Alphabe Thursday … W is for Virginia Woolf
I have looked forward to writing this particular walking experience; is is the reason why I began the alphabet of walking.
Virginia Woolf, daughter of the great alpinist Leslie Stephen revealed to a friend that she didn’t take to mountains and climbing; why should she, she adds ‘Wasn’t I brought up with alpenstocks in my nursery, and a raised map of the Alps, showing every peak my father climbed? Of course, London and the marshes are the places I like the best’.
Her London, had more than doubled in size since Dickens had walked the streets. Woolf wrote of the confining oppression of ones identity, of the way the objects in one’s home ‘enforce the memories of our own experience’. So when she set out to buy a pencil in the city one winter’s evening, she did so it seems without fear and her account became one of the great essays on urban walking.
‘As we step out of the house on a fine evening between four and six, we shed the self our friend’s know us by and become part of that vast republican army of anonymous trampers, whose society is so agreeable after the solitude of one’s room’. She went on to say ‘ Into each of these lives one could penetrate a little way, far enough to give one the illusion that one is not tethered to one single mind, but can put on briefly for a few minutes the bodies and mind of others. One could become a washerwoman, a publican, a street singer’. She walked down the same Oxford Street as Thomas de Quincey, now the shop windows are full of luxury items with which she filled an imaginary house and life only tobe removed again as she returned to her walk and the reason for her activity that evening.
Wednesday’s Wood engraver
I am a printmaker working mainly with lino and wood and I struggle with making my work tonal. My work is usually black and white, any shape or colour that appears is always a happy accident. Each time I start a new piece, I practice making marks this way and that in a hope the answer will come … I wait! I recently engraved a cockerel in wood engraving lesson and not matter how I tried the subtle little marks just didn’t do it. I will at some point go back and look at it again but I am afraid the action will be drastic.
While browsing again through the Poetica da Resistencia aspectos da Gravura Brasileira I found this lovely example of a cockerel by Aldemir Martins (1922-206) … isn’t it lovely? Cannot wait to see more of his work!
Weekly photo challenge … Early
I am an early bird; each morning except Sunday I rise at 5 am. I began this ‘habit’ in 1995 when studying for my degree for the Open University. I was working full time and had a daughter still at home so I would do my study before the family awoke and I needed to get on my bike to do a 20 mile round trip to work. I did graduate and no longer have to do such a long journey to work, but somehow this early rising bit has remained. Now, I do yoga, meditate, drink tea and put the final touches to my daily blog post.
At this time of year, I can, just before 7 am venture out into my little back yard. It is a blessed haven where I can sit with the final draft of my first pot of white tea; almost now lost its first rich flavour but still refreshing and warm. My walled garden isn’t not yet graced by the sun, but I, draped in a blanket, sit and wonder about the day ahead , rejoice at the new growth and absorb the peace even as the birds begin to wake noisily in the nearby sycamores.
Last week I …
This weekend I had some works hanging in an ‘Art Exhibition’ albeit on pegs and several lengths string. It was a wonderful experience I will not forget it.
Early in the new year I attended two sessions of evening classes at Block Keep; a local art gallery where some of the resident artists run annual tutorials for students of mixed ability.
This year it was planned that the ‘artists’ might show their pieces at the end of term. Nice idea, but for me a bit of a worry as I didn’t actually complete anything; each week I went along to learn a new skill and to practice later, or, not at home. So at the end of the evening although I signed at dated each work they were not ready for public consumption; but it was too late, I was committed; signed up for the duration.
So for 5 weeks we drew, with pencil, charcoal, pen and ink, pastel, even water colour and the next we got into printing, with wood and lino, learning about the paper, inks, rollers, the press; we laughed, cursed, cut our fingers, got messy, learned about clearing away and honed our precious printing skills. Our prints were hung to dry with pegs on a piece of string; to collect the following week. Some were selected for the show.
Here they are, delightful and politely called ‘experimental’ maybe they appear unfinished, raw and even clumsy to the uninitiated … but to me, seeing these gave me hope that one day we will not be hanging on a washing line no matter how wonderful it seems now.
