I love hot soapy water on my hands, I can’t quite believe that people need to be encouraged to wash their hands. It’s such a refreshing task. Alcohol gel is nothing like as satisfying . I also have a funny habit of photographing sinks. So now hand washing is the new big thing, cue Julie Andrews
” Here are a few of my favourite sinks.”
I think I’m a bit of a romantic when standing in Arrival or Departure areas. There is something that refreshes my faith in human relationships. There is anticipation,sadness, anxiety and hope but familial love and the closeness of friendship are the uppermost emotions.
Yesterday I spent a couple of hours in a combined arrival and departure area of a train station. I have embarked on heart wrenching journeys to visit dying parents from here, excitedly started fascinating journeys to the rest of the world. Alternatively I have waited patiently to welcome many people I love and care for. On Sunday evenings there is often a gathering of young people just embarking on their careers in the navy being gathered up from all corners of the country to be bussed off to Torpoint to start their basic training at HMS Raleigh.
Yesterday I was going nowhere , just there to promote Daffodil Growing , Art and many other fascinating aspects of the Tamar Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
What a perfect excuse to people watch. Plymouth Argyle were playing at home so the green and white army were the biggest recognisable group. Closely followed by happy Cosplay participants. Then there were the family or friend groups and the excited gathering of university students. There were some tears but there was overwhelming happiness too.
It was unpredictable who would interact with the joyous yellow of our leaflets and posters. The happy travellers of Plymouth Station took our yellow missives, who can guess how far they will travel.
The first race of the Gig Racing season is being held on Saturday 7th March in Saltash , Cornwall.
Ladies Race at 12 noon and men’s race at 2:30.
I could have had a glove stretcher, a warming plate, a penny lick. What I actually got was the cheeky Coca de Mer.
Yesterday I was at an event hosted by The Box, the soon to be open contemporary cultural space in Plymouth.
https://www.theboxplymouth.com/
I was handed a mystery object to talk about.
The Coco De Mer , a giant seed pod from the Seychelles was not unknown to me, there is one growing a tree at the Eden Project and there is a shop of the same name just North of Covent Garden
https://www.edenproject.com/
https://www.coco-de-mer.com/
The seed is known for its erotic appearance, something that has hastened the trees demise in its native Seychelles.
It’s name means Coconut of the Sea, a name given erroneously because floating seeds were found in the seas of the Indian Ocean and were believed to come from underwater palm trees. In fact they had dropped into the sea and sunk because of their immense weight , only floating to the surface when the decay process made gasses and gave them bouyancy.
The Box specimen is blackened and has a glossy finish with a hole drilled into it. It was very tactile, not particularly heavy. It has obvious visual female charms but the surprise was how calming it was resting on my lap. The curves just nicely fill your hands and the smooth surface of the Plymouth specimen encourages fingers to make journeys around its form.
The tree is endangered because it’s seeds are the way they are and surrounded by erotic folklore. They are protected by law in the Seychelles, but can be sold in a more controlled way to tourists and institutions. Historically gathered examples are sold for massive prices.
Since meeting the Plymouth Coco de Mer, yesterday, I’ve read a bit more about it on another blog site, a good read if you are interested.
https://seychild.wordpress.com/2016/11/08/coco-de-mer-symbol-of-seychelles-mystery-of-the-garden-of-eden-explained/amp/
Yesterday was an interesting day. A coffee meet up with a friend serendipitously introduced me to an artist and jeweller . Then an unexpected printing hiccough gave me some water colour scraps to create a new image.For interest I though I would use the Instagram Grids of the three people I met to illustrate this blog.
Coffee was with tessajanedesigns at Ocean Studios. We were just having a social catch up after teaching a Social Media workshop earlier in the week.http://www.tessajane.co.uk/
Mark Wiggin saw us nattering and came to join us.
https://www.markwigginart.com/
Then we popped upstairs to see Val Muddyman. Her current work recreates the tiny details of the beauty of a beach really close to her workshop at Devils Point.
https://www.valmuddyman.co.uk/shop-1
Hugo loved her workshop.
For completeness here is my Instagram grid.
I met all these people in just one hour, the images I found of their work on Instagram is such a simple illustration of why Instagram is a great piece of Social Media for Artists and Makers.
The image above is a future palimpsest but for now it’s a collage.
Grey rainy mornings have been a constant companion of 2020. Some days the subject for the daily pondering is obvious, other days nothing seems quite interesting enough, today, with the early rain, is one of those days. A quick skip through the image archive tempted me towards writing about rust, but ultimately one of the rust coloured images I retrieved pointed me the way of a saltier story. Baked goods, in particular the Cheese Straw.
