BirdTreeArts

I’ve started a photoblog, partly because I wanted to play with wordpress’s new funky-groovy design, which automatically chooses a background colour to suit your picure, and partly because my words, at the moment, are slightly constrained and confined, so can’t just tumble out randomly and happily as per usual. So. Pictures. At the moment it’s just some flower pictures I took in the garden at the start of Spring. Hopefully I’ll soon have some irridescent silk images to put up there too. These are not great pictures, I am not a great photographer, and my camera is a cheap snapshot one. But they’ll be a kind of photo-sketchbook, for me, as will this blog, I think, now that there is not such a pressing economic need for me to sell things, and I have, in some senses, more time to think about what I might make.

The evenings are longer, and tomorrow I will be picking elderflowers, for cordial which I make every year. It’s gorgeous - lemony and refreshing, with a delicate flavour. I make my first batch next week, and for those who are interested, the recipe can be found on the recipe pages . It’s ever so easy, and freezes well – my Mum, who has a huge freezer, freezes it in ice cube trays, and thus keeps her household going in refreshing drinks through summer. The other nice drink is lemon balm tea - just pick the leaves from the plant, rinse, and infuse them. It’s refreshing in warm weather - uplifting rather than zingy. I’d add a slice of real lemon to the infusion, too.

I have busy tidying up the end of one job, and starting the other with proper energies. Ludlow Assembly Rooms, gorgeous though it is, has had to be relinquished. That isn’t because I don’t love art curating, but simply the paid hours in Ludlow are far too small to make the job worthwhile. And the school where I’m working truly does look after its children, and so it’s rewarding working there, properly rewarding, in the sense that you feel what you do makes a small difference.

Anyway my last weekend at Ludlow was spent organising the private view of Patrick Semple, and his work looks gorgeous. I loved it, anyway – his collaged pictures. It’s a combination of found objects and interesting things arranged so as to make one stop and take a philosophical breath, wondering on purpose and tradition. I truly could spend hours looking at them, on a visual and thoughtful basis. The man himself is nice, too.

What else? Well, despite the love of walking, I have learned to drive. And bought a car. This is not without regret, since ecologically it sucks, but three miles a day is too much for me to walk in all weathers easily, and the three miles is added to a train journey. I like this Hereford job, and it fits round my children (and my own work), so car seemed inevitable.

Car is burgundy and small. I drive it badly, and probably shall continue to drive badly around the good roads of Herefordshire, pissing off its road-worthy citizens, for some time to come. I am doing my best, and it is not a fast automobile. Sixty miles per hour is as fast as I can go, and that is with a favourable wind. My children, however, are very proud of me, and remained so even when I reversed into eldest daughters best-friends-mothers-gatepost yesterday night (I did not hit her dog, or her new car, however).

The pictures are of my back garden, with its row of painted jampots holding tealights (I love that it is warm enough to stay out in the dark, in the evenings, wrapped in a blanket, with a small fire, and the lights twinkling and glimmering), and of the view from Offas Dyke footpath, just before Kington. There are advantages to driving, after all. It’s my favourite stretch of the path, with gorse, hills, trees, sheep, and quiet. I saw a rabbit hole, used and furred up where they bolt down it each night. Lots of lambs, and the hills swooping away to valleys without roads in them.

Sometimes, feelings creep up on one. Buried in busy-ness, I find myself tired and sometimes sad underneath. My own work has ground to a halt, slightly (which is a double shame because LAR has made me some useful contacts). But the other good thing about the teaching post is that I will not have to worry about drawing work to sell for prints all the time. I can make things with more leisure, more thought, more lazily, with time to edit and rework. And so I have ordered five metres of fine silk, and fished out my frame and dyes, and will make some banners, for despite the tiredness and the sadness I feel the old familiar feeling creeping up from my toes, a need to make, make, make. And so I shall, but bigger and less saleable, and with more of the old sense about it, of making to communicate, in some way, and making, if I can, something which could (like in the fairytale) be shaken out of a golden pear, all coloured silken yards of it, a banner and a story combined.

