.
There are days when a good walk during daylight is the most precious thing. Plymouth has a wealth of cobbled streets to wander in to try and find some perspective after a tricksy political overnight. We found this crazy arrangement of lampshades in Cosy Club.
https://cosyclub.co.uk/location/plymouth
December night and the Cornish year-round bauble.
Eden project rose out of Bodelva Quarry , near St Austell in Cornwall, around the Millenium. A fantasmical dream of one man, Tim Smit, brought to reality by architect Nicholas Grimshaw, structural engineer Antony Hunt and constructors McAlpine.
It opened to the public in March 2001, 18 years on it is settled into the Cornish landscape and psyche. As with any big new development there have been rubs and chafes but plenty of good news too. Eden has been showing significant profits since 2012.
The Eden effect on Cornwall has been immense, by 2009 it had brought £805m into the local economy.
With a ‘locals’ pass Eden has become a year round destination for theoldmortuary. We can avoid the busy tourist-heavy days and use the outdoor spaces for dog walks and gardening inspiration. At Christmas time we use the shops to buy environmentally friendly gifts that are often locally produced. Walking the cool biomes during the late-opening evenings is a wonder of plant architecture and illumination. As ever with an oldmortuary outing there is always coffee and cake, and on this occasion a kangaroo too.
Mr.Robin, Britain’s National Bird and Christmas favourite.
In June 2015 Phillip Hoare described the Robin as ” Brutish,ruthless and ready to ruck.”
Stuck, as we are in Britain, with a General Election in the run up to Christmas it is hard not to see the Robins characteristics in some of our politicians. Just like the Robin they will pose innocently over the Christmas period hoping that none of us remember what they are really like and who they harmed to be there.
Detail from etched stained glass at The Bulls Head, Barnes.
Some days you get more time than is truly necessary for the task in hand. A trip to Barnes for a classical concert with some additional unexpected hours gave us time to explore the town and it’s excellent charity and coffee shops.The Thames shapes this northeast portion of the London Borough of Richmond- on- Thames. The Thames was our first destination. We were both gig rowers so we love a bit of paddle action. On a Sunday this portion of the river is busy with rowers, the boats seem impossibly flimsy compared to a sea- faring gig and the speeds impressive. The promenade alongside the river is raised up to give pedestrians a good view of the rowing. Crowds on this bank are a familiar sight on Boat Race Day. We walked for as long as the weather was good and then took shelter in The Bulls Head. I’ve wanted to visit this significant Jazz venue for a very long while. My dad loved Jazz, his desire to visit the jazz venues of his dreams and experience live jazz was thwarted, probably, by my arrival when he was only 27 and then by the realities of life. For a while when I was his adult child we shared some jazz experiences and since his death I’ve continued to, occasionally, dip into Jazz. I don’t give it enough attention, every time I do I realise what I’m missing. The Bulls Head is a fabulous building for music, two Barnesian musicians have rooms named after them, Holst and Bolan. Not surprisingly the background music is brilliant, as was the food. Proper live Jazz in the back room will have to wait for another day. We were destined for a classical afternoon at St Michael and All Angels Church.
https://www.thebullsheadbarnes.com/
Barnes Concert Band gave a performance of Dixieland Jazz, ( so we did get some live jazz) Klezmer, classics and theme tunes. Over an hour of intriguing and different music played in a beautiful church with great acoustics was followed by an excellent afternoon tea also provided by the band.
theoldmortuary was there being supportive and proud of a brother and brother-in-law. He is the bands musical director. It was a really fabulous performance.
November has always meant London. I was the only child of an entirely ordinary Essex couple. My November birthday was always marked by a trip to London, sometime around my birthday (14th) The date is significant because around this time both Remembrance Day and the Lord Mayors Day are marked. Depending on scheduling my birthday trips were either coloured vividly as if in party mood or more sombrely in quiet reflection. Occasioally, like this year both occur in the same weekend, a cultural salt caramel or sweet and sour sensation. The exact reason for this regular pilgrimage to London is unknown and unknowable as both my parents are long dead. My recollection is that they felt it was really important for me to know and relate to the capital city, a sentiment and experience I have passed on to my own children.
