opposites and the same

'Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque technica historia', ('The metaphysical, physical, and technical history of the two worlds, namely the greater and the lesser'), Robert Fludd, 1617,  © Wellcome Photo Library, London

Am contemplating voids. 
'Et sic in infinitum' on the edges of the above image means 'and like this to infinity'.

Paul La Farge, on Black, in Cabinet.

And Kenya Hara, on White.

locked

But now no music was on her mind. That was a funny thing. It was like she was shut out of the inside room. Sometimes a quick little tune would come and go - but she never went into the inside room with music like she used to do. It was like she was too tense. Or maybe because it was like the store took all her energy and time. Woolworth's wasn't the same as school. When she used to come home from school she felt good and was ready to start working on the music. But now she was always too tired. At home she just ate supper and slept and then ate breakfast and went off to the store again. A song she had started in her private notebook two months before was still not finished. And she wanted to stay in the inside room but she didn't know how. It was like the inside room was locked somewhere away from her. A very hard thing to understand.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

dark flutter

 

  

 

  

  

Hand Shadows: The Complete Art of Shadowgraphy; Louis Nikola; Pub. C. Arthur Pearson Ltd; 1913

message + lots of mores

On Friday the research group that I'm part of at University of Plymouth - Message - had a small one day only show on the ground floor of our building. It was an informal and understated affair, but lovely to see everyone's work and galvanise us all into 'finishing' something. Personally for me, things don't finish quite that simply really, but it was nice to feel that at least a line was drawn under the first chapter. More shortly.

We're hoping to make something a little more permanent and long term to follow this work up - so more about that shortly too.

Best of all from this I get the great satisfaction of ticking something off my four things checklist…

So now I want to get some things up together for a small solo show. Something about all these absences I think.

studies in indirect communication vol. xix: deleted expletive

I dreamed that I was colouring in the inside of the basin of my toilet, to just below the water level, with a black permanent marker. Could spend quite some time deleting things that i'd rather weren't there, or hadn't been said. Although probably not my toilet. These fluoro-bangs have a funny coating on them though, that makes my pens run out almost immediately.

words on types of words

 

Click to see bigger.

studies in indirect communication vol. xviii: flee

seafaring & crockery

 Interior view from a peepshow, 18th century.

 

 Frigate in ivory, gold and iron, Jacob Zeller, 1620.

Porcelain plate, 1880, anon. Rebus riddle saying 'Quand on veut commander on doit savoir obeir', or 'If you want to be able to give orders, you must first be able to obey.'

  

Delft tile with depiction of a peepshow, 1880, anon.

Images capturing something of the spirit of the things that are rushing through my head at the moment… Peepshows / turbulent waters / full sail, sails furling / wind capturing apparatus / historical warships / old men of the sea / feasts on boats - looking out to sea / delft blue.

a new label deserves a new post

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dark chamber

 Camera obscura, c. 1769, anonymous etching

I'm thinking back to those ten missing days. I want to make project about it. It may start here. Enough said.

four things

It seems I need to remain focussed.

I'm all over the place at the moment. Too much paid work and not enough quality thinking time.

Thought I should make things a bit easier by setting some parameters.

Four things I want to work on in the immediate future (in order of priority):

• A submission for the launch of the UoP Message website and book 

• Ten missing days project

• Shadows

• Boats, maritime things, naval history, pirates, crockery

There are no pictures on this post. This is to scare me into activity. Best get on then.

studies in indirect communication vol. xvii: deleted exclamations

selects

I love the Cooper Hewitt Selects series. The Shadow puppet image above is from the current exhibition in the series, selected by Ideo. See also Hella Jongerius (selecting samplers) and Yinka Shonibare (selecting objects relating to travel). I saw the latter back in 2005 just the day before I was told my proposal for a project at the British Library had been accepted. The exhibition totally fired me up.

a description of absence vol. i

hair tents

 

  

Thinking about 'hair tents' after reading The Power of Hair in the Victorian Imagination by E.G. Gitter.

To download a pdf version of the article click here.

Hair tents: warm and nest like, dark, sheltering, a protective retreat.  
When 'your girl, lying on top of you, lets her long hair down around your head' (William Tindall).  
For Dante Gabriel Rossetti they provided a 'visionary moment of perfect dark silence' (EG Gitter).
Robert Browning writes about them in Pauline as a place to nurture creativity:

Pauline, mine own, bend o'er me - thy soft breast
Shall pant to mine - bend o'er me - thy sweet eyes,
And loosened hair and breathing lips, and arms
Drawing me to thee - these build up a screen
To shut me in with thee, and from all fear;
So that I may unlock the sleepless brood
Of fancies from my soul, their lurking places.
(lines 1-7)

Links abound between hair, gold, webs, weaving, story-telling and story-reading, with a ladies tresses seen as beautiful and pure, haunting and alluring, duplicitous and deadly. Some things I thought worth making note of for future projects:

Saint Agnes

There are various stories about the martyrdom of Saint Agnes. The following is just one variation.
 