This is all about The Bookbag. Now, truth, yes, I came across it because a friend co-runs it, and yes, I’m a sycophantic tutu-wearing penguin with more hair than wit (actually, I’m not) and, and, and… but this site is genuinely very useful, and so it warrants more than a short sentence nestling between cous-cous and the Bristol water-bus.

Bookbag is a *ahem* book review site, which means it provides reasonably in-depth reviews of various new releases (fiction and non-fiction), and some old favourites. I use it to browse children’s fiction in particular, where I find the reviews to be most pertinent and helpful (some are particularly well-written, some are fairly standard, but all give a fairly decent idea of what the book is about, and what kind of ‘category’ the thing fits into).

What is particularly nice about the site is the reviewing, by and large, doesn’t come across as pretentious, demanding or snide. If a book is ‘chick lit’ the review will tell you, and give a viewpoint of the book as chick-lit, rather than wailing and gnashing teeth because it isn’t a Dickens. There’s a friendly tone overall, which sometimes spills over into chumminess, but not so often that the site is tooth-achingly sweet, and there is also an underlying sense of integrity. The reviewers do not come across as the publishers lapdogs, or as having their own agenda. The reviews are, by and large, informative, useful, and reasonably short. Hurray. Have some cous-cous, Bookbag.

Anyway, it’s worth a look. For me, it’s been particularly useful in recommending reads for my eldest daughter, who is a keen, keen, keen reader, but because her reading abilities soar above what she can easily emotionally handle, it give me a good ‘heads-up’ on what kind of book I’m considering purchasing for her.

Why have I mentioned animal skeletons, then? Well, simply that I get to curate a show by Patrick Semple, who is really rather damn good, and I’m excited about his altarpiece, which was last exhibited in the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, and which comes to Ludlow next month. And it’s going to be damn good, if what I know of his work holds true. More on him and his work next post, when the show is up. S’exciting.

I have done no work of my own. I’ve been too busy. However, I have ordered some lengths of silk, so as soon as the weather gets warmer I can do some serious work on new hangings, and when they’re finished, I’ll photo them and my website proper can go ‘live’. Well, that’s the plan, anyway.

Where did the picture of that vintage-fabric tote bag come from? Well, it’s one of the bits and pieces of stuff I’ve been making, and since I couldn’t copy over Bookbags logo, it seemed apposite. And to add some colour (I’ll photograph the fifties china set I picked up for a song next post), some more random things I’ve been doing, of the vanilla soap, glittery lemon soap and beading varieties:

Well, it’s been a busy half-term, what with getting a new job (exhibitions curator at the Ludlow Assembly Rooms) and having the children around, with two exhibitions to put up and take down within a week of starting the job.

But I did eventually remember to collect my children from Mother, and we’ve managed to squeeze in a brilliant couple of days in Bristol, just at the centre of things, before I go back to researching new artists and (more prosaically) trying to find a local supplier for foam board so I can mount information properly.

I’ll write about Bristol, and then take a look at the artists in the assembly rooms, and then, right at the very end, there’s a surprise find of a book review site which is really rather shiny bright and lovely.

Bristol was brilliant. We stayed in the Youth Hostel (see pictures above), as we do. Why? Because it’s cheap as anything (fifty pounds for a family room with en-suite, shower and breakfast included), right in the heart of the nice harbourside area, about a two minute walk from @bristol and pretty much next door to the Arnolfini and the Architecture centre. And of course there’s The Trumpet Bridge, which isn’t called the Trumpet Bridge, I’m sure, but the Millennium Bridge or something. But we call it the Trumpet Bridge just the same.

