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One small step forward

27/4/2015

At last I've finished a piece of work! It's not that I haven't been producing prints, and they each stand on their own, but this is where I've been heading for 4 months and now I'm there. It's gone to dress up in a Little Black Frame. Then off to a party, hoping not to be turned away at the door by the bouncers. I'll let you know.

Thing is, though.

Thing is, I have two exhibitions in July and am going to need more or less a round dozen prints for then. Even counting in weeks, I don't need to use my toes to figure out that's not a long way off and I can't spend four months on any of them. Or, indeed, all of them. Hmm.

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Sigh

13/4/2015

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That's it, BABE is over for another two years. The sun shone down benignly (though not exactly warmly), Bristol (the little we saw of it) was great, the fair was busy, the coffee and cake trolley was wonderful, and now it's all gone until the next time. Sigh.

I was rather frustrated, though. Gemma and I weren't quite positioned so that we could each keep watch over the other's table, so neither of us really got away to see anything much else at the fair. My mistake was then to look through the Arnolfini photos of BABE and see a little of what I missed - if I'm at the next fair, I plan to abandon my table for vast tracts of time and see much much more.

Part of the gorgeously printed and constructed portfolio for 'Anything the earth gives up', one of Gemma's new books (with letterpress printing by David Armes), which includes a photo showing the original print on muslin, catching the breeze at her allotment. A thing of beauty. Of course.

Playing in the sunshine before the second day started (while nobody was watching).

My table.

Seeds - yet again I discovered myself making last-minute books with unlined bookcloth! Ah me.

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After Matisse?

5/4/2015

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Because it looked ridiculously colourful, and because I remain a colour junky inspite of appreciating the more subtle tones as well, I made the slightly extra effort to pop into the Holburne, Bath, to see the NIcholas Rena exhibition After Matisse.

The exhibition blurb describes it as an intervention. Alright, so I'm not sure what constitutes an intervention, but I've always thought of it as some kind of subversion of the existing exhibits. As I said, the Holburne is a (very) slight extra effort, being, from where I usually park, in the exact opposite direction to everything else I choose to visit. I don't, therefore, go in there quite as often as I might, but I keep an eye on what's on - it would be silly to miss must-see stuff for the sake of a change of direction. And I'm pretty sure that previous 'interventions' there have followed that pattern, of being installed in and amongst things as they already were, sometimes implying (but presumably no more than that!) a certain level of disruption and destruction.

This time, though, the long dining table, normally insanely weighed down with fancy china, heavy silver cutlery, intricate glassware and just about everything else the Georgian(?) crockery cupboard has tucked into its nethermost corners, had been completely cleared to show off this collection of pots.

And I just wasn't convinced. I mean they're nice enough - moulded clay, fired, refined, and finished off I think with emulsion and wax - but. But. They didn't amount to enough, somehow. Pleasant lines, colourful, um, that's it. Yes, alright, the shape is faintly reminiscent of Lucy Rie (the potter is mentioned), and Matisse used a lot of colour when he wanted to, but I wanted something more than this. I imagine they might have looked a lot more interesting looming out of the usual crazy dinner setting - something uncomfortable, faintly alien. But maybe the museum tried that and it didn't work. Maybe the show came with certain conditions to be met. Or maybe I missed other pots scattered hither and yon - it was a short visit. Whatever, my overall impression was that I couldn't truly see the point.

Moving away from the visiting exhibition, one thing at the Holburne has always made me smile - the teasly way visitors are dissuaded from sitting on the exhibited chairs.

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One small step forward

Sigh

After Matisse?

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