Starting at the top I present the Gail’s Cheese Straw made with Mature Cheddar Cheese and Comté. This tasty little pile photographed at Gail’s Dulwich VillageI have a long history with cheese straws. My mum used to make them with left over pastry. Hers were pale and flacid and only as tasty as the cheese she had laying in the fridge. On fancy days she made a ring shape of cheesy dough and enclosed three or four skinny cheese straws within the ring.A fellow blog writer has taken the time to write the history of the cheese straw. It’s a fascinating read on a rainy morning.
https://thehistoricfoodie.wordpress.com/2018/10/30/cheese-straws-a-quick-history/I loved these unsophisticated treats eaten warm after school. For much of my life they were the only cheese straw I knew, I make them myself with left over pastry.At some point in the Baking Renaissance of the 21st Century . Cheese Straws became bigger, puffier and altogether much tastier.
Armed with a Gail’s cookbook and a bit of creativity, cheese straws started to look a lot more fancy in my own kitchen.
I don’t know if people feel particularly passionate about cheese straws. I suspect they are overshadowed by prettier and sweeter ‘show stopper’ baked goods.But without the cheese straw would it’s savoury cousins, the bacon or sausage tasty even exist?
Artists and makers tend to be isolationists. Not, perhaps, deliberately but almost certainly circumstantial.
In order to create original work a space is required. Those spaces become a unique location where the artist or maker has the tools and ingredients of their production alongside reference materials and importantly the space to think.
Even in the most delicious communal art spaces ,artists quickly set about erecting boards and barriers to mark their own individual territory.
Shared areas, the loo or kitchen have an almost international grubbiness to them . Marked with indelible signs of the artists that have passed that way. Artists ,Mark-Making on communal areas like a tomcat with territory acquisition and the balls to do it. Just like tomcats artists communal spaces have a distinctive odour.
As an aside I believe the art world has missed a trick. Imagine an exhibition of Butler’s sinks, or local type, brought together from around the world’s greatest artists studios. All displayed in a huge white space. With their original fittings and adjacent work surfaces. Imagine the smells!
Social Media allows artists to maintain their isolationism and yet join with like minded people without the effort of putting on their arty clothes and washing their faces. Social media just needs one clean finger and a camera phone.
Last night we had a real-time gathering of artists from the Tamar Valley to share and expand their knowledge and use of Social Media . Everyone arrived with at least a clean finger and a camera phone. Everyone left with fresh knowledge, a few more followers and probably some new friends.
What to do on the first day of a new month having lived through the wettest February on record, in England and Wales.
The sun is shining and my feet scamper past both the wellies and converse and look optimistically at my twinkly golden Birkenstocks.
Let me just say the ladies (my feet) have not prepared for this. They are blue white and toenails have not been painted. The last time they were truly out was Christmas Day when waterproof Birkenstocks facilitate our traditional paddle.
I allow my feet their moment in the March sun and wearing wholly inadequate footwear we set off for the twin coastal villages of Kingsand and Cawsand .In honesty this past month of wellie wearing has inflamed my big toe joints, this horrible sensation also encourages wilful and inappropriate nakedness of the foot.
The poor choice of footwear immediately identifies itself when I want to take photos of fields of Daffodils on the way. Each field is surrounded by slithery red mud.
With my trusty wellies on I would have easily gathered arty shots of budding daffodils, stretching towards the horizon for this blog . Luckily sunshine and geology will give us a pop of colour that inspires as much as daffodils.
The sea wall at Kingsand is a thing of vibrant beauty on a spring morning. This whole area of the Tamar estuary is alive with geological colour.
March 1st had other plans for my poor feet , by coincidence a friend of ours was on a cliff watching the weather from inside a cosy bar. Moments before we were hit with a soaking deluge she sent us this picture not knowing we were less than a mile away.
Luckily we were very close to The Devonport Inn.
Good chips, beer and seats indoors solved the problem of inadequate footwear.
All over Cornwall, daffodils have been raising their heads, looking for sun, in the darkness of winter in preparation for a big Spring reveal. Similarly artists and makers have been using the snatches of winter daylight to create work for this art exhibition in Gunnislake, Cornwall. The first visible sign that an exhibition is beginning to come together is the arrival of boxes of posters and flyers.
@theoldmortuary also has two pieces of art featured so that is another reason to feel zippy and spring- like this morning.
March, how lovely to see you.
theoldmortuary.design 