Author: hamer the framer

Kai’s Next Challenge

On Sunday Kai is running the Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon through Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, St James’s Park and Green Park. This will be the culmination of her running & cycling events to raise money for charity. Here she is being congratulated and comparing medals after the London Bikeathon at the Royal Hospital Chelsea. Please see her page at JustGiving.

Frames of reference

Swimming Studies

Water is elemental, it’s what we’re made of, what we can’t live within or without.

So begins this wonderful book by Leanne Shapton. I’d seen her paintings at Lutyens & Rubentein but hadn’t realised she was also a writer. This is a memoir of her days training as an Olympic swimmer and of how that obsession shaped her later life as an artist. I’m no swimmer, maybe a gentle back paddle, preferably in a river rather than a pool, but I’m buoyed up by reading Swimming Studies.

Frames of reference

Castle Hedingham

We left the car by the duck pond at Wickham St Paul. After breakfast at Spencer’s Farm Shop of coffee and the best bacon sandwiches north of Columbia Road Market we walked down Rectory Lane past hedgerows heavy with hips and haws, and with elderberries and blackberries. There were hazelnuts and crab apples, hops, sloes, bullace, sweet chestnuts and acorns. There was ivy and bryony and guelder rose too, and there was lots of surprising blessed sunshine. Continue reading “Castle Hedingham”

Frames of reference

Barnacles & Dames

This arrived just too late. But the exhibition continues until 26th October so there’s time to see it. Mary Kuper celebrates 100 years of books in the Saison Poetry Library collection with an exhibition of images, poems and etymologies suggesting a play between the words poets use and the meanings buried in their forgotten roots and histories. The title is courtesy of Joseph Brodsky. There is also a beautiful handmade book printed by Mary herself. More here.

Frames of reference

Dom’s Big Leap

This is Dominic. He’s a picture framer. You’d never guess! But on November 4th he will break free from the constraints of conformity and for a few brief moments become a crazy vertigo defying stuntman. All in the name of charity. He will abseil down Battersea Power Station, but he needs your help. Please support his attempt to resist the power of gravity by visiting his JustGiving page.

Frames of reference

Jelly Green At Kensington Place

Jelly Green‘s cows are now installed at Kensington Place. The famous mural has been put into storage to make way for a new exhibition space to be known as The Art Wall. As Dominic observed, it’s less of a mural, more a mooral. Which is one way of looking at it. They are very direct, very ‘in your face’ as one of our customers described Jelly’s paintings. They are a face to face encounter, one to one, nothing else is important, no need for superfluous background. There’s a spark kindled by those magical, energetic brushstrokes, a spark of recognition. Continue reading “Jelly Green At Kensington Place”

Frames of reference

Penwith Peninsula

Whilst writing the previous post about Cornwall I remembered this set of Richard Long photos, the first thing I ever framed for myself. See the beautifully joined corners, marvel at those hand-cut windows, but note that I neglected to put any fixings on the back to hang it, so for 25 years or more it’s just been standing around. The photographs and text were printed by Coracle Press as a concertina booklet, and although I often visited their tongue & groove lined gallery in Camberwell, I think I bought it at Arnolfini in Bristol. It was titled A Day’s Walk Past The Standing Stones Of Penwith Peninsula. Kai took one look at it and immediately decided that was to be my challenge, to walk those nine stones in one day! I’m not so sure. Continue reading “Penwith Peninsula”

Frames of reference