Postcards from the edge

 I was delighted at the end of last year when Fiona asked if I'd like to join her and 4 of her  friends in a postcard print exchange for 2017. I jumped at the chance for sharing ideas and the parameters were straightforward:- send four postcards to everyone else on the list, once every three months, in a pre-determined size and picking from a list of print techniques to realise them in.

 All postcards had to respond to the changing seasons so January's offering was Summer....
now I know it's not summer here but it is in the southern hemisphere and I did not want to be out of kilter so I did my summer postcards in December for January posting and I am currently contemplating a collagraph for autumn to be posted in early April.

 I chose to do a monoprint based on a Barbara Kingsolver quote from the book 'Prodigal Summer' and I sat back to wait for mine to arrive. Susan's came first followed by Kim, Andrina, Fiona and Steph. Poor Stephanie's took 2 months to reach me and we'd almost given up hope of getting a full set and then it just appeared last week. So, now I had 6 including my own and wanted to find a way to keep them all together. As I always slip in default mode and make a book I cracked on with an idea today.

 I made a mock up of a double folded accordion book and made pockets to slide each postcard into. I thought cutting a letter out of the front would show a peep of the postcard and make it relevant as all the seasons have 6 characters so I could make a full set by the end of the exchange.

 Then I just cut off one of the flaps and turned it on itself to neaten the front. I was thinking of adding covers but I used quite thick paper for this exercise and just drawing or printing something on the front may be enough. I am well aware that my cutting is wonky but I did not plan it too closely. I made it just to see if it would do the job and I think it will although I need to re-think the right typeface to use. I also know that summer has two 'm's' but Blogger won't upload the second photo for some reason which was housing Susan's postcard. I love technology!!

 That last statement is of course only partly true.......

 I went up to Bristol yesterday to do some screen printing and had a mock up of all these beetles from either my drawings or my photos from the Natural History Museum in Oxford. I cut them out and stuck them all on a circular piece of paper because I have been looking at making toroidal books recently. Simon, who was running the workshop said I work in a very analogue way because most people would have scanned all the drawings in and moved them around in Photoshop. Well, I use Photoshop a lot but like to have my hand in things and quite enjoy messing about with scale on the photocopier and superimposing images on top of one another.

 With the circular book in mind I bought these old sheets which I think might be from a tachograph or something similar and I printed by beetle ring onto them for a bit of experimentation. I might use them individually or stick and cut them back to back before making the book. I shall reveal all when I decide.

In my 'analogue' way I had produced some imagery for the 'winter' postcard for the exchange already. As we're in the middle of these freezing temperatures it is a season uppermost in my thoughts! Simon altered it in Photoshop to get it onto acetate and I gaily printed 8 versions to get 6 good ones but I have noticed today that they are too small! He may have changed my original or I made an error up front. Who knows?
The long and short of it is that I have my postcards for July already but not only are they the wrong size, I have realised today that screenprinting is not one of the disciplines on the list. Drat and curses.
I'm not showing them here just in case..... but if I have a surfeit of winter themed postcards to get rid of.... anyone want something sent from Wales?

Getting ahead

 About a month ago I nearly fell down the stairs but I managed to save myself by catching my hand in the banister, resulting in a fractured finger. I heard a sickening crack and thought I'd broken bones so a fracture was getting off lightly. Since then my hand has had to be taped up and you realise how important every digit is when you don't have use of all 10 of them! Luckily it was my right hand and I am left handed so it could have been worse. In fact I could have fallen badly and done myself a bad injury so I consider myself very fortunate. I have been able to carry on drawing this month and I have been working on ideas for a screenprint as I am going up to Bristol this weekend to get some screens exposed with Simon again. He has set up a special day for me and one other so I aim to make the most of it and I need both hands strong enough to pull that squeegee!!

I've been drawing beetles and hellebores - as usual, with more ideas than I can fit into the time allowed - but I also want to do something local to here so I went up to St Davids Cathedral yesterday to add more photos to my groaning files.

 I've lost count of how many times I've been up to St Davids in the 20 years we've lived here but there is always something new to see. Yesterday it was empty of people, probably because Wales were playing Italy in the Six Nations at the same time. St. Davids was like a ghost town so the cathedral seemed like it was all mine, except this time I got more involved with what was outside rather than inside.

 I realised that I had never walked around the whole perimeter and looked in detail at the  statues either side of the big windows. The two above are either side of the main door but the others are towards the east end, mainly in shadow in the afternoon. Some are eroded beyond recognition but others stand out.

 I love this lady clad in her sandstone wimple and the creature below was a real find.

 My favourite is the young man. Something about those flowing locks and the faraway look in his eyes just speak to me. I can see me returning just to see what he looks like in different light. Yesterday was cold but sunny and he was in shade for the afternoon. I might try an early morning to see if his features are highlighted more sharply then.