I do love Youth Hostels, but they do vary. Bristol seems well-staffed (I expect people love volunteering for it because it’s all urban gorgeousness), and although still slightly tatty, tatty in the sense of ‘perhaps you should have got the polyfilla out before you painted that’ rather than ‘oops, plaster’s coming off the wall’. I thought, at one point, how my life does seem to revolve around places that are a bit like that. Co-operative-like, and full of goodwill and volunteers, but still there’s something always peeling off somewhere, and clean is one thing but smartly polished another. And then I thought how much I prefer that kind of thing to the travel lodge culture, and the posh hotels, which have resentful unhappy staff who might, or might not, spit in your tea. So I’m probably quite lucky, really. And that’s a thought I had before I even GOT to the canteen at Spike Island, which is an entirely gorgeous story of cous-cous salads, leafy greens, falafel and roasted vegetables. More of that later, too.

One nice and not-often-reported on thing about Youth Hostels, is that the people in them Read. In the Bristol one there is the advantage of huge comfy sofas and books, but equally at breakfast everyone seemed to be reading. Mainly papers (of the Guardian and Times variety), some guidebooks, some more heavyweight looking stuff, and a biography of Richard Hammond, but still all reading. S’good. Another nice thing about the Bristol one is that the Breakfast (included) is nice. Lot of muesli-type things, a big bowl of natural yoghurt, cold meats, grapefruit, croissantish stuff, or the bacon/sausage/tomato thing. Coffee. Hot Chocolate. Orange juice. All relaxing and filling, and it’s improved since the last time, too.

But anyway, on the first day, we headed up to Clifton, to Look at the Bridge, and take in the view through the curious, Victorian and round Camera Obscura. I like Camera Obscura, or at least the three I’ve been to, and this one reminded me greatly of the one at Aberystwyth. Same kind of slightly Victorian, peeling round the edges, Scientifically Spectacular interest. And a hand-painted sign for the Attraction that surely must have been penned and painted in 1931. Underneath (yes, that’s underneath) the Camera Obscura, was the Giants Cave, which nicely proved that yes, there are still some parts of England that the Health and Safety Stazi have not yet reached.

With a cheery wave (handpainted notice recommended that under fours shouldn’t venture down there) the manatthedesk (biscuit tin of money, none of this fancy ‘till’ nonsense) told us to watch our heads as we issued down. And we did. Down, down into a never-ending tunnel of spiral stone steps, culminating in a sheer metal staircase, culminating in a small, uneventful… err, cave. With a hint of light at the right hand side. So, following the light, we issued out…pretty much straight into the gorge. Yes there were railings, Yes there was the kind of metal see-through planking so beloved of National Trust properties. But my Mother, quite seriously, would have wet herself. Well, she would have wet herself if she had been foolish enough to vanish orff willingly down numerous steps into the darkness of the rock. Which she wouldn’t have done. So, I suppose, there you go.

Right, so Bristol was fantabulously fantabulous. I can heartily recommend the SS Great Britain (I thought it was going to be very dull. How wrong I was), and the National Galleries touring ‘Love’ exhibition (much more interesting than it sounds, and at the Museum of Bristol, which also has a big Egypt exhibition, and the most amazing wooden/polished brass/pull chain Victorian Ladies Toilets - working ones, too). I can also recommend the Arnolfini, of course and…a find for me…Spike Island, which was a factory of some sort, and which, by some kind of magical transformation, is the home of many fine artists (it grew out of a Bristol Co-operative that I had heard of, from when I was in touch with such things), and, in the canteen, the most gorgeously cheap-but-nice food that you sometimes are lucky enough to find in towns. Salad, of the help-yourself variety, but nice salad, with nice bowls, not the gloop and ick stuff you get in Various Chains. Falafel. Hummous. Yoghurt. Joy. Oh, and a lovely lentil quiche with sweet pepper sauce, too, and all for about four pounds each. Wow. And if you’re thinking ‘you heathen, not to mention the shows’, well, they were on change-over, and I’m going back to see them, so I am faintly vindicated. And I want to get tickets for some of the Festival of Ideas things at the Arnolfini, if I can.

