A birthday card for Dominic, my Rowley brother and fellow tree lover, drawn by his father in 1985 when he was just 21. Continue reading “Trees I Have Fallen Out Of…”
Trees I Have Fallen Out Of…
70 Trees
It’s April 2023, and I will be 70 years old. What better way to mark the occasion than to plant 70 trees, not in the ground, but in the window of the Rowley Gallery. I sent out a call to 70 artists and got lots of replies. I could plant a small forest. So here’s a small celebration of trees, of their variety and complexity, their shelter and enchantment, and all their green, filtered, numinous enlightenment. Continue reading “70 Trees”
Seats For Deities
Emi Shinmura came over from Berlin especially to install our latest window exhibition, and we are honoured to host her series of recent wood carvings – Seats For Deities – until the end of March. Continue reading “Seats For Deities”
Hollington’s Florilegium
Hollington’s Florilegium, paintings by David Hollington, a botanical alphabet, part 2: N to Z, in the window of the Rowley Gallery through January and February. They are accompanied by a selection of David’s miniature paintings, and a few words of introduction here below. Continue reading “Hollington’s Florilegium”
The Minchenden Oak
I’ve still not been getting out much but on New Year’s Day I managed to get 5 miles from home to visit the Minchenden Oak. I didn’t get such a great welcome, but thankfully I was not denied access. It looked like it was meant to be closed, but its makeshift gate was on the ground when I arrived. This is the only entrance to the Minchenden Oak Garden, a small walled garden created in 1934 to safeguard the ancient Minchenden Oak. Continue reading “The Minchenden Oak”
On Waiting – Bram van Velde
On Waiting – “even the painter is blind but he feels the necessity to see”. Film about the Dutch painter Bram van Velde who was a friend of the writer Samuel Beckett.
Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood Of Breath
Here’s a turn up! Previously lost footage of Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath on French TV in 1973. Fifty years ago!
Lineup includes Dudu Pukwana, Harry Beckett, Elton Dean, Lol Coxhill, Louis Moholo, Harry Miller, Nick Evans, Mark Charig, Radu Malfatti. And Chris McGregor at the piano.
Big thank you to Riccardo Bergerone. Tracks: Do It, Nutcase, Andromeda
Gate No.84
The date on the photo is 21 August 2022. It was a Sunday. We started out at Gate No.84, Earl’s Path north, and headed down the Green Ride into the forest. It’s a steep hill but always steeper coming back. Continue reading “Gate No.84”
It Is Not My Music
There’s a celebration of Don Cherry at the Barbican tonight (Don Cherry Tribute). Sadly I can’t go. So I’ll put this video here as a consolation. And today I’ll rummage through my CDs and I’ll shake the Cherrytree. Its fruits have many flavours and taste of many places. According to Richard Williams, “he collapsed the distance between the supposedly primitive and the supposedly sophisticated more effectively than any musician I can think of.”
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This film from 1978 is about Don and Moki Cherry and others who lived with them in the school house in Tågarp, Skåne, Sweden, in the 1970s and onwards. It includes sequences from SoHo, New York, and Moki Cherry’s textiles on the walls in Hästveda and Long Island City. With Rashied Ali, James Blood Ulmer, Nana Vasconcelos, Denis Charles, Huss Charles, etc. A film by Urban Lasson.
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If you enjoyed this you might also like to see For Don Cherry.
Perry Wood
It’s a balm of leaf light. Catch it on a good day and you can carry it with you for months. This was mid August, now as I write it’s mid October and I’m housebound, too sick to walk in the woods, so I gaze at these photos and remember how we bathed in the green light of sweet chestnuts, how it washed over us, and Perry Wood is a convalescence of trees. Continue reading “Perry Wood”