one of my favourite taps,
from one of my favourite gardens. . .
.
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every so often when doing this

the most bizarre coincidences occur

so, you all know I have one of those things that people have for 1950s fabric. . . so the lovely and thoughtful dinahmow sent me this link. . . which shows these fabrics: remember that image on the top left? why! we were looking at it just the other day. . . (with regard to Jacqueline Groag) (you were paying attention that day, weren't you?) (yes, you!)

and then yesterday, when I was researching Kathleen Raine, I notice an interesting link in the obituaries column, informing me that Lucienne Day has died. . . and she created the fabric on the top right of the image above. . . and these:and this:

Lucienne Day inspecting Aspects of the Sun, 1991
installation for the John Lewis department store at Kingston upon Thames

(which is really really really really strange, because I sat in the John Lewis cafe at Kingston many a time in my penultimate life, wondering about that piece); and her fabrics were used for a book cover too (which was one of the weird things I discovered about Jacqueline Groag, if you'll recall):

and Lucienne grew up in Croydon, as I did (not usually something I'd confess to, but for the purposes of today I shall - but I expect you to immediately forget about that fact) and then of course we musn't forget that Hepworth also created work for John Lewis. . .

so let's just leave coincidence aside for a moment and look again at some of the beautiful words of Raine. . .
.
Confessions

Wanting to know all
I overlooked each particle
Containing the whole
Unknowable.

Intent on one great love, perfect,
Requited and for ever,
I missed love's everywhere
Small presence, thousand-guised.

And lifelong have been reading
Book after book, searching
For wisdom, but bringing
Only my own understanding.

Forgive me, forgiver,
Whether you be infinite omniscient
Or some unnoticed other
My existence has hurt.

Being what I am
What could I do but wrong?
Yet love can bring
To heart healing
To chaos meaning

Extracts from Barbara Hepworth: Carvings

and Drawings (I was trying to find images of her illustrations to show you, but I couldn't)

Marble Form, 1963
" a strong example of Hepworth's two-dimensional work
parabolic curves and arcs suggest a relationship between the colours
and the shifting perspectives of inside and outside, surface and string"

.
The war, Cornwall, and artist in landscape, 1939–1946
Hepworth began producing gouache and pencil works shortly before the outbreak of war in 1939. Having taken refuge from London with her husband (Ben Nicholson) and children in Cornwall, she did not have much time to carve, neither did she have a space of her own. Instead she filled the gap left by carving by producing two-dimensional works.

"In the late evenings, and during the night
I did innumerable drawings in gouache and pencil
– all of them abstract, and all them my own way of exploring
the particular tensions and relationships of form and colour
which were to occupy me in sculpture during the later years of the war. . ."

These creations, a combination of drawing and painting, were to become an important process in Hepworth's art. Hepworth herself acknowledged the huge relevance of these works to her sculptures: ‘they are not just a way of amusing myself, nor are they experimental probings – they are my sculptures born in the disguise of two dimensions.' Whilst they rarely related to actual sculptures, they were ‘a form of exploration…abstract in essence – relating to colour and form but existing in their own right.'

..."I used colour and strings in many of the carvings of this time. The colour in the concavities plunged me into the depth of water, caves, or shadows deeper than the carved concavities themselves. The strings were the tension I felt between myself and the sea, the wind or the hills. The barbaric and magical countryside of rocky hills, fertile valleys, and dynamic coastline of West Penwith has provided me with a background and a soil which compare in strength with those of my childhood in the West Riding. Moreover it has supplied me with one of my greatest needs for carving: a strong sunlight and a radiance from the sea which almost surrounds this spit of land, as well as a milder climate which enables me to carve out of doors nearly the whole year round."

(see, I'm trying to work out how Hepworth came to illustrate Raine's book) (and it's not as easy as you think - there I was thinking that everysinglethingintheworld would be on the net at the end of my fishing pole) (I can see a trip to the British Library coming up) (anyhoo, you'll remember a lot of this from the other day) (won't you) (cos you were paying attention) (weren't you) (yes you!)

perspective

I must have read many books in the past five years

Gormley

The Time Traveller's Wife, for example - even tho it was published in 2003, I'm not sure if I read it straight away; The Vintner's Luck - 2000; The Five People You Meet In Heaven - 2003; The Lovely Bones - 2002; Astonishing Splashes of Colour (2004) and Flights of the Human Mind (2006); She's Come Undone - as far back as 1992 and I Know This Much Is True (1998); to name but barely a few. . .
.

Serra

I've reread lots of work by Gabriel García Márquez, Milan Kundera, Bruce Chatwin and have found new authors such as Nicole Krauss (The History of Love) and Stefan Merrill Block (The Story of Forgetting)

Hepworth

(and I've lived thru - despite my best attempts - many changes in my life, and altho I started writing my "book" when I was happy, in 2004, perhaps I am now back on a more even keel than I was in 2005. . .)

Goldsworthy

(yesterday I looked thru the words that I had been beginning to assemble - it was like remembering baby photos but seeing an adolescent)

Ryan

back in 2004 I was only just beginning my love affair with Hepworth altho I was already engrossed in the artists of The Newlyn School; I'd seen many works by Andy Goldsworthy and Richard Long, but was only just becoming familiar with that of Antony Gormley - hadn't heard of Richard Serra

Minton

.
I hadn't seen an illustration by John Minton, didn't know the wonder that is the art work of Rob Ryan, was still to come across the words of Carol Ann Duffy, but I was already in love with the poetry of Kathleen Raine, for I had owned a book of hers since 1983. . .
.
however it wasn't until 2007 that I was to come across the following:
.