Oh, but joy, and lots of interesting people-watching to do, mainly of people lugging canvases around, but some women with babies, one holding a large pink parcel tied with Blue String. Also some Older (I think they were mature students) Women with Lots of Books, and a very quiet, eminently gorgeous artist at the next table, who I would have made moony eyes over, only I was intent on feeding myself, and trying to convince R that chilli cous-cous really is a good idea (she preferred the chips, because she is five, and she just did). Anyway, with New Job I will get to go to Views there, since I boldly announced myself at the desk, and so hopefully will get to know the place better, which’ll be something to look forward to.

We did other stuff too, but travelogues get boring when written by amateurs, and besides, I’ve a lot to get through, this post. In fact, I might split it, and do a separate account of Ludlow Artists, and The Bookbag. In fact, I will.

Well, it’s been half-term, and I’ve been enjoying my children. One trip to London (I could almost see the doors opening in my eldest daughter’s mind), friends round for a party, more friends round for tea, and gingerbread men to be baked (and eaten). This week, technically, was back-to-work, but as all artists-with-children realise, it’s difficult to get down to things when you spend a good hour looking for that masking tape, only to realise it’s been used in a vibrant (and imaginative, yes) game of ‘Tutankhamen’ - in other words, Mummify That Barbie. I’m torn between pride (best thing you can do to Barbie, really) and sticky exasperation. Youngest daughter has decided that her favourite reading matter is Pink magazine. Alas, it has little to do with Gay Rights, less to do with an ironic take on the punk rock movement, and is full of twirly (pink) ballerinas and smiling (pink) bears. I am tempted to start, singlehandedly, an Ironic Mommas Underground movement, and design a Pink magazine full of O’Keefe drawings, analysis of the contents of lipgloss (slimy fat, pigment made from beetles) and How to Mummify Your Barbie tips, but it might not sell.

And I have gotten some work done. The weather was gorgeous for photographs. Ice, sunshine, and the ice half-melted, half frozen. I have enough on my plate with the hedge pictures, and coast pictures, to not want to take on more, but I’ll hang on to these in the back of my head and see if I can do something with them properly another day. I even, at one point, braved the cold and took out my sketchbook, which is where the small watercolour comes from.

Well, it’s been longer than I like before posting here. I mean, a nice teasy gap is all well and good, but Over a Week? I blame both my tonsils (wildly inflamed) and my Personal Life (ditto), which occasionally draws me inexorably away from a computer screen, kicking and screaming as I am dragged.

All is now as sane as it will get for some time, and I have Mainly been Drawing Mermaids in my absence. One has turned out (rather unfairly) as a kind of Joan Crawford brazen hussy of a dyed blonde despite her watercolor (she is going to return to natural brown tomorrow, and it will suit her much better). The other is a sadder pencil drawing, which I think is nicer, but probably will not sell. Joan will undoubtedly sell. And soon I shall draw a less brazen Joan which will work even better and might contribute to my quest for Nice New Boots.

One trip to Ludlow, in the rain, but the castle always looks nice (it was Closed). How can a castle be Closed? It was very walkaroundable, and the views, although damp, were still romanticky and quite sad.

To cheer me up, as I walked us home in the rain, my youngest daughter (five) told her first ever joke:

Rosie: I have a joke for you.

What do you get if you cross a cat and a rabbit?

Me: I don’t know

Rosie: A woolly jumping.

Me: Hahaha. Very good darling.

Rosie: I made it up. Did it work? Was it funny?

Me: Not really, no. But it was nice anyway.

Rosie: It’s meant to be what if you cross a pig…err…and a sheep…and a trampoline. And you get a woolly jumper. So I changed it, it’s jumping (jumps up and down). Do you see? Jumping.

The pictures are of mermaids. Why not. It is January, after all. We had chocolate eclairs for tea to celebrate the joke.

