Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Kronos Quartet perform Black MIDI by Nicole Lizée.
“The goal is to create portals into other dimensions.”
Black MIDI
Six From Susan Foord
Summer Landscape
These are paintings of great sincerity and refinement. White paper is stretched over board, sized and primed, and then the search begins to find the image. Care is taken to avoid becoming too figurative, as if recalling a long since forgotten moment, a vision blurred with the passage of time. Perhaps a view from childhood. A distant memory evoked just as the dark closes in. A delicate membrane illuminated with light years of paint. It was Easter Sunday, day of resurrection, when I came to visit. Continue reading “Six From Susan Foord”
The Captain’s Alphabet
that’s right folks, an old box set of prints of mine from 2000, the captain’s alphabet, has just been republished as a book (two actually… you’ll see when you buy one), by joe pearson at design for today. come along for a drink, a book, & some tunes too from mr alex barrow, and we’ll all raise a glass to Mr peter Sampson. hope to see you there, jonny. Continue reading “The Captain’s Alphabet”
West Sussex Sunday
We started from Sheepwash Lane, beside the cricket pitch in East Lavant, north of Chichester and followed the path by Manor Farm to where it borders the River Lavant. This was over a month ago, still officially spring but the sun shone like summer and cow parsley showed us the way. Continue reading “West Sussex Sunday”
West Sussex Saturday
A month after my birthday and my present was to wake up under a new sky. We’d come away for the weekend and the bright morning window offered a fresh perspective, the fast-moving clouds seemed to suggest anything was possible. I’m writing this a month later, on the eve of a new dawn. Yesterday the General Election voted for a hung parliament, a brave new world where even Kensington seemed to be turning red. But here in Chichester the sky is perpetually blue. Continue reading “West Sussex Saturday”
Patience (After Sebald)
This modest, immensely enjoyable documentary is about one of my favourite books, The Rings of Saturn by the German poet and critic WG Sebald, who was born in 1944, taught for much of his adult life in this country, mainly at the University of East Anglia, and was killed in a motor accident in 2001. It was first published in German in 1995, translated into English three years later and is an account of a walking tour of Suffolk, the people he meets, the places he visits, and the historical and literary reflections prompted by what he sees and senses, taking his mind around the world. Suffolk becomes a sort of palimpsest for his eloquent, precise, lugubrious, often drily witty meditations about war, death, destruction and decay, about memories and continuities and the feeling that nothing entirely disappears. Continue reading “Patience (After Sebald)”
At White House Farm
White House Farm at Great Glemham in Suffolk has 120 acres of historic watermeadows, arable land and woodland, home to a fine collection of ancient oak trees set in parkland grazed by the farm’s flock of Alde Valley sheep. The farm also hosts a continuing succession of residencies for artists, writers, makers and musicians, and each year the Alde Valley Spring Festival shows off their work. This year the festival theme was Quercus & Co, a celebration of the English oak, and featured an exhibition of paintings and drawings of veteran trees and woodland by Jelly Green. It was not difficult to find. Posters of her Puzzlewood painting led me from the A12 down the country lanes to the farm. Continue reading “At White House Farm”
Here & Now
Twig Circle
Construction with found twigs
I attempt to make intense, individual objects
objects whose power is not dependent on where or when they are seen. Continue reading “Here & Now”
Garden & Countryside
Sometimes a garden can be the best room in the house, a great place to spend time with friends and family, to walk together and share its beauty, to be diverted and distracted, to pass the time and forget ourselves. We can wander off and make discoveries, tell tales, find reflections and common ground. Continue reading “Garden & Countryside”
Two Days In Epping Forest
I suppose that’s a bit of an exaggeration, we didn’t stay overnight, but it sounds better than two visits or two day trips to Epping Forest. The first was a week after Easter, on St George’s Day, inspired by blogposts and tweets about holloways, I wondered what’s the closest thing to a holloway in Epping Forest? And so we went up to Jack’s Hill and walked to the western edge of Ambresbury Banks. Continue reading “Two Days In Epping Forest”