Christmas is Coming

I try to do my weekly shop first thing on a Monday morning just after the supermarket opens its doors for business. Normally I am on autopilot and nothing disturbs the old grey matter but this morning my peaceful reverie was interrupted by Bing Crosby... hearing 'White Christmas' so early in the day sent a chill down my spine.... but there is no escaping the start of the Christmas season so I am getting in early with my annual plea for the albatross. It won't be long before you either send or receive your Christmas cards. If you are able to save the stamps and send them to the RSPB after Christmas it will help in the vital conservation work they are supporting in order to save this magnificent bird. This year I'm going to put a little plea in each of my envelopes to try and encourage as many people as I know to save their stamps. If this is not the cause for you, a quick web search shows other charities that can make use of your stamps so I hope you'll find one you'd like to support.

This little video was produced in 1951 so the posting dates are not to be taken as gospel! I love stop motion films and Lotte Reiniger used papercutting for her films to huge effect. I know it's very dated (aren't we all) but where she led , others have followed. She was a pioneer in this field and her films have an old fashioned charm that find a ready home with me.

Eliminate the negative

A couple of months ago I started a drawing course with Aberystwyth University. The first section which was traditional drawing skills finished a couple of weeks ago and we're now into a 12 week section where the emphasis is drawing from the imagination. This week we had to draw a huge stack of chairs which everyone (except me) hated. I have found a love of drawing detailed, complicated things with lots of negative spaces. I'm not saying I am any good at it.... but I enjoy it! Similarly I also enjoy abstract stuff too and this week's homework required cropping our chair drawing and using other mediums to display it. I decided to make some collagraph plates as part of my response. I made five plates and today I have spent about 5 hours in my shed printing them. Of the five, only two work in a way I am happy with. The image above shows one of them, inked up with three different colours of varying viscosity.

In the summer I did a short term consultancy project for an old employer and I used some of the money I earned to treat myself to some good quality rollers. My friend Sue gave me the right advice of which ones to buy in order to be able to do viscosity inking successfully and today was my first try 'at home' of the technique. As I put out too much ink I decided to ink up a couple of older plates to use it up. There is a limit to how many plates I need for my 'homework' so I produced the prints above and below. The colour combination is a favourite one.

I must have pulled over 20 odd prints today and some should never see the light of day but that's the whole point of proofing plates and trying things out. You can think a plate will be wonderful until you pull that paper away from it and realise it leaves a lot to be desired! If there's a downside to a full day's printing though it must be my inky hands.... and backache....

Going down to the sea again....

It was announced a couple of weeks ago that National Geographic had named Pembrokeshire as the second best coastal destination in the world along with the Tutukaka coast in New Zealand. This means it beat places such as the Seychelles and Bermuda! The magazine rated 99 of the world's islands, coastlines and beaches for sustainability and authenticity and their top 15, which included Pembrokeshire, were chosen because they are in excellent shape, being relatively unspoiled and likely to stay like it.

Perhaps that's because there is so much to see around here that none of it ever gets really busy even during the height of the summer tourist season? Anyway, we decided to test that theory yesterday and headed north of the county for a brisk walk along the coast. The peninsula of Dinas Island which is owned by the National Trust starts and ends at a place called Pwllgwaelod. When we got here it was heaving with kayakers and coasteerers so we took a walk along the path to the beach a short distance away at Cwm yr Eglyws and found it deserted.' Now THAT is what Pembrokeshire is like!

The little hamlet at Cwm yr Eglyws is well known for having its own microclimate. It is often a few degrees hotter and drier than other parts of the Pembrokeshire coast. There is a sandy beach and a slipway for small boats. It is the site of the 12th century church of St Brynach which was almost completely destroyed by the Royal Charter storm of 1859. Only the belfry, west wall and part of the graveyard remain as you can see above. The Royal Charter went down off the coast of Anglesey in a horrendous storm in 1859 which affected many parts of the Welsh coast. It was responsible for over 800 deaths in one night and also led to the setting up of the gale warnings from the Meteorlogical Office. Not that there were any gales in sight yesterday afternoon. It was a beautiful day but darkened as the afternoon wore on. Last night saw one of the worst storms of the autumn so far and I hear on the news that it is now making it's way across mainland Britain. If it's anything like we experienced here, I'd batten down the hatches!