Shells

Reaching down arm-deep into bright water
I gathered on white sand under waves
Shells, drifted up on beaches where I alone
Inhabit a finite world of years and days.
I reached my arm down a myriad years
To gather treasure from the yester-milliennial sea-floor,
Held in my fingers forms shaped on the day of creation.

Building their beauty in three dimensions
Over which the world recedes away from us,
And in the fourth, that takes away ourselves
From moment to moment and from year to year
From first to last they remain in their continuous present.
The helix revolves like a timeless thought,
Instantaneous from apex to rim
Like a dance whose figure is limpet or murex, cowrie or golden winkle.

They sleep on the ocean floor like humming-tops
Whose music is the mother-of-pearl octave of the rainbow,
Harmonious shells that whisper forever in our ears,
The world that you inhabit has not yet been created.

Kathleen Raine

(rereading the prologue of my "book" reminds me of the above, possibly my favourite piece by Raine. . . and yet I'd written my prologue before I'd read her poem)(remember this)

by popular request: more on Hepworth

I won't go on at great length about her there is so much information on the web if you're interested, apart from to say that the main thing I like about the work of Barbara Hepworth (January 1903 – May 1975) is (and I'm putting this in quotes because they aren't my words) her "sculptural interplay between mass and negative space" which she developed during her time at the first art college she attended in 1920; thirty years on, she was still using the central void to great effect as well as her sculpture, I find her paintings and sketches interesting

(note the "interplay" between "mass" and "negative space"!)

I'm not so keen on the following piece, which is in the garden of the museum in St Ives, but what I do like about it are the colours of the bronze. . .

the next one, Sphere with Inner Form, I do like, because of the roundness of the sphere and again the colour of the metal

(altho the I must confess I don't like the "inner form"!)

now, look really carefully - in the background of that photo, can you see the slabs with holes (to put it bluntly)? I wonder if the following sketches were Hepworth working her ideas up for that piece (Walk Through)
and here it is, Walk Through (but not photographed by moi in her garden, as you can see):
and the following sketch shows more of these ideas:

Abstraction: Squares and Circles

now I promised man that I'd find a photo of one of her strung pieces, which in a way remind me of his dreamcatchers. . . so here it is:

notes from an exhibition

no, not my latest art visit - my latest read

I haven't quite finished it yet but so far it's been a lovely read - covering art, Cornwall, Hepworth, creativity, painting, the Newlyn School, love, family life, depression and ECT (all subjects close to my heart, as you, dear reader, know) (or indeed, close to my brain in the case of ECT)

and also a topic I'm not so familiar with - bipolar disorder (I,LTV sighs a small sigh of relief)

in fact, I liked the book so far so much that the other day I wandered into my local bookshop to see what else was available from the author. . . a whole shelf full!! but I left without a single purchase, the blurbs on the back of the covers put me off each and everyone of Patrick Gale's other works

I do wonder if I've been a little hasty especially since this book has been on my shelf, unread, for quite a while and I can't even remember why I bought it originally (probably not because of the blurb on the back, it has to be said)

and you, dear reader,
(I mustn't forget about you, since this little chink
of cyber space is really rarely ever all about me me me)
what are you reading at the moment
- and would you recommend it?

all of which puts me in mind of Cornwall and

one of my favourite holiday destinations

a day out in St Ives. . . and a visit to the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, part of Tate St Ives; now, most of us are familiar with Hepworth's work - but the wonderful thing about this museum is that it's set in her house/garden/studio. . .
.
so not only do we see some of her works in stitu. . .

but we also see inside the workings of her studio

the works that were in progress at the time of her death. . .

her tools. . .
her personal effects. . .the works that never were. . . and if you scrabble around on the ground under the sculptures, you can even see this:

holes

all of which (above) reminds me of this:

(don't tell The Teen, but I have that poster and intend to put it on one of the newly painted walls)

"as I was going to St Ives. . .

. . .I met a man with seven wives"

.
well, this I didn't, and neither did I come across bags of cats - however, I did visit one of my favourite places:

and what a fantastic summer exhibition!

being rather cheeky, I sneaked some photos of the Rie works that were on display (camera phone again) (couldn't have sneaked with the real camera):

I spent rather too much money in the shop - which I'm kind of regretting now - but I found some lovely things! (and yes, for anyone who received a Doran postcard, rest assured that I bought two sets so I could keep one of each of those that I sent); skipped the cafe, because the sun had come out and went down to the beach for a coffee. . .

. . . of course, whilst in St Ives, it is essential to visit the Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden too, a place which has provided me with so much inspiration in the past, and I duly did - but more of that at another time
.

. . .I'd tell you what The Teen said about the Alfred Wallis pictures, but that is a whole other topic which I'll also spare you on this occasion (however maybe one day we'll look into Wallis some more?)
.
. . .as it is, I have yet more Cornish treats coming soon, you lucky lucky people you (oh, and I still owe you some seaweed too, don't I? don't let me forget that!)
.

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