Well, those might not have been the actual words, but that was the gist of a review of Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre's latest production, A Midsummer Night's Dream.  It's the sort of description guaranteed to strike fear into the soul of someone like me - I sit through their farces and near-farces, more often than not grim-faced and with folded arms.  I console myself with the thought that surely you can get a return from something you hate and that sees two hours of your life trickling away from you forever, just as you can from a really enjoyable production.  If nothing else, it gives you a benchmark for dire, and that must be worth something?  So I approached this whacky fun in a reasonably negative frame of mind - chalk it up to experience, I thought. 

I couldn't have been more wrong.  It was brilliantly good fun, both true to the original and wildly original in itself, and I cannot remember the last time I laughed so constantly at a play - my face ached as we left, and we spent our walk through town smiling broadly and exchanging quotes and chortling happily.  If that makes us sound like a bunch of idiots, that can't be helped.  Not everything quite worked out - the music, or at least some of the singing, was, um, variable - but there was that feeling that this production got to the heart of what the play is about.  I've seen attempts at the madness and mayhem before, but not truly realised what they were at, and probably just sat through those sections waiting for them to end. 

It's only on for another week - go see, and do your own chortling.   

All that stuff I said about sketching every day?  For the umpteenth time, it hasn't quite started yet.  In my defence, there are good reasons why this hasn't been the right time, but the excuses have to end NOW.  Or soon.  Well quite soon ...  My advice is don't bother watching this space.  It will happen some time, but Procrastination would be my middle name if I could just get round to putting it there.

And off yet again to the Potfest in the Park, held each year at this time, at Hutton-in-the-Forest in Cumbria.  The sun doesn't always shine, though it did this year, and the rain doesn't always hold off, though again it did this year, even if the ground was distinctly soggy.

It wasn't a vintage year, but it's asking a lot that every single year should provide me with something to obsess about.  Anything I might have liked to take home either cost a lot! full stop, or a lot for what it was, but that didn't detract from the enjoyment.  Son and I went around disagreeing on almost everything, which is half the fun.  I would like the boat-like ends to a pot, he would opine that the boat-like ends ruined it for him; I would claim that I could not understand why this exhibitor was here at all, he would like the colours of the glazes.  It was great.

There's always a competition, with a theme - this year's was 'Journeys and Pilgrimages' and, as usual, some potters appeared to think that calling their work by some name related to the theme was effort enough (or perhaps I was missing something), some helpfully explained why their piece fitted the brief, and others went all out to match the title.  The works do vary enormously - some make you think, others make you admire their skill and all of them help you to consider what you might produce.  I like the limitations of having to work to a theme - it concentrates the mind, stops me feeling that I'm floundering about in the infinities of time and space.  That might, however, say altogether too much about my lack of unprompted inspiration.

Anyway, a good day as ever.  The Potfest in the Park is on today and tomorrow, and next weekend, friday to sunday, is Potfest in the Pens, in Penrith - quite different, but also worth a visit.       

I needed to go to the Holden Gallery yesterday, for a quick look round in connection with the Manchester Artists' Book Fair (taking place in October).  At my previous drop-in visit there had been a graphic art exhibition on and I was quite looking forward to a bit of a browse while I was there.  However, it turned out that the exhibition had been coming down when I was last there, not going up, and instead I arrived to see 62@50.

Which was great!  Apparently the 62 group was formed - guess what? - in 1962, 50 years ago, to support embroiderers and promote its members as serious artists, rather than allowing embroidery to languish as a hobby for genteel ladies.  Nowadays it includes textile artists too.  I was terribly short of time (an hour's worth of parking, and a good walk away) so I'm reluctant to say that I liked any artists best after what barely amounted to a whistlestop tour, but I'll do it anyway.  The first works I saw were by Elaine Megahey (the only person there, I think, without an informative label) and her pieces are still among my favourites of the exhibition - a combination of layered support, embroidered, printed and goodness knows what else, both wall pieces and an artist's book.  I took no photos (almost certainly photos wouldn't have been allowed anyway) but here's another piece by her - I love it too.   

I also liked works by Sîan Martin ('Pentathlete' - a digital print of stitched drawings on vellum, cut into strips and threaded on to, well, threads - inspired by Edweard Muybridge), Ann Goddard ('Going going gone' - a grid of 12 prints, of the same image but in various combinations of black, grey and white) and Caroline Bartlett ('At Rest' - something very tactile, felted, with lace imagery and in soft shades of grey and cream) but my other favourite piece there was Penny Burfield's 'Endangered' - again in soft shades, 562 oversized smoke-fired paperclay seeds, heaped on a giant list of the 562 most endangered British Isles flora.

