Connections and Collections

I am always intrigued when random events come together and suddenly connect. I heard the fantastic news yesterday that my friend Sue received a distinction for her recently completed MA, her degree show being, coincidentally, the last creative exhibition I've been to in the past month or so. Her major working theme has been on collections  housed in the Oxford Museum of Natural History and the same theme of collections has become the focus of new work by textile artist, Stephanie Redfern, whose blog is one of my favourite reads. Through Stephanie's blog,which I can thoroughly recommend,  I was introduced last year to the work of Welsh artist, Clive Hicks Jenkins and I subsequently went to see his major retrospective exhibition at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.
You're probably wondering when I'm going to come to the point here but bear with me.... because the connection is that after the exhibition I started to read Clive's Artlog on a regular basis and over recent months I've eagerly read the posts about the creation of two accordion books for a new exhibition, again at the National Library. Yesterday's post on the Artlog detailed the opening of it and, on the spur of the moment I decided to drive up to see it for myself. It was a joy as always to see art in a book form and the artists selected had all approached things in such a diverse way. Each had produced two books, Clive's being an alphabet primer and a book with pop-ups and flaps etc. Sadly the cases enclosing the books precluded trying them out... otherwise I would have tried, believe me! Pop over to the Artlog to see more photos and to read Clive's post about it. Whilst you're there trawl back through past posts to see how the books were thought out. It is another  fascinating blog and rewards regular reading.

 So, like buses, I went to one exhibition yesterday and then today found myself at two more! I went along to the private view this afternoon of an exhibition called 'The Memory Clothes' in Carmarthen, the first solo exhibition of my friend, Lynda Cash, another textile artist working with collections. Lynda's collections of treasured family photos, documents and memories that have figured throughout her life and career have been brought together with a mixture of printing and stitching skills and it was just lovely to see it all brought to fruition. Although I've known Lynda for about 8 years I never knew that her first job was as an apprentice at the couturier house of Norman Hartnell, a favourite of the Queen and the Queen Mum. One of the key images Lynda had used was her first weekly payslip from Hartnell's for £3 4s 5d. It made me wish that I had  kept some of my paper memories like this but I'm enough of a hoarder as it is so it's probably good that I haven't.

Lynda's private viewing was getting busy so I popped across the road for a quick look around the latest exhibition at Oriel Myrrdin. At this point I had bumped into another friend who I offered a lift home to and I could see she was not inspired by what we saw so I shall have to go back again on my own because I certainly was! On display were selected works from the British Council Collection from a raft of contemporary artists all producing work to celebrate the achievements and lasting legacy of Charles Darwin. I quickly took this photo but cannot attribute an artist to it. It is a beautifully rendered pencil drawing of a book cover and brings me to the last coincidence and connection because I have been looking at book collections this week and looking at drawing the patterns made by the spines of rows of books. Don't you just  wonder at how these common threads run through things and how blogging connects us all in invisible ways?