Oh Mrs Heelis, what would you think?

I do embrace new technology - honestly - and I love pop-up books... but I still like to hold the thing in my hand and turn the pages by myself. This is really clever stuff but nothing will ever beat the old fashioned way for me I think.

Canine Capers

Reading Bird in the House this morning I see that the next exhibition at my local gallery in Carmarthen is going to feature the textile taxidermy of Donya Coward. I love the inventiveness of this work and the subject matter. It reminded me that there is another dog related exhibition I'd love to see next month but this one isn't local sadly. It will be at the Rebecca Hossack Gallery in London and features the work of Peter Clark. Now, I've mentioned Peter before on this blog because I think the things he does with the paper that others discard is nothing short of magical. The exhibition is called 'Dogs are for Life, not just for Christmas'. These are all the images on show at present and 'Young Sea Dog' here is my favourite. Well, it's done with maps so no surprise there...

Gloucester Cathedral

A few weeks ago my friend Sue went to see 'Crucible', an exhibition of sculptures at Gloucester Cathedral. Her post, here, inspired us to get up to Gloucester to see it, something we finally managed yesterday on a warm, sunny, beautiful autumn day. Her photos do it better justice than mine so I will not inflict too many of my efforts on you here. Suffice to say it was a fabulous exhibition in a magnificent setting. We arrived early to avoid any half term crowds but the cathedral was packed by about 11.00. Not surprisingly the exhibition has been extended because of huge visitor numbers and will now end on November 7th. If you live in the vicinity I urge you to go. There are 76 sculptures in situ inside and outside of the cathedral. Some you'll love and some you'll be ambivalent about but all of them provoke you to think about them.

This is Close V by Antony Gormley lying prostrate in a small chamber of its own. Very atmospheric. When I went back later I found a young man also lying prostrate nose to nose with it. How amazing to want to connect with something as much as that. No-one entered the little chamber while he was there. It was if we were all giving him the space he wanted... alternatively it could have been that great British reserve and not wanting to intrude... or plain embarassment that he could do such a thing in such a place....

...but the place was truly magical and somewhere I am ashamed to say I have never been before despite living 'just down the road' for most of my life until my mid 40's. As the sculptures are dotted all over the building you explore most of it whilst searching for them. I got lost in the delight of the tombs, the medieval floor tiles and the nooks and crannies, most of my photos being of the floor and oddities that I came across.

This early 17th century memorial was so detailed but what thrilled me most was the scratching and etching it had been subjected to by years of visitors. It was covered in little marks of graffiti as were walls everywhere. Names and dates were carved into the walls. I found some from 1705, 1763, 1841.... proof that Banksy was not the first graffiti artist in the West Country.

They began building this cathedral in 1089 although it was originally a Benedictine monastery as long ago as 700AD. When Henry VIII started to abolish the monasteries it was saved purely because his ancestor Edward II is interred there so you have an unbroken timeline of worship here for 1300 years. I know Sue is going to visit it again and I will be going back too, maybe before the end of the exhibition as there are many things I want to see again. My photographs have shown me things that I just didn't look at well enough first time round!

Jones - her book

The contemporary weaving exhibition I saw at the National Woollen Museum the other day was called Warp+Weft, the museum being just one of a three site venue for the event. More interestingly, for me, was the other work I went specifically to see. This was the response, in drawing and in stitch, by Julia Griffiths Jones to the museum, its artefacts and its production. I first saw Julia's mild steel work a few years and I love the strong graphic quality of her work. One of the outcomes of the work at the museum is a digitally printed book of her drawings on wool. It sent my mind thinking yet again about marrying printmaking and felt or woven textiles. Something to revisit perhaps? Anyway I'll let the artist tell you all about it herself and if you're intrigued to see more visit her website where there is also another video showing the book in all its detail.