Day five of the potter's art challenge....and this camel seen in the window at the Buckenham Gallery in Southwold...is ready, willing and able to paaarrrtay!!

Where do the ideas come from?...I dread to think!

I think this sweet camel is long gone...off partying somewhere classy...but others will follow where he has lead no doubt.

You can always pop into the Potters House here on Heath Road Penketh to see what the potter is conjuring up at the moment.

Looking in  and...

...he's looking out!!

...clay feet!

...that sounds quite old testament-like doesn't it?...

...well they are for some pieces that I made many years ago but never really liked the plaster feet that I put on them at the time  ....I think they look rather good just sitting here...

...that high instep is very McClellandish...those in the know...will know!!

..oh yes and the hammer toes ditto!

A Poem for Thursday.

The Outing to Dungeness

Prospect Cottage

Basically it was just a hut
A fisherman’s hut
Along with all the other huts
Now I love a hut
I would like a hut by the sea
Not too much to keep tidy
And the sound and smell of it all…


Basically it was not really a garden
Just the way you collect bits of plants along the beach
And hope that they might take root
And help you to remember that day
By the sea on the beach
In the shingle…

Really it was not sculpture
Not what those earnest artists
Like Andy or the Welsh man would think of as sculpture
More like me when I walked the sands at Ballyferris
And picked up the rubbish that the others had dropped
Well I say the rubbish
I never actually thought of it that way…


Really I wasn’t too sure about the yellow windows
And the writing on the end wall
All about the sun
Though the mist obscured it that day
And the words were a bit small
Now that my eyesight is not what it was…


So what made me cry?
For it was only a fisherman’s hut
It was only the shingle all around it by the road
It was only railway sleepers upended
Standing like a modern Stonehenge
And the perfume of the gorse
And the yellow horned poppies…

No really …there was not much there you know.


[This was the day that we went looking for Derek Jarman's house on the shingle in that magic spot called Dungeness. The brochure say the largest area of shingle in Europe. Full of wild sea flowers, protected by the local authorities....mysteriously beautiful.]

The White Lady

She stood on a Morroccan pokerwork table in the porch.
She was always there as I was growing up.
When the house was cleared all those years ago...I got to keep her.
So I put her on a hall table in the large front cloakroom...reminding me of home and family in Ireland.
But all things come to naught eventually ...and it was always a certainty... what with children and then grand children racing around the house ...that one day she would be toppled off her table and smashed.
I put her up in the top studio and kept all the pieces hoping for a time to glue the bits together.
Days, weeks and years went by, and always something more important filled the time.
But....this new year... the potter got her down, gathered the pieces and took her to his studio.
And once again she graces the table. Children grown up....grandchildren with more important things to do on computers etc.

The story was that she came from the Glasgow Festival Exhibition of 1888. She is made of Parian ware and has the stamp...Copeland. The title of the sculpture is .."The stepping stones" by Edward W. Wyon and it was distributed by Art Union of London.

Now sadly it's clear that she has seen better days...and the latest fall was certainly not the first as there are scraps of parian missing from toes and arms.
But I'm thrilled to see her amongst the roses and amazed that she has survived at least four generations on my mother's scottish side of the family!

Hot from the kiln!

These sculptures are just out of the kiln this morning. Here they are still  hot in the studio.

 As soon as they were cool enough we got them photographed and on to f.b.. I put them into flickr as well and added to the various groups.
They are all destined for distant climes! Well that is Kent and Suffolk. The Suffolk galleries are,
The Snape Maltings...which I always think is very apt for Alan!...
The Buckenham Gallery in Southwold, favourite place in England....
And The Harbour Gallery in Whitstable, Kent. This is a fairly new place for us to exhibit. If you live nearby, why not have a look at these in person.

The back drop is also the work of an artist. I got it from the Tate Liverpool a few years ago. It's by a South American artist, but I have lost track of his name. He gave away freebies of the prints of his original photographs and I took a couple. If anyone out there can recognize his work, perhaps you might let me know who you think it is.

"Mrs. Milliken's Garden"

There is a little town in Co. Down on the shores of Strangford Lough,

called

Greyabbey. 

In some ways it's a "nothing grand"  kind of a town.

But in other ways, it's a mystical place, where once you have been,

you can never forget.

And in this little town is a little shop.

Not just any old shop,

but an art shop extraordinaire.

This is Milliken's art emporium.

What? ...I hear you say. 

That little shop in that little town?

YES!

We went last week my sister and I.

Rosie had canvases to collect, so I tagged along with her.

The front door had a notice on it...similar to our own shop...

"if not open ,come around the back...

we may be in the garden!"

So we trundle around the back to find a world that compares with Venice or Florence or Rome!

I once shared a holiday with someone who when confronted with the walls of Venice, remarked that they could do with a good lick of paint.

One can only sigh!

Here at Milliken's are ancient doors and windows for produce long ago discontinued.

Doors above,

where bales of who knows what would have been hauled in for the winter.

Useful doors for useful places.

....and nothing going to waste...

And who wouldn't long for such a door as this,

as an entrance to the office each day.

But that is not all.

I spied the garden and swiftly sneaked a photo of the archway leading into it.

As I turned to go, not wanting to intrude any further,

a voice with at beautiful Co.Down "burr" to it , cried from a window,

"Go on in there girls!"

and next thing... Mrs. Millington came towards us across the yard,

and beckoned us to go through the arch and into another world.

Mrs. Millington is the gardener.

Although as she said,

"At ninety two it's not always possible to keep it at the level of maintainence that I would like."

"Rosydandrums"

That's it... I shall never call them any thing else in future...

so much more descriptive...

don't you think?

She sat in front of them giving us the names of each one.

Structures so full of flowers

 that it was nigh on impossible to walk through the perfumed paths.

"A white lady" close by.......

...a wonderful glimmering white clematis.

A working garden...where wheelbarrows...

and washing...

sit side by side with rhubarb and "tatties".

And the birds are not forgotten.

Mrs. Milliken stood in the heart of her garden.

And we were loathe to leave such a feisty, gracious and knowedgeable woman.

But we had places to go and things to do.

So we picked up the canvases and took them to the car

 and entered the normal world and it's hurly-burly once again.

Sweet memories.