Daily painting project - the wrinkly one

From a cloud of colour to a decorative pattern, via sanding back ... and many layers of paint. I've been increasingly reluctant to cover up "the pretty pattern" ... it either needs something new doing, or to be discarded.

Clerkenwell Design Week

"week" = three days ... do designers work such a short week? It seems that in this part of town, which abounds with design offices and showrooms, designing consists mostly of office furniture, a significant proportion of which included "privacy walls", including this nook which might be useful in a busy home -

The main attraction for me was the "infinity gate" with its parallel mirrors ... of course I took lots of photos of feet, some mirrored -

At Vitra, the cloud lights proved to be great collectors of dust (so we won't be getting one!), and the "tom vac chair" competition attracted some amusing entries -

dog collar and sound system

"the udder tom"

Outside another venue, elasticated chairs -

 Best discovery: the secret garden of Priory Church, part of the St John museum -

 Then on to lunch, which was accompanied by lightning, thunder and heavy rain -

Irresistible consumer opportunity - the art shop on Clerkenwell Road - jam-packed with wonderful tools and paints and notebooks and more -

Poetry Thursday - The Unpredicted by John Heath Stubbs

O, Fortuna!  (via)

The Unpredicted

The goddess Fortune be praised (on her toothed wheel
I have been mincemeat these several years)
Last night, for a whole night, the unpredictable
Lay in my arms, in a tender and unquiet rest -
(I perceived the irrelevance of my former fears)
Lay, and then departed. I rose and walked the streets
Where a whitsuntide wind blew fresh, and blackbirds
Incontestably sang, and the people were beautiful.

John Heath Stubbs (1918-2006)

A whitsuntide wind, blowing fresh - Whitsun is the seventh Sunday after Easter ... perhaps Easter was early the year the poem was written ... (In 1971 the movable Whit Monday holiday became the fixed Spring Bank Holiday at the end of May.)

A lifelong fascination with history, started in the tiny village school on the Isle of Wight he attended, informed John Heath Stubbs' poetic career. He went on to Worcester College for the Blind and Queens College, Oxford, and was first published in 1941. As well as "one of the most interesting poets ... of the latter half of the twentieth century" Heath Stubbs was also a critic, anthologist and translator. He was awarded the OBE in 1988.

Nearly blind from childhood, he had a special alliance and friendship with the deaf poet David Wright. His public career was never orthodox; his books were numerous; his output did not falter with age.

Sketchbook course, weeks 2 and 3

The course runs on a Monday and in the UK, May has two Bank Holiday Mondays, which makes things confusing and slightly fractured. First, the still life from week 2 (after the first holiday Monday) -

The smudgy areas are the result of not being allowed an eraser - instead, we scribbled over the misplaced lines and then rubbed the area with a folded-up paper. It adds interest, shows the process of becoming...

Then, photocopying and adding those images to the sketchbook, either on the original drawing, or cutting through as we did the previous week.

the page before the actual drawing, with bits transferred

the drawing, with additions

the page after the  original drawing

This week we were in the cast court of the V&A - not much fun, I thought - a crowded, higgledy-piggledy place, hard to position oneself so as not to be "in the way"; interruptions from this'n'that, hard to get into the drawing itself. For those of us less than enamoured of the actual objects, the tutor suggested looking at the juxtapositions in the space, and eventually that worked for me. (Having a stool helped - thanks to the kind warder who brought me one. Finding a stool at the V&A is sometimes impossible!)

We used the smaller sketchbooks in the museum, and next week will take these pages into the larger sketchbooks.

First a bit of grappling with foreshortening (unsuccessful, but I was so grumpy at this point) -

Richard I, in Rouen Cathedral

Then a bit of juxtaposition -

and some more in an area nearby -

which was intended to add the area to the right, on another sheet of paper

until finally, elsewhere again -

Others in the class found much of interest in this wonderful screen -

Next Monday is the second May bank holiday Monday, so no class - but a chance in the interval to go back to the museum and get on with the drawing in a better mood ... and with some interest in the possibilities...

Prize surprise

Surprises - that was one of my hopes for the "Developing practice for makers through museum collections" course. I was thinking along the lines of finding exciting work by new-to-me artists, or starting to work in a different way on a new theme, things like that (which seem all to have happened, how good is that).

For some months I've been developing the "museum-maze" idea, in response to the "Inspired by the V&A" exhibition possibility, and  a few weeks ago was surprised to be selected for the show.

Last night was the "opening party" and the prizegiving, which was held in the auditorium at Morley College (the show is in the Gallery next door).

In the distance is the principal of the college extolling the virtues of adult learning - bending the ear of a government minister who was present.  And then came the prizes. I was flabbergasted to hear my name and the word "printmaking" and found myself joining a group at the front of the room. After being given certificates we were herded into place for a group photo. I'm so glad I wore pink shoes -

and then it was out to the college's secret garden for drinks - how lucky we were with the weather -

After a while I was hoiked back into the gallery to have my photo taken with my work, and encountered another printmaker taking photos (probably wondering why it qualified as print?) - and had a chance to babble on about how interesting the floors in the museum are, made by female convicts etc -

The gallery decided to show my "book" on a lightbox -

Earlier, just as I got to the gallery everyone had decamped to the auditorium for the bar and speeches, so there was a chance to get some general views -

The show is on till 19 June; nearest tube station is Lambeth North. On the V&A website are winners from previous years, when the museum itself ran the show.

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."

***

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?

London through the ages

A video available here shows the development of London since Roman times, with emphasis on the structures that have been preserved.

The yellow dots show Roman archaeological sites. In
Roman times the population may have reached 30,000

After the Romans left, Anglo-Saxons settled in farmsteads
 and, by the 9th century, within the Roman walls

In the prosperity of Tudor times, by 1600 the population rose
to about 200,000 

 Many Tudor and early-Stuart structures were lost in the Great Fire of 1666, and more during the slum clearances of the 20th century. And of course structures of all ages were lost in bombing during WW2.

By 1840 the population was 2 million - the largest city in the world. 

As the chief city of the British Empire, Victorian London had 6 million inhabitants.
Between the 1940s and 1970s, many Victorian buildings were lost to commercial development

Daily painting - evolution of the square canvas

Influences ... a roll of blue painter's tape, used to mask squares (very fiddly!) - a good colour with the orange, so I tried to match the paint. Adding swirls and mistyness and mostly covering the orange squares. Seeing some spiky plants from the bus and quickly photographing them. Note to self: look carefully the photograph, draw from it first, rather than trying to paint from memory.

The background has subtly changed colour several times, but the plants themselves are not as they should be. However, along with the idea of painting the plants in red-modulated-with-green, some yellow crept in, and that was entirely right, even if it gets mostly hidden.

There's at least another day's worth of painting on the plants, and then what's the next step - try the plants again ("fail again, fail better"), or try something different??

Football madness

The local team is Arsenal, and Arsenal was playing in the FA cup - pubs up and down my street were, on this sunny first-day-of-summer, filled with people wearing red&white, spilling onto the pavement...

At home, through the open windows, a shout and cheers ... another shout and cheers ... it was going well. It was all over, and as someone, crossing the road on rather unsteady legs, informed a passing car, "we won! free kick!"

Much hugging, much tooting of car horns, call and response; much spontaneous singing, chanting; many cans of beer being carried. Football fans ... this is their hour...

I lean out the window and watch it live - Stroud Green TV, my favourite channel.