November Sunshine...

 

It's not an easy thing coping with change in these days... 

Lines are drawn on winter grass

I stop and stand for a moment

whisper...don't go...don't go.

It's my soul song  my heart cry

Shell and stone   feather and bone.

Black oak stark against blueness

Drawing  restoring  slow breathing

sigh...don't leave...don't leave.

My soul song   my heart cry

Shell and bone   feather and stone.

For these we give thanks again

For copper rustling  mossed cushions

cry...stay awhile...stay awhile.

Sing my soul song   slow my heartbeat

Shell and stone   feather and bone.

Lines are drawn on winter grass

A low sun moves and shadows pass

now going...soon fading.

My heart cry   my soul song

Shell and stone   feather and bone.

Lockdown walks...

Here's a pic of some summer flowers in the herb garden.

"Fox and cubs"

Lockdown walks in Penketh

I'm enjoying the need to walk around the district again!!

Over the weekend two lovely walks towards the south of the parish...

Sankey Brook...

...making it's way down to the Mersey River...

...and this one very close to our home...

... the walk down to the Ferry Inn by the Mersey and the yacht haven in the Sankey Canal...

...golden light on the water..still...

...the boat yard by the canal... 

 

..and here's some lovely autumn colour from the garden at 

The Potters House Penketh.

..as they say on all the blog posts...

"Stay Safe"

🍂

Song for Spring

Song for Spring

Praise be to the swallows

Who dared to venture north this week

Praise be to those fellows.

Praise be to the sun

All glorious in the shadows it throws

Praise be to the sharp sun.

Praise be to the green grass

Softening the verges with the red bilberry

Praise be for the petrichor.

Praise be to the coal black ravens

Nesting high in the tallest beech trees

Praise be for cawing birds.

Praise be for the seasons

Catching us unawares each year

Praise be for the northern spring.

...there is time to enjoy and time to reflect...

a Poem for Thursday....Preston Patrick in March

Preston Patrick in March

Preston Patrick in March.

 If you don’t hurt crows

They won’t hurt you

My father said

And I believed him.

Chorus :-

While water drips

In a blue plastic drum

Water runs from

A pipe in the yard

Water brown bubbling

And smelling strong.

In the ring of trees

Black branched

Against a pearly sky

Crows weave nests.

Chorus:-

Ghost trees hover high

On early green hills

And mist and low cloud

Merge in distant perspectives.

Chorus:-

There sits a flatbed trailer

Unmoved by their caws

And rusty supports form

As iron oxidises.

Chorus:-

The inspiration for the first stanza came out of a poem by Vicki Feaver in her  book,

 “The Handless Maiden”…Cape Poetry

Wasps…

“If you don’t hurt wasps

They won’t hurt you

My father told me.

But I didn’t believe him,”

Day Seven Art Challenge Alan Snape Potter

..and so we reach Day Seven of The Art Challenge for the potter...Alan Snape...

At the closing exhibition of his time studying art at St Martins Lancaster...every piece of work apart from two which we still have...sold! 

At that time Alan was working in wood, metal and ceramic. He was creating wall pieces with burnt wood and metal or clay..... big powerful pieces of art.

 I was always sorry that teaching at Penketh High...stopped all that influence. Too much else to think about...apart from family growingup etc!! 

So the commission for a wall mounted work to be placed in the foyer of the Oaks Centre  in Penketh was welcomed. 

The piece is composed of oak beams burnt in the bonfire, down the field, until charred to his satisfaction. Then formed into various sized crosses and three pure white ceramic balls placed within the sculpture.

If you ask him what it means you will receive a gentle shrug and...

 "what do you think?"

I'm adding this early pic of Alan's car....the beloved Nelly...car...circa 1967...in Rochdale with a friend from St. Martin's College Lancaster, the lovely sister @Rosiemcclellandart and yours truly...how glamorous, how young, how innocent we were!

I kept slim by pushing Nelly to start her most days!!

 

Art challenge...Day Six...Jonah in the Boat Asleep.

Day Six of the potters art challenge.

Many of the series Alan has produced have been based on well known Bible Stories. 

This is from the story of Jonah who disobeyed instructions...and ended up inside a BIG fish!....he eventually obeyed ...though still wasn't very happy...read it for yourself!

In this piece from the series Jonah is asleep in the boat...just before they throw him off to the fish!!!! Typical of the potter's sense of humour.

Art Challenge Day Three

Day Three of the potter's art challenge.

Most artists hate commissions...takes them away from what they want to do...it means they have to ask questions!!

But commissions are also bread and butter for an artist! 

This commission was however a pleasure for Alan.

This is a Baptismal Bowl commissioned by a newly renovated Liverpool Church. 

(pics by G)

Art Challenge...post one a day!

Today I've posted an edited photo taken as part of a series when we went to find Derek Jarman's cottage on the shingle in Dungeness.

"The Abandoned Boat"

What an amazing place...a wilderness of stone and sea...yet full of life with such banks of marine wild flowers and a glimpse of a hare running away from his cottage.

I may never get a chance to return...but the memories are strong and quite a bit of poetry resulted from that visit.

"The Abandoned Boat"

Wild flowers on the shingle.

 The emptiness of the landscape.

Rusting metal everywhere hidden in the maran grasses.

Sculptural rusting metals...abandoned.

A Poem for Thursday....