And finally, when they restored the east end of the cathedral they added a sculpture of the last Dean, John Wyn Evans, a figure I remember well. My husband said 'Oh look there's Eric Morecambe'.....
which got a withering look from me, but at the moment I need him as a driver so I kept my thoughts to myself. I need to stay strapped up for at least another two weeks but when I go back for the next look , I shall drive myself, and leave him at home!

Murmurings

 I have a great friend who rants and gets into a real tizz about the way hedgerows are managed by farmers. She writes to the local paper and has been known to stop contractors in their tracks and question them as to why they are cutting hedges back so roughly rather than laying them in the good old fashioned way.

I am with her every step of the way, probably more so since the old farmer with land around us passed away a couple of years ago. His rented land , after over 75 years in one family, now has new tenants, charged by the local estate who own it with bringing everything into the 21st century. Two years ago the hedges on fields on our side of the road were chopped away. We felt exposed and vulnerable. Our road was always a bit hidden and overgrown and people whizzed past our house without even seeing it. But life moves on and the new hedges are settling in and growing better but the downside has been the complete disappearance of ground nesting yellowhammers in our garden. Already a red data list species, we've gone from a healthy winter population to no winter population as their habitat has been lost. Similarly we no longer enjoy the constant hoots of tawny owls at night as much as we used to. It is definitely a case of winners and losers.

 And then just after Christmas the contractors started on the other side of the road. It's poor land, very marshy and boggy, but the estate have found someone to take it on with free rent provided they cut the trees on the roadside boundaries. In one afternoon we lost all of the cover we have had for over 16 years and it has taken some getting used to despite knowing that some of the trees were rotten and failing.

 In truth, the house is lighter and the sudden loss of so many old trees has meant even more birds in our garden. Every morning we delight in four or five jays feeding together as a group, obviously missing their daily roost somewhere. Buzzards are more frequent and so is the sight of red kites overhead, but it is late afternoon where we notice the greatest difference.

 We've always enjoyed large numbers of starlings flying overhead to their  night time roost in the winter. They congregate in their thousands each day at the massive farm half a mile down the road and swoop over about 4pm.... except that since the trees came down they've taken to stopping off in the trees in front of the house and in the garden. I start to hear a noise and look up to see them land in my favourite ash tree, building in numbers.

 Very soon they are everywhere, on the ground, in the trees, in the air and the noise is deafening.

As soon as I open my back door for a better look they are off like lightning and the noise of their wings as they take off en masse is quite thrilling. Watching them duck and dive together in the field is also one of natures wonders but lots of birds mean a lot of mess so whilst we're enjoying this as a benefit of the hedges and trees being cut it takes some getting used to.

I've yet to tell my friend what they've done but she's coming over next week and I know she will be horrified. I'm thinking of making her arrive at 4pm and hope she will be taken by the spectacle in the air and not see the one on the ground!

POSTSCRIPT

For those that have asked me, let me tell you that my friend had steam coming out of her ears when she came yesterday. In the meantime my husband had visited the estate office to find that a tree survey should have been done before the cutting so whilst there were apologies all round that the contractor went ahead too soon, the deed has been done. Someone has been back to tidy up the whole roadside boundary but what is lost is lost. I try to be philosophical as it is not our land and we do not have any rights over how it is managed. In small communities like ours you want to keep people working with you, not against. The field contained within has been a bog for years but now the trees are gone it is going to be drained so I wait to see what happens next.
In the meantime the starlings have stopped meeting in our ash tree en route to the overnight roost but they are gathering in larger and larger numbers and you can time the afternoon fly past to within a few minutes either way. My friend stayed to see it and thought it wonderful leaving us both being philosophical about the outcomes of change.

Year end ... new beginnings

I am patiently waiting for 2016 to end and open a door on another chapter. I hope it will be better than the one we've had this year. It has been like a year like no other in my memory with contrasting highs and lows. Sadly, more lows than highs.

For someone of my tender age we've lost  musical heroes this year in David Bowie and  Prince, and then we lose Rick Parfitt and George Michael within two days of each other. News about Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds seals a week of strange tidings and has had me wondering 'who next?'
A phone call today tells me that 'who next' is an old friend from newspaper days who passed away in Ireland yesterday after a long fight with cancer. We had e mail exchanges this year when he was well enough to write and his humour will leave me with wonderful memories of friendship.

The political upheaval of Brexit in the summer had me wondering if the inmates were now running the asylum. Recent events here and abroad makes me conclude that they might be. So many others seems to have an agenda that differs to mine. I want the impossible it seems. I'd like to see a resolution in Syria in 2017 and hope for refugees. Faint hope I suspect.