If I’m honest I fell a little out of love with London in the 1970’s . Years as a student , being poor and in grotty accommodation was not enhanced by the turbulent times. I had also inexplicably chosen a Science subject when my real interests were art and writing. Not London’s fault at all but sometimes the location gets the blame for the daftest of personal decisions. East London and the City, the locations of my work and life environment were pretty raw and grim around the edges. Out of love I might have been but I still gave London it’s due diligence in the seventies and in the barely improved eighties. Wherever I lived November nearly always found me doing something Londonish.
November is a good time to visit regardless of the length of your journey. Tourism is at a low point and the frenetic pre Christmas pace doesn’t pick up until the end of the month. Long walks are easier if pavements are clearer. I like to take the same walks that I did in the seventies, back then ancient footpaths avoided busy roads but sometimes, around Smithfield, took me through slaughter house yards. Not only have the centuries-old slaughter houses gone , with their open rivers of blood hosed into street drains,so have the footpaths. Developers seem to have developed a blind eye to paths that had been used for centuries and maybe no one else cared enough to protest. Maybe history and rights of way were forgotten at a price.
This November, coincidentally I was in a London for a writing course with The Gentle Author, decades of familiarity bit me on the bum. Parked up briefly in a familiar spot we organised ourselves for the longish return drive to Cornwall, smug in our knowledge of such a place. Two days later the parking fine arrived. London always has spare capacity to surprise.
This stretch of mud is one of my favourite sights. It appears on the banks of the Tamar. Pill Creek feeds into the main River at Saltmill; at low tide its serpiginous track into the main body of water is clear to see. There are many others that can be seen from the road bridge but this one is easy to get close to on foot. I never plan my walks to deliberately to see it but serendipity is kind several times a year. Time stops still for a bit when I catch it at perfection. It recalibrates me until the next time.
This was a weekend of passions colliding. I had enrolled in a blog writing course run by The Gentle Author who is known for his books and blog about Spitalfields. I don’t know how or when I discovered his blog but it has been a pleasurable daily habit for a long while.
By the greatest of personal serendipity the course was held in one of my favourite London cafes The Town House, Fournier Street.
I can only recommend reading https://spitalfieldslife.com to explain quite why I wanted to learn how to craft my own blog in his style . Similarly I don’t have the words to explain the subtle beauty of https://www.townhousespitalfields.com/ Make the time to go. I went for the first time some years ago during a Hugenot History Festival. I’ve been an irregular visitor ever since.
The Gentle Author attracted the most interesting group of people to his course, There was a group decision to keep details of the course unspecific on social media. Specifically though this was the loveliest group of people I’ve ever done a course with. The Gentle Author encouraged and extracted beautiful words and moments from us all, seemingly effortlessly. If I was shattered after two days of writing, extracting the best, oh so kindly from 14 of us must have been exhausting. The Gentle Author just kept finding writing nuggets right until the end, and then he went home to write a blog. We all went home with his book Mr Pussy tucked under our arms. Our cohort was such a lovely group of people, we are all keeping in touch to support and encourage on our blogging journeys
Our writing and thinking was fuelled with fabulous food by https://thegentlewoman.co.uk/library/leila-mcalister and drinks by the cafe at TheTown House.
I’ve reproduced the details of the next course below. I am still fizzing, such a positive experience email spitalfieldslife@google.com
Spending time in Spitalfields is never just about one sensation. Obviously. There was a little time to take in the local vibe . Street Art is everywhere. My walk to and from the course takes me through some favourite streets.
London gives good Palimpsest is an earlier theoldmortuary blog and features some Spitalfields Street art. It takes so many forms, I found this sticker not far from Fournier Street on Sunday morning . The beauty of the street art here is the mix and overlaying of aesthetic and political art, obscured and damaged by flyers, stickers and random scrawls. She will be gone soon.
That, my friends, was a weekend very well spent.