I was asked by @neviepiecakes aka Natasha Collins...lovely daughter..if I would post some pics for seven days from the different series that I've taken on camera. Thankyou Natasha.
This photo is one of three from a travel series. It now belongs to a great friend. I'm sure that there are references in this pic from wonderful international photographers...and so I give them thanks for their blogs and hope that I may have learnt from them and their skills.

I often think poetry when I take pics...and this little poem is very apt for the feelings often there when on a long journey...and you are really nowhere!

To Travel

To travel is to be nowhere.

You’re not here

And you’re not there.

So,

If you get the wrong train to somewhere,

Or you get off at

The wrong station for somewhere,

Does that mean

That you have completely disappeared?

And when the train gets to somewhere

Will they find that you are nowhere.

And how will you get back from there?

I'll post the other two in the series for you. 

 The start of the journey

All change at Euston

Chalk Paint

It's been a long time coming, but at last, at last,  we have redecorated the dining room.
I say we...you who know me will realise that the royal "We" usually means ..The Potter!.
But I did my bit by keeping up the supply of coffee and tea and making soup for lunch from the stock saved from the holiday meats and bones. Never, ever did a carcass get thrown out at the Ormeau Road home in Belfast while I was growing up. Bones and giblets, onion and carrots, rice or barley and the homely smell of stock simmering on a low gas!...ahhh! .
...Anyway the walls are now a soft grey, the ceiling white and the wooden staircase wall white as well. Things have yet to go back in place, but it's starting to regain a life of its own again .
For a while it had become a dumping ground...the table always full of items crying for attention .......or not!
 I also did my duty and went to IKEA! Obviously, I bought a box of candles....does anyone ever go to IKEA and not buy candles? I bought new cushion covers in glorious shades of grey...very tasteful I'm told ..a sort of zebra rug thingy to put under the table...to warm our feet...the room is not the warmest spot in the house.
 Oh and three little sheepskin rugs to cover the seats of the wooden chairs. That idea I saw in one of the blogs I follow " Lisas Hus "....http://lisashus.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/ett-vackert-julslut.html....brilliant...so now there will be warm feet and warm derrières.
I'd bought some chalk paints about a year ago when I first mentioned the redesign of the room to the potter and there they sat all year, clogging up the kitchen surfaces. But today, was the day to bite the bullet and brighten up the old wooden chairs.
We used to be antique dealers. Hmmm....what have we not been I ask myself!...and to paint a windsor chair was tantamount to betraying one's country....treason!
What rubbish...I plonked it on the studio table and got the job done...love it. Another two to do tomorrow and the job's a goodun...as they say around here.

Discovering John Blakemore...photographer.

I've discovered the work of the photographer...John Blakemore...yes I know ...rather late in his life...but sooner late than never.

So I'm inspired by his work to try to push my own photography on a bit.

His work on tulips started me off as a pot in the living room was almost dead and yet still reaching out for the light....I did what "they" recommend...took loads and loads of the same thing but each one slightly different and that assessed them before editing.

 ...at the same time I had an article about Steichen and his iconic photo of Gloria Swanson around ...reading it from time to time in between other things...and so I tried the black net over the lens to capture a distance in the pics....
...fun and maybe a bit of success and a moving on in what I am trying to achieve.

The Rhinoceros

The potter has an uncanny knack of being ahead of the game.....the word game I use lightly!  No football meant.
He produced his first penguins a few months before "The March of the Penguins", arrived on the big screen. The polar bears before the global warming fears were played out on the small screen each night.
The latest animal to emerge from the heat of the kiln...is the rhinoceros.
She...for it is she....is ready for a night on the tiles with nails painted red as she sashays out into the big wide world.
The great white rhino is all but extinct ....I believe only five exist in the world today and they are all in zoos...how sad that man's greed....sale of the magnificent horns...will mean generations to come will not have the joy of knowing this armour clad beast in all her grandeur.

This magnificent creature will be on display at The Gallery Bank Quay House, Warrington from tomorrow in a new exhibition there.

As will this photograph of The Old Girl's Grammar School Palmyra Square Warrington. By your's truly!

 Open until 20th April.....

Esther Takes the Pics...

I passed the camera to the lovely grandgirl...

...Essie...

...on the way back from her singing lesson....and she followed the path of the sun going down...

...sounds like a first line for a song!!...here's what she caught...

(edited by Grangee!)

Friday in Berlin

My lovely niece...Jessica...she of the "Berlinified" blog...took us to the Martin Gropius Gallery where there was an exhibition of the late Diane Arbus's photographic works.

  Jess studied Fashion Photography at London School of Fashion...and knew about Arbus's work, but to see the results of a life of photography in the many rooms used is such a different thing from learning about it in the lecture room.

Some quotes from the show...
"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you - the less you know"

"I see the divineness in ordinary things".

"Photographs are like a stain - it was there, but no longer is".

I like these quotes.. ...but to be honest I'm still thinking about what they mean for my photography!
I made lots of little squiggley drawings about the pics that really interested me...

I was most interested in the way that she set up the photo....light and form and filling the space in ways that I might not have thought of. Some reminded me of "Hopper lighting" or even Hammershoi.She was seeing images and taking shots of people and situations that were way out of the normal photographer's scene.

One of her interesting quotes  ..."late afternoon, early winter sunlight" the best light to take pics!...I'll remember that !

The problem with East Berlin?...tooo many things for me to snap!!I kept getting left way behind the others!

Yes....you know it...not really a worker...a very BIG model!!
But it took me in!

Very excited as the family have bought me Photoshop...so let's hope that my pics improve!