I am not usually so introspective but I think the biggest loss, that of the passing of Leonard Cohen, has made me so this year. Revisiting the  words from 'Anthem' makes me realise what an important step change there has been in 2016. Eyes down for something more positive in 2017. Bring it on.

Solstice

So, Winter is finally here. Up early to catch the sunrise, peering out into the dawn and thinking of all those people on Glastonbury Tor or at Stonehenge doing the same thing like an annual ritual. The days have already felt short and very dark so today will feel no different. Amazingly, on the other side of the world, friends are celebrating the Summer Solstice. Do take a look at Barry's incredible sunrise in Australia. Here in Wales it was dull and cloud heavy. I could happily do a swap!
It's one of those days of the year that I try to record in words. I look for a poem that says what I want to say. That means turning to my favourite poet, the outstanding Alice Oswald and the best collection ever - The Thing in the Gap Stone Stile. I have picked 'Prayer' for 2016:

Here I work in the hollow of God's hand
with time bent round into my reach. I touch
the circle of the earth, I throw and catch
the sun and moon by turns into my mind.
I sense the length of it from end to end,
I sway me gently in my flesh and each
point of the process changes as I watch;
the flowers come, the rain follows the wind.

And all I ask is this - and you can see
how far the soul, when it goes under flesh,
is not a soul, is small and creaturish -
that every day the sun comes silently
to set my hands to work and that the moon
turns and returns to meet me when it's done.

Is it really December?

 I am finding this December such a delight. This dry mild weather means glorious sunsets and some misty mornings. Yesterday brought the first touch of frost for us in the west but it disappeared as the sun rose, leaving everything weeping tears. It is all looking decidely ragged out there in the garden now but we resist the temptation to cut down the seedheads of the teasels, eupatoriums and hydrangeas until the bitter end. There's a lot of other seedheads too which are providing food for the birds and huge joy for us as we watch them plunder the treasure. The hardy Shoo Fly seed pod cases are getting more papery by the day and I shall harvest them for next years seed  soon but they look like winter stars on their long stalks and I keep thinking they'll last a little longer yet. It's hard to believe we are in the throes of Christmas lunches although with just over a week to the winter solstice, it has started to get dark here by 4pm and the days are most definitely shorter.  But it's been a magnificent autumn this year and I want it to continue for a bit longer. Please.

Doing lots, showing little

 There's little point in making apologies for the lack of blogging because it has only crossed my mind occasionally throughout this autumn. Hasn't it been a glorious one here? There's been lots of walking, lots of collecting things on those walks and plenty of drawing and prints ensuing. I have been playing around with drypoint print  ideas and working on a few book ideas, one all about beetles and the other looking at childhood memories of my home town of Bristol. It involves learning to sew with my Mum and my great aunt Lilla and the books are both so different that I am really enjoying working between the two ideas in tandem.

 Using some of my imagery from old patterns bought by my aunt in the old Bristol department stores of Lewis's and Jones's I went up to Bristol yesterday and spent the day learning to expose my photos and create screenprints from them. I did a fantastic one day course with an artist named Simon Tozer who was really generous with his time and expertise. The sewing ideas are all part of the book idea but I also produced a two screen  A4 print from a photo I took of some of my 'Batsford' books.

These great little books were published in the 60's and 70's and have some unbeatable titles. Some of them have become very collectable and are no longer a second  hand bargain price, but others are still there for pennies online and the graphics and the ideas are as valid now as they were 40 years ago. Do look out for them!

I think screenprinting is now firmly  'another' of my favourite things but it's that time of year to prepare for something else... but I'm still not going to mention the C word I promise. Instead I'm going to concentrate on the things I intend to do in 2017 such as finish those beetle and sewing books and prepare for delivering more workshops.

I shall be teaching another book workshop at the Yard Artspace in March and do take a look at Sue's programme for 2017 as she has managed to lure Sarah Morpeth to Cheltenham for a weekend of papercutting and bookmaking which should be really exciting. Before that I start a five week mixed media collage course locally which will be five individual all day workshops run fortnightly through January to March. Can't wait to see that happen and I am preparing samples daily for it. This is a course I've devised from scratch so I hope it goes well!

I'm also working on some prints for a postcard print exchange I've been invited to join. There are six of us but I'm the only one in the northern hemisphere. Everyone else is in Australia and I am really excited about taking part. Given posting times and drying times I am already working on my first set of prints which has to be posted in January. No reveals as I cannot spill the beans in advance but when the time is right......

With the days so busy and posting so infrequent it may well be that it is time to shut the door on the blog. Instagram is beckoning me and I feel like it might suit my needs. Who knows?  But if I decide to take the plunge I'll let you know!