the early photos - some very small - were displayed to advantage in large frames behind thick, well-cut mounts. 

Making much from little

Large-format negatives were interesting, or was it just that they introduced some colour?

Dora Maar's hands

A dress masquerading as a tattoo, c1935

The shadows of nudes are what I'll remember from the exhibition, perhaps because I've just been looking at the "ladies and vases" by Charlotte Hodes -

And of the model, Assia Granatouroff -

 A "fashion and beauty" photocollage for magazine illustration - rather sinister, perhaps because of the turbulent white impasto painted background, revealed (accidentally?) in the hand -

We know Dora Maar mostly through her relationship with Picasso and his "Weeping Woman" painting, and the exhibition includes a little book of little photographs of him, put into little pockets. The album has an interesting structure, and is perspexed to the nines -

There's a fair bit of surrealism - and the main Surrealism room has been painted an almost irridescent shade of pink. I hurried through that one.

First project of 2020

My favourite tablecloth, the one with subtle grey checks, revealed itself in its true colours 

when I found some remnants of the fabric - the white had, over the years, become rather more grey!

I recently used the remnants (backed with recycled shirt fabric) to make placemats

but had, on discovering the sad fading of the favourite cloth, ordered some linen from Lithuania, which arrived before Christmas. Once the festivities were past, I pre-washed the linen, ironed it while damp, and set to work on making the tablecloth.

 If I'd ordered 10cm more, a false hem at the ends wouldn't have been necessary

 ... but it worked out in the end, mitred corners and all -

 Ahhh - done - and I'm not unhappy with the brown check -

Meanwhile a charity shop find was a curtain made of ticking, which will (one day!) make another tablecloth, with a jolly print around all the hems -