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Interestingly, clouds exist, whilst not being visible… read an article on subvisible clouds.
And this site is brilliant for anyone who's in the least bit interested in the skies above them:
The Cloud Appreciation Society.
9.7.09
an indistinct or billowing mass
6.7.09
3.7.09
tanks & tablecloths

After a long year, it's finally summer. Most of my work ends for a few weeks now and I'm trying to think about ME for a while and be a practising creative again!
So I'm delighted to announce that Tanks & Tablecloths returns rejuvenated after a long pause! Discussions between myself and Elizabeth Haven are currently underway as to how we move forward, but we are excited at the possibilities and have set up another blog to begin documenting our dialogue.
Check:
tanksandtableclothsvisualarchive.blogspot.com
Hopefully see you here a bit more often in the future…
14.5.09
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14.4.09
13.4.09
three
On the afternoon of the private view for The Art of Lost Words, in which I launched In Absentia, a book about owls, I came across these three little chaps in Hyde Park. I would never have spotted them without the help of an excellent friend and an unknown birder. My first owls in the wild.
12.3.09
marks & gestures
'Punctuation is not a proper object: it is neither speech nor writing; art nor craft; sound not silence. It may be neither here nor there and yet somehow it is everywhere.'
'Punctuation marks function as shadow figures that both compose and haunt writing's substance.'
'Intonation - what we might call the trace of the sound of punctuation.'
'Therefore I call them [punctuation] not symbols of Logic, but dramatic directions, enabling the reader more easily to place himself in the state of writer or original speaker.'
Punctuation: Art, Politics & Play, Jennifer DeVere Brody, Duke, 2008
11.3.09
in correspondence to the speaker's breath
'Punctuation. Four stops, two marks of movement, and a stroke, or expression of the indefinite or fragmentary –
3.3.09
in absentia
17.2.09
11.2.09
missing flight vol. II

The myth, that the Monarchy and the government will fall if the ravens leave the Tower of London is well known, but I didn't realise that each raven has one of it's wings clipped so that it can't fly far from the tower. Now on a mission to get some raven wing clippings…
10.2.09
missing flight vol. I
Photo © Arthur Christiansen.From The Collins Guide to the Countryside in Winter by Alastair Fitter & Richard Fitter
9.2.09
in a word
With thanks for allowing me to reproduce his images here.
8.2.09
with microfilm strapped to their ankles
All images © Charles Barten & magic-lantern.euIf time and money were no issue, I'd send out a flock of pigeons with hand-drawn magic-lantern messages right this minute. The Magic Lantern Slide Collection of Charles Barten in the meantime offers some beautiful inspiration, both in terms of material referencing birds, flight and other skirr-related activities but also for text-based and hand-drawn magic-lantern slides (see tomorrow's post). A big thank you to Charles Barten for allowing me to reproduce just a few of his slides here.
7.2.09
snowy & barn
This evening at dusk: the impossible task of photographing an owl I am unlikely to be able to see or hear. But I think perhaps that is the idea.
4.2.09
sermon to the birds
According to folk-lore, one day when Francis of Assisi was traveling with a group of companions, they arrived at a clearing in which birds filled the trees lining the road. Francis told his friends to wait for him while he spoke to his sisters the birds. The birds surrounded him, and not one flew away, the power of his speech holding them transfixed.
'My little sisters, the birds, much bounden are ye unto God, your Creator, and always in every place ought ye to praise Him, for that He hath given you liberty to fly about everywhere, and hath also given you double and triple rainment; moreover He preserved your seed in the ark of Noah, that your race might not perish out of the world; still more are ye beholden to Him for the element of the air which He hath appointed for you; beyond all this, ye sow not, neither do you reap; and God feedeth you, and giveth you the streams and fountains for your drink; the mountains and valleys for your refuge and the high trees whereon to make your nests; and because ye know not how to spin or sow, God clotheth you, you and your children; wherefore your Creator loveth you much, seeing that He hath bestowed on you so many benefits; and therefore, my little sisters, beware of the sin of ingratitude, and study always to give praises unto God.'
Saint Francis of Assisi, patron saint of the animals
c 1220
31.1.09
no ears to prick up, no mouth to utter
Designs for bird balaclavas, preventing the wearer from both hearing and speaking properly.
29.1.09
cast all your care upon god
Keep yourselves in the love of God — Jude 1-21
With God all things are possible — Mark 10-27
I walk among you — Lev. 26:12
Ye must obey God — Acts 5:29
Let us consider one another — Heb. 10:24
Have faith in God — Mark 11:22
24.1.09
black light
The gloomy Claude glass is a convex blackened mirror designed in the 18th century to aid artists and tourists to create landscape paintings. They would turn their back away from the landscape and instead view it in the mirror, which would present a vast scene in a more manageable size whilst also subtly harmonising the tonal values of the view.
Claude Lorrain (1600-82) was a leading 17th-century landscape painter who worked in Rome and became famous for drawings and paintings displaying a subtle gradation of tones. His work became immensely popular in England in the 18th century. The Reverend William Gilpin, an amateur artist, advocated the use of a Claude glass saying, 'they give the object of nature a soft, mellow tinge like the colouring of that Master'.
16.1.09
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11.1.09
characterless
'The whisper is essential, because the full human voice is too idiosyncratic, too marked with its own history. I'm looking for anonymity so the purity of the object won't be blocked from coming through, from displaying itself in its nakedness. A whisper has no character.'
Siri Hustvedt, The Blindfold
the owl and the birds
'An Owl, in her wisdom, counseled the Birds that when the acorn first began to sprout, to pull it all up out of the ground and not allow it to grow. She said acorns would produce mistletoe, from which an irremediable poison, the bird- lime, would be extracted and by which they would be captured. The Owl next advised them to pluck up the seed of the flax, which men had sown, as it was a plant which boded no good to them. And, lastly, the Owl, seeing an archer approach, predicted that this man, being on foot, would contrive darts armed with feathers which would fly faster than the wings of the Birds themselves. The Birds gave no credence to these warning words, but considered the Owl to be beside herself and said that she was mad. But afterwards, finding her words were true, they wondered at her knowledge and deemed her to be the wisest of birds. Hence it is that when she appears they look to her as knowing all things, while she no longer gives them advice, but in solitude laments their past folly.'
An Aesop's Fable, translated by George Fyler Townsend
10.1.09
of silent flight
Spotting Birds, Jaroslav Spirhanzl Duris & Edmund Burke, Hamlyn, 1975.
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