Sempronius, a Roman prefect, is angry at Saint Agnes for refusing to sacrifice to the pagan gods and to marry his son. He orders her to be stripped naked and weighed down with chains and exposed to his soldiers. But as her clothes are torn off her, she prays to God and inexplicably her hair grows and grows to form a dense cloak around her that cannot be penetrated.

The myth of Philomela

Philomela has her tongue cut out after being raped by her sister's husband, Tereus of Thrace, when she threatens to speak out about the attack. She weaves a fine cloak/tapastry that tells her story and sends it to her sister Procne. The story culminates with her and her sister being turned into birds by the Olympic Gods. One variation of the story states that Philomela is turned into a swallow that has no song and Procne into a nightingale that sings a sad and lonely song by night. More here.

dead object

Image of Jomon Pot © The British Museum

 

Image of Mold Gold Cape © The British Museum

On Fridays, on the train to Plymouth to teach at an inordinately early hour, at the moment I like to drink coffee and listen to podcasts to ease myself into the day. At the moment  really enjoy the bite-size narratives on offer from A History of the World in 100 Objects. I'm learning so much - and normally I quite like not having pictures of the objects, instead leaving things up to the imagination. But the two programmes above really intrigued me, so I have finally looked them up online.

As Sir David M Wilson (Director of the British Museum 1977 - 1991) wrote:

A museum is not a dead institution and anyone who accuses the British Museum of being dusty and boring is either ignorant or lacks a soul. The British Museum is full of life. To hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren it each year provides a sense of adventure; to millions of toursist and visitors it brings a sense of renewal, and to thousands of scholars a deep well of knowledge. It belongs to the whole world and is kept secure for all mankind.

From The Collections of the British Museum, ed. David M Wilson, British Museum Press, 1989.

I heartily agree.

the invent-ory

I'm so excited. For over a year now I've been meaning to put a .pdf download link on my website so that people can read the article I wrote for Ultrabold magazine back in 2008. Finally I've done it - and not broken my back (and my laptop) in the process. And doorways suddenly open! The potential is huge.

If you're interested in reading the article, called The Invent-ory: Words on Imagined Repositories, Endless Indexes and an Exercise in Collecting Beginnings then please click here.

all real lizzies?

From a student of mine at University of Plymouth,  Mella McKeown. It's so unusual to find old stuff with your own name on it - so thank you!

boundlessness

Split into an examination of lists that are finite and those that are deliberately without end, this is a pretty good summary of the visual list, albeit quite classically biased. Nonetheless worth a look at if you're at all interested in taxonomy, systems, collections and the neverending. I am.

To read a review of Umberto Eco's The Infinity of Lists, click here.

studies in indirect communication vol. xvi: colloquy

A colloquy is the most formal of all conversations (: a colloquy on nuclear disarmament); it can also be used to jocularly describe a guarded exchange (: a brief colloquy with the arresting officer). New Oxford Dictionary

notes in sketchbook

 History is silent.

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Sculpture exists in time.

You walk around it.

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Where narrative is prompted and defeated at once.

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Sitting quietly in a space between hesitation and action.

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Both empty and promising.

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studies in indirect commuincation vol. xv: dialogue of the deaf

A discussion in which each party is unresponsive to what the others say.

studies in indirect communication vol. xiv: a device to frame a mouth

Fancy-dress leftovers.

studies in indirect communication vol. xiii: punch

 

 

  

 

  

  

  

Just playing. Getting back into the swing of it. Nice to just to spend time in my studio.

a maker of cloth

I've just finished listening to this on the Radio 4 website: Ismini Samanidou, a colleague and friend here in Falmouth, talking to Sandi Toksvig on Excess Baggage about narrative in weaving. An erudite and passionate interview, that certainly states the case for traveling.

misty-eyed

 

I found this chair several years ago at the tip and bought it for a fiver. It needed a lot of sorting out but it was already clear that it was a gem. When I took the rotten padded seat out of it I discovered amongst the horse-hair stuffing a cheap fake-gold necklace. Odd that it was tucked away in there when it clearly wasn't valuable, and there's no way it just drifted there by accident: it was absolutely placed with intent.

After some investigation I found out that it was an old sea captain's chair - it rolls back on it's axis (rather squeakily) and would have been used in a ship's bridge.

This weekend when I removed the sheepskin on it to give it a dust, I discovered that it was covered in salt. The marks all over it looked like the trails of tears. Very mysterious. I've oiled it now, so we'll see what happens next.