Abstract art is art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality but instead uses shapes, colours, forms and gestural marks to achieve its effect. The term is also applied to art that is based on an object, figure or landscape where forms have been simplified or schematised.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/abstract-art
Synesthesia is a condition where one sense ( for example hearing) is simultaneously perceived as if by one or more additional senses. The word synesthesia comes from two Greek words syn ( together) and aisthesia ( perception) meaning joined perception.
https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/syne.html
My abstracts are mostly landscape inspired. Rooted very much in a particular place but also informed by the history and geography of the place. In some respects they are also created with reference to my synesthesia. Whilst creating art I often listen to music, sometimes deliberately chosen , other times just random. I often choose not to allow synesthesia in and listen to spoken word radio. A painting created with Joy Division as background music would be subtly different if it were created while listening to Benjamin Britten. These things are hugely important to me but joyously insignificant to everyone else.
http://www.joydivisionofficial.com/reimagined/
It’s important to me to know where a painting comes from once I’ve committed it to canvas or panel. Naming it is obviously a start, but that has never quite satisfied me. Owners of my works often read something quite different into them , sometimes I share the geographical location or the synesthesic source, but they are of course, free to interpret the art on their walls however they see fit. However for me there has always been a tethering that I couldn’t quite catch, something that satisfied my need for a location but that didn’t dictate too much to the final work . I’ve recently discovered ‘what3words’ It is a location system that is simple and accurate to a 3m x 3m square anywhere in the world.
https://what3words.com/daring.lion.race
Retrospectively I’ve started giving my pictures a ‘ what3words’ tethering.
Beast From The East.
From the title anyone can roughly work out the timing of this painting. It is an amalgam of a few wintry walks in the village of Forder near Saltash in Cornwall.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=beast+from+the+east+2018&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari
The walk takes you along a creek into Churchtown Farm Nature reserve. Most days I stopped at the same spot to contemplate the cold . What is never obvious is that this was painted when I was personally very chilly as our central heating boiler broke down and we were without heat during this period. However I can perfectly express where I was standing when the inspiration for this picture formed using what3words.
Breathing. Frowns. Index. Curiously appropriate words , I’m sure this won’t always be the case.
Coincidentally I’ve discovered a whole new story for the next work that I was going to tether, I was doing a little research about the pillow in this picture, prior to giving it its ‘what3words’ location. As it turns out there is a whole new story which deserves a blog all to itself. Here it is at Tate Modern as part of the Pillowtalk Exhibition, with my lovely daughter.
Here is its estimated ‘what3words’ location while at Tate Modern.Loaded.Tiger. Salon.
The story of this pillows journeys and my experiments with what3words will be the next blog.
https://www.southlondonwomenartists.co.uk/pillow-talk-conversations-with-women/
Serendipity plays such a part in life. I have serendipitously joined an art group local to me in the Tamar Valley. I’ve joined but I was not quite ready, obviously I applied to join but I had no expectation of being accepted so I hadn’t factored in my unavailability for various key events, or the fact that I was barely able to create any art in the critical early months of my membership.
The art group was not completely unknown to me. I reviewed their London show in an earlier blog.
Drawn to the Valley, Drawn to London. Artists of the Tamar Valley.
I had also often been to exhibitions over many years that were held in the Tamar Valley organised by the group
Joining a new art group is always a little tricksy. No two are the same and getting involved is the surest way of navigating your way in. A few months in I’m finally able to participate more fully. Here is a trio of my experiences so far.
The Summer Exhibition was a wonderful experience. For the first time ever the exhibition was curated in a new public space, Butchers Hall in Tavistock.
The Private View was fabulously busy, the venue was probably the star attraction for many but the art was not overshadowed. Visitor numbers were high and sales were impressive. As a new member I was thrilled to sell a piece. Anyone who buys a piece of original art at these events is more appreciated than they probably realise. A red dot 🔴 is guaranteed to make even the coolest artists perform back flips, mentally if not physically.
Open Studios is a fine arty tradition organised across the length and breadth of Britain. Artists open their studios ( obviously) but also their homes. Some group together and share a larger space. It’s a chance to grab a bargain for art lovers and a chance of a good clear out for artists.