Having claimed these as special, I'm dying to go back (it's on till mid-august) and spend more time on all the exhibits.  There were some lovely quirks - two tiny and characterful guinea pigs perched on the frame of a work by Rachel Howard reminded me of my own two from childhood (Streaky Bacon and Smoky Bacon), and I definitely want a longer look at Caren Green's 'Desserts - she had her cake and she ate it - D-I-E-T-S   F-A-I-L' which I think was the ways in which diets fall by the wayside, printed over a number of handkerchiefs.  And then there were all the other works that didn't have enough time spent on them because they didn't immediately make me go 'ooo that's nice'.  A return visit is definitely a must. 

I had (still have) a thought that I might like to enter something for the annual Ing Discerning Eye (Anne Desmet's work, above, was one of last year's choices), and so was making my way idly through the galleries of the last few years.  There's some excellent stuff, along with plenty that doesn't take my fancy, but presumably did the selectors.  Discerning Eye has six selectors who can each invite artists of their choice but must also choose a fraction of their selection (check the site for more detailed info) from open submissions.  The works of each selector are then hung together, so that there are effectively six mini exhibitions.  Some artists are chosen by more than one selector (though different works, natch) and some artists are chosen year after year for remarkably similar works.  I guess if you have a winning formula, why change it?     

It's not a print show but I find that it's mostly prints that snag my eye.  I was particularly taken by Milá Fürstová and looked up the website - very precise work, but inventive, with quite a lot of blind embossing.  I'd like to see her work for real - I'll have to look out for an exhibition.

Other people's blogs provide endless inspiration, don't they, one way or another.  Notes to the milkman was talking about gesture drawing, which I think means the really quick scribbly sketches you try to do when you hope you can finish before whoever it is looks up, or before whatever you're travelling in moves on too far beyond whatever you're sketching.   Actually, I suspect I'm missing the point and they have to be sketches of people moving?  Well, I'm taking it to mean really quick sketches anyway.  I have any number of these, I find.  I've mentioned that I can't cope with all the promise of a blank page in a sketchbook - how can I violate that pristine territory with something imperfect? -  and that instead I sketch on tatty scraps.  Thank goodness I manage to treat my bag like a temporary paper recycling bin, so that at least there always is a tatty scrap.  Or at the very least the inside cover of a cheque book (please don't get rid of cheque books...).  I'm rambling.

Yes, so all these sketch/doodles end up in a great heap of paper (kept in boxes, to look less heap-like).  The heap is everything - letters I really ought to keep, pics torn from magazine, articles I mean to read one of these days, spare bits of paper that surely are still useful for something, paper bags as sad mementos of shops long gone (Quarto bookshop in St Andrews, anyone?  Papyrus in Bath?).  And sketches.  Occasionally I trawl through a fraction of the heap (it goes back years), more or less applying my 10% rule, which is that if you chuck out 10% of the stuff, then that surely counts as progress.  I extract these scrawled lines, often think hey, that's got something (we're not talking skill or versimilitude here), and have taken to sticking them in a notebook as possible future inspiration for something.  Anything.  And however sketchy the doodle, it always takes me right back to when and where, so at least it functions as a sort of diary.

(Fishermen by the reservoir and kids at a swimming lesson - very very sketchy though not much movement.  Except maybe the fish?  Got to be honest, though, I don't think these are ever going to develop into anything)

But the point was that the very notion of such careless scribbles as John highlighted attracted instantly.  I know we should all be sketching every day.   I also know I don't.   But that blog has made me decide to do just that.  Alright, it probably won't count as gesture drawing, because nothing will be moving fast enough, if at all.  But it'll be something at least.  - nothing careful, just on the hoof and brief.  With so little expectation riding on the end result, I'm far more likely to do it.

And then there was Elizabeth Willow's and Jonathon Raisin's Lincolnshire blog, something wonderful is coming.  Elizabeth mentioned it last week, so I had a look (mostly rain - but why should I be surprised?  England this year is mostly rain) and felt all inspired by the photo-collections, reminiscent of their own museum list.  I'm always fascinated (sometimes incredulously, I confess) by collections of like things - I would have liked to visit Hans-Peter Feldmann's exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, earlier this year, but of course I didn't.           

(Some photos borrowed from the Something Wonderful blog - a selection, not a collection)


So do I want to make my own grouped photos (hell, I've probably already got enough chimneypots and lampposts), or do I want to visit Lincolnshire (flat places really are excitingly different countries)?  Both?