Well, it was an inauspicious morning to go out for a walk - drizzle, and the children just strapped onto the school bus. But good things seem to be happening at the moment, and I’m very glad that I plodded up the muddy hill. A storm was blowing in from the East, and all to the left was a golden light, and to the right, clouds racing and movement in the bare trees. I took several pictures, but these seemed to me the best ones, and their colours seemed to pervade the rest of the day - golden, faded, illuminating the world differently to the normal grey January day-after-day, like the quince and the blossom in the hedge outside a huge Edwardian house which I pass nearly every morning.
I’ve started a watercolour. I’ve been trying for some time to get rid of the ink lines - they’re too harsh for me at present, and too defined. Fine for doodling, but I want to play with colour a bit more - do some work reminiscent of the long bluey-greeny silk banners I made one Summer a long time ago - all swirly colour and dip dyed. I’m pleased with it - at the stage where I’m a bit unsure of touching it for a bit, in case I Spoil It Completely. Which has happened before to pictures half-way through.

All swooshy, muted colours - 1930’s faded wallpaper colours - gold the colour of the sky this morning, blue the colour of the clouds. Let’s see if I can pull this one off, then.

You’ll be pleased to know (I’m thrilled) that my seasonally mimsy self-reflection has ground to a merciful halt, and I’m back to my usual state of calm-amid-chaos. The resolutions have been made, the cake is back in the tin, and at least this year I have managed not to dye my hair bright orange in an urge to appear more interesting , but have left it it’s natural colour, which will just have to be interesting enough All By Itself.

I’ve been reading about Whistler, and his deliberate choice of muted palettes. I’ve never-ever been one for Muted Palettes. I like bright rich blues, and reds, and gorgeous silky greens. I like Kandinsky and Chagall and Frida Kahlo, with their peacock colours. But I also like Whistler, and his Nocturnes, Harmonies and Symphonies. With their muted, faded palettes, but gorgeous still.

Today was a muted day. There was not heavy frost, nor bright sunshine, but I went out and took the camera anyway (partly to see the overflowing river-water on the fields, partly to grab some special time with my eldest daughter). And I think I came back with some treasure. The photographs aren’t as immediately pretty as the frosty ones, but they’re interesting, and I’m fascinated by the colours in the seed-head one. So there we go. A muted hedgerow, but still interesting.

I spent much of yesterday in Ludlow, in the rain. We went first to DeGrey’s Tearoom, the children and I, and then to the castle. The tearoom is what you would think a DeGrey’s tearoom should be like. It has waitresses with little aprons (it must employ half the teenage girls in Ludlow on a Holiday basis), and real china. The tea is leaf tea, and comes with a little pot of water. And the cakes (you get a choice of ‘Cream Tea’ or ‘Afternoon Tea’) come on a little three-tiered stand, with aplomb. The building is Tudor, and the whole experience like going back to the 1930’s. The sandwiches (I chose salmon and cucumber) come beautifully arranged, as if they had been dressed by an old-fashioned couturier. It is a rather gold-plated experience, but one we cope with it by the children sharing the sandwiches and scones, and my not having a choice of fancy cake (yes, they are called ‘Fancy Cakes’). And it’s worth it, just for the sheer fun of the small ceremonial of it all.

Ludlow castle, if you ever get the chance, is well worth a look around. It’s not too large to be scarily imposing, and there’s plenty of room for children to run around. There are many tall winding staircases to spooky towers, and an ice-house under the moat which doubles as a skeleton-rattling dungeon. The views are suitably viewish, although the experience does lack the terrifying thrill I’ve experienced in some Cadw properties, which seem to specialise in surprising twists like unmarked 200ft drops to the waiting sea. I can only deduce that the Welsh do not believe in Fencing Children In. Or they are conducting some experiment to do with natural selection.