I couldn’t participate because all my recent work is hanging at UltraCardiac, a cardiac ultrasound facility at The Science Park in Plymouth. Next year I will be better prepared, but for now I’m thrilled to have big white walls to show my pictures on. Grateful thanks to Sean and Sarah for their space.
https://www.ultracardiac.co.uk/
Not participating made it easier for me to get out and about to see other people’s work. There was a helpful guide book to assist people to locate artists around the Tamar Valley .
Drawing Day at Kelly House.
Once again the location was the star, that and the amazing hosts Sophia and Warin. Kelly house has been in the same family since 1100. About 15 artists were given freedom to sketch and draw both inside outside the house. There was also a room to gather in and chatter over drinks. I found a crumpled crown, previously used in a pageant in the 1930’s, and hunkered down for five hours of painting still life. A crime, I know, in such beautiful surroundings but it’s not every day that a crumpled crown presents itself to me.
I can’t say I’m the most sociable person when I’m painting but it was lovely to meet some other members over a cup of tea. I’m intrigued to see where Drawn to the Valley will take me.
This is the year of refreshing old skills. Sewing , like watercolour has been long abandoned. My mum was a brilliant seamstress and made fantastic clothes and costumes throughout the sixties and seventies. I learnt loads from her but never really used the skills and ended up just about competent to turn a hem. In time her wonderful, but heavy, 70’s Brother machine, found its way to the tip. A couple of years ago my ex- husband bought me a lightweight, new Brother. Nothing like as swanky as the old one, but how much tech do you need to turn up hems?
Sewing Bee came on the TV, originally, when I was still working stupid hours in London, then early this year it was announced that it would return in the late winter after a gap of a couple of years. No longer having erratic hours and on-call as an excuse, I enrolled on a sewing course to gain some Sewing Bee chutzpah.
https://www.makeat140.co.uk/ is a gorgeous fabric and sewing stuff store at the Royal William Yard. Lizzie Evans the happiest of haberdashers, ran a successful business from an old mortuary in the Barbican area of Plymouth. Old Mortuaries are a bit of a thing around here, there’s us, Lizzies previous incarnation, a bakery and a bar running in old mortuaries locally. Anyway I digress.
Links to other old mortuary businesses in Plymouth
https://www.theoldmorgue.co.uk/
Make at 140 moved to its new location recently and now has the fabulous spaces at Ocean Studios in which Lizzie can run her courses.
I did the beginners course. Our course was taught by Jackie, an enthusiastic teacher with five years experience of home sewing. My group of novices were a group of women ranging in sizes and ages. We were all pretty focussed on producing the two items being created during our five week course. The first, a tote bag, taught us basic pattern use and sewing machine skills. The first class also covered the anatomy and physiology of a sewing machine and the tools needed for a basic sewing kit.After the Tote bag we quickly progressed onto making an actual garment. We were really well supported by Jackie, who is endlessly patient and encouraging. Lizzie was also there every Tuesday , sometimes supporting other groups or classes but always there to make half time beverages, comestibles and to share her sewing wisdom. At the end of week five I had a strong and useful tote bag and a top that actually fitted me.
There are loads of follow-on courses to join but I decided to take some time out and make some mistakes at home before returning for advanced stuff later in the year.
First up in my mistake plan list was a Merchant and Mills pattern, euphemistically called 101 Trousers. 101, has come to represent basic, simple or easy, but my take on 101 has always been more about George Orwell’s torture chamber in his novel 1984. As it turns out the trousers straddled these two meanings rather effectively. My big error was buying a fabric that was the same on both sides. Hannah my partner chose a lovely botanical fabric with a plain reverse side, she had a much easier time of it. My choice gave me ample experience using an unpicker.
On reflection the pattern probably was foolproof but we just took foolish to higher levels than it could accommodate. Eventually after using a months supply of the f**k word, copious tea and YouTube gazing we produced two lovely pairs of trousers, with pockets, that we will wear with pride in full daylight amongst people we know. That is high praise because we are a fussy pair.
I’m already planning my next garment on the mistake plan. I’m confident that my new found basic/ beginners skills will ease me towards less mistakes and more confident seamstressing and then on to the next course at Make at 140. For everything else there is YouTube .
Home made pattern weight using recycled fabric swatches and ribbon from Christmas gifts.
https://www.professorpincushion.com/
theoldmortuary.design 