14 Postcards

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A series of postcards produced by Common Ground to accompany England In Particular, ‘a celebration of the common place, the local, the vernacular and the distinctive’. Continue reading “14 Postcards”

Frames of reference

Montserrat

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No trip to Barcelona is complete without an excursion to Montserrat. It had been recommended many times so finally we got the train from Plaça d’Espanya. The ticket price included a transfer onto the rack railway at Monistrol de Montserrat for the steep climb up the mountain. Continue reading “Montserrat”

Frames of reference

Ascenseur Pour L’Échafaud

A favourite clip from Louis Malle’s 1958 debut movie, Ascenseur Pour L’Échafaud, starring Jeanne Moreau with a wonderful improvised soundtrack by Miles Davis.

Davis was booked to perform at the Club Saint-Germain in Paris for November 1957. Jean-Paul Rappeneau, a jazz fan and Louis Malle’s assistant at the time introduced him to Malle, and Davis agreed to record the music after attending a private screening. On December 4, he brought his four sidemen to the recording studio without having had them prepare anything. Davis only gave the musicians a few rudimentary harmonic sequences he had assembled in his hotel room, and, once the plot was explained, the band improvised without any precomposed theme, while edited loops of the musically relevant film sequences were projected in the background. www.discogs.com

I have to admit I’ve not yet seen the film (though I did once see Jeanne Moreau looking in our gallery window) but I’ve listened to the soundtrack countless times. I bought the LP years ago after reading a recommendation by Richard Williams and I agree with him that it’s one of Miles Davis’s best.

Frames of reference

100 Cups

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Long ago I made cups, real ones out of porcelain to be exact. And now I don’t do that anymore. Instead, I often paint pictures of cups. It began innocently enough, as a path for transposing the ceramic cups that had always inspired my pottery into paintings. This simple idea launched an obsession and soon my desire to paint cups got a little bit out of hand. Because I had so many different ideas, I began numbering them in an effort to hold it all together. Continue reading “100 Cups”

Frames of reference

Woodland Birds

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A lovely King Penguin book from 1955, donated to The Rowley Gallery library by Evelyn Hallewell. The colour plates are by Peter Shepheard and the book was a bargain at 5/-.

As well as being a beautiful picture book ‘Woodland Birds’ will lead many out to watch for themselves the inhabitants of our woods and forests. Continue reading “Woodland Birds”

Frames of reference

Into The Woods

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A couple of years ago this embroidered purse arrived in the post, a surprise gift from a benevolent customer. I was not sure what to keep in it, or whether I should just frame it, so it’s been waiting in a corner of my workshop. I saw it again recently and decided to discover where it came from. Continue reading “Into The Woods”

Frames of reference