Silent Sunday
On Saturday …
This week has been good if not a little overwhelming and I don’t know where to begin. I have been invited to write two blog posts although is a potential article for a journal. My CV and letter is all but ready to present to an art guild but the 6 works are not yet ready. It is still difficult to believe even after writing the curriculum vitae I am still not convinced I have what it takes to show my work.
A month or so ago I did a couple of short courses on drawing and printmaking. Although I have had ‘lessons’ and been practicing for a couple of years it was good to have the encouragement of two professionals and the candid feedback.
Today is the exhibition of the resultant works; I have been helping to organise the show in our local gallery; it feels likes more like performing art with the frills, drama and butterflies. Not exactly what I was expecting but nonetheless a joy!
With thanks to the joy-ness provider!
Friday’s snapshot from the library …
To celebrate a few days of sun and blue skies; a colourful snapshot or two …. from the library
Alphabe Thursday … V is for Paul Virilio and speed
As I come nearly to the end of my walking alphabet; I look at the way railway trains and particularly the way that speed took away pleasure of travel. Even in the 19th century when trains were not yet high speed, travelers were saying that they seemed to ‘transcend time and space and become disembodied.’ Writers were saying such things as ‘ the train was experienced as a projectile, travelling as if being shot through the landscape. Losing control of one’s senses; no longer a traveler, he became a parcel.’
Speed, they suggested didn’t make travel more interesting ; people now have the need to read, sleep, to knit or complain of boredom. The use of cars and planes has increased this transformation and we watch movies or listen to music on headphones to relieve the monotony. Paul Virilio, the French cultural theorist and urbanist said that ‘the loss of the thrills of the old journey is now compensated by the showing of an [action] film on the screen over head’.
So true.
Wednesday’s wood engraver from Brazil
Emiliano di Cavalcanti (1897–1976) was a Brazilian artist, printmaker and writer, born in Rio de Janeiro and paved the way for modern art in his country. He trained to be a lawyer but turned to art seriously after a successful exhibition in São Paulo in 1917.
In 1922 he help to set up the Semana de Arte Moderna in São Paulo which is regarded as pivotal in Brazilian culture celebrating dance, literature and painting together. From 1923-1925 he worked in Paris for the newspaper Correio de Manha during this time he became acquainted with notable avant- garde artists such as Braque, Matisse and Picasso. He continued to visit Europe regularly for the next 20 years.
His work draws on a wide range of influences such as Cubism, Fauvism and I understand, Picasso’s Neoclassicism of the 1920s which he blended with his own colourful style and suited to the Brazilian subject matter he enjoyed; mulatto women, carnival, poor fishermen and prostitutes. It seems his cheerful, conservative brand of modernism and his delight in local subjects won him great popularity in Brazil. This wood cut is a fine example of this.
I am really looking forward to finding some more examples of his work during my visit and read more about him he was I understand always an advocate for the poor and oppressed and went to great lengths to aid and protect them
Weekly Photo Challenge … Afloat
I was born afloat in more ways than one. In 1950 with my parents recently moved from Essex; on a houseboat I began life, among a community grown from those who escaped the enemy bombing of nearby towns. My dad, a boat builder built our home from a redundant war ship; later he went on to craft a sailing yacht from an ex-lifeboat. So in a sense we were a family afloat. Also, life was also in flux our existence was a constant adventure not always of the good kind. My dad never married my mum, he was not a man to be ‘moored.’ Looking back, he might be considered an anarchist or a punk but he would not have been comfortable with any label. He was a floating spirit, not suited to the traditional way of life. When my mum and siblings moved to house nearby, my dad didn’t join with us for long. The transition was not as easy as we hoped but we soon all embraced the stable live and enjoyed living in the local community. We went on to have families of our own.
For my part I enjoyed the land and the stability it offered; but now that the children have all flown the nest; I look back to the afloat-ness and the space between the shore and the sea. I remember the sense of adventure, the days we spent afloat without a care or commitment. So while I will not move back to the river I can promise myself to remain afloat and keep the feeling of impending adventure.
Coat Hanger Doll's House 