I never know quite what to make of the gap between Christmas and New Year, and this year is no exception. Yesterday I was tired and fretful, and glad to be done with the hurly-burly hustle of a family Christmas. Today I’m bored and faintly restless - on the edge of something, but I’m not sure what. So I’m drawing, while the children play with their toys. I would like to be grand, and to make a thing each day, until the holidays are over. However the drawing today took a bit of a while, and I want to do more on it, or collage it, or embroider it, or something . We shall see. I don’t know yet whether I think that the sketch can come to anything any good or not.

Things you should know about my Christmas:

On Christmas Eve, Rosie decided to attack her hair with the paper scissors, just as my Mother was coming in for Mulled Wine and Polite Conversation. It was so hacked that I sat her (Rosie, not Mother) on the table and gave her an impromptu pudding basin ‘trim’. She looks a little strange, but given the ‘before’, it’s a distinct improvement.

Eleanor then (to be nice), wanted her hair cut short, too. So she has a bob, which suits her. Father, in his wisdom, collared me just as I was sweeping up the copious hairiness, and took the hair away in a bag, because, according to him (and he should know), it’s ideal for simulating Thatched Roofs on his guage of Model Railway. A slightly surreal moment, but it passed, thankfully.

On Christmas Day, I was woken at precisely Half-past Three, and didn’t get back to sleep. There is a picture of me, all dressed up, at my parent’s house (I did the cooking, but their house is bigger), but no-one will ever, ever, see it.

Eleanor’s favourite present is a whoopee cushion with a picture of a football on it.

Rosie’s favourite present is paper and new shiny felt-tip pens.

My favourite present is a Book Token. I am, officially, a dull girl. But a dull girl who loves bookshops, which has to be better than a dull girl who loves, say, Asda Meat Pies, or Bargain Hunting in Matalan. I may take the children into Hereford tomorrow, and we shall spend our tokens with happy abandon. I am considering taking the children to a Youth Hostel somewhere, because that really would be fun, and good for us all to get away for a night or two.

My Parent’s house is set in really beautiful countryside - a remote valley. It’s lovely - so quiet and beautiful. I managed to sneak out for a walk, early on Boxing Day morning. The views were splendid over the valley, and the river full and beautiful. I walked from Kinsham to Wapley Hill Fort, and then had to rush back for drinks and Aunties.

The pictures which are not of the drawing are of my Mince Pies, which I enjoyed making, and we are enjoying eating, and our cake, which the children decorated. I make my own mincemeat - it’s easy as easy and nicer than the boughten variety by far. The cake is a Dundee Cake, rather than a Traditional Christmas Cake, because I find the Dundee kind get eaten, rather than sitting around in the tin until November next year.

It is a bit early to wonder what 2008 will bring, but I am thinking about resolutions, and wondering anyway.

This will (unless something really noteworthy, like an earthquake, or thunderbolts happens) almost certainly be the Last Blog Entry Before Christmas. I may, if not horizontal on the carpet at my long-suffering Mother’s House, post one between Christmas and New Year. I may, with luck, decide that my New Year’s Resolution is to join a peculiar branch of a peculiar tree-worshipping sect, and eschew the computer for leafy branches and delightful shadow patterns. But it’s unlikely.

I have few nice new pictures to show people, which is rather mizz. It’s because I’ve been busy being Mama, and having a Rather Nasty Cold, which sentence will be causing stressed Mamas all over the world to nod knowingly in time with me, whilst wading through seas of paper and sellotape, and blowing their noses in synchopated rhythms. We should start a band. Really we should.

However, I can show you the more landscape oriented pictures of the frosty morning walk (and I shall - it is unashamed padding). And some pictures of the glassy, classy baubles on my Christmas Tree, some of which are finds foraged from junk shops and are relicts of chandeliers, and under which people have probably danced, and cried, and looked at for many years. Very Jane Austen, the chandeliers, and the landscape, I think, and that feeling of watching people dancing. Although, to be fair, they did not have telephone wires in Jane’s day. Or cameras, apart from the obscura kind.