urn
These are from this summer, all in my mom’s neighbourhood.
I’m working with photos for a few days to distract myself from some technical difficulties with the other series I’ve been working on. I’ve looked around to see if anyone else is doing a similar process with inks, pencil and encaustic, but haven’t seen any, so I’ll go back to experimenting with the propane torches tomorrow. So far nothing big has caught fire or blown up, that’s good anyway.
Earlier this evening I was showing a friend the website of one of my favourite photographers, Michael Eastman – his Cuban and Italian photos are incredible. Then I learned of the death of Roy DeCarava, another amazing photographer. I was trying to pick a few of his photos that I liked best, but it is so hard to choose. This is one of many, and this, and this. They are so evocative.
Now that I have loaded my photos onto this post I’ve decided I don’t like the way they look small. I love how art has such a different effect at different sizes (except when it doesn’t work small on my blog). I spent the day at an art museum with some friends recently, and was loving the difference between various pieces close up and at a distance. And the texture, that fantastic delicate texture of drawings and miniatures, it’s all completely lost in reproduction.
broken
This window is in a beautiful building in the village my mom lives in, it was abandoned 19 years ago.
In my art I like to use images from my life and the places I’ve explored. Damaged old buildings evoke so many emotions, and questions.
This piece is not finished but I haven’t figured out where to go with it next.
doorway
For this I used the image of my mother’s doorway – sitting here I can smell the stone and plaster walls (unless my sister is cooking ratatouille, bread pudding with ginger toffee, or some other deliciousness). The house dates back to at least 1595, the records before that were lost when the town was sacked in 1576, and when she moved in the only plumbing was a sink underneath the window to the right of the door, all cooking had been done in the fire.
I love row houses because I love town noise, and my mom’s house is so accessible when someone drops by for a visit, but my dream house would be a ‘portland’, a row house with a long strip of garden behind. I recently stayed in a beautiful example of that in a medieval town outside London while visiting relatives (including my most adored aunt and uncle who are fixing up a barge in the gorgeous port of Sandwich), the garden was 40+ feet wide and 630 feet long, on a south-facing slope with orchard, pond and nuttery. Perfection. An upscale version, built 70 years after the one I stayed in, is Rothe House in Kilkenny, which has been restored and opened as a museum. It would be great to be part of a project like that, they did such a good job on the gardens and orchard, and next time I’ll definitely spend more time in their library.
15 kilos
No art today because I am travelling, all packed to Ryan Air’s precise requirements. These are photographs I took during a drive with my sister the other day, all things we won’t see for a while. The farmer who sold us honey that day insisted that we come down to pick the tomatoes with him so that we could appreciate the layout of his farm. The tomatoes were amazing with some herbs we picked and chevre on bread.
local colour
I love the designs of old hardware, and the variety. Here are a few favourites from the village my mom lives in.
Mme, above left, holds open the shutters, to the right is the view up the street past my mom’s house.
Below are some local doors, many of them have multiple locks, I love the heart-shaped one.
Apologies for the quality of the photos, the camera has been seriously uncooperative lately.
market
Two shots of the market in my mom’s town, taken by a friend, Derek. I was never really a dapple grey person, but I really like that horse. My great-grandfather’s horses consistently took top awards, the ancient amulets I’ve seen from where our ancestors lived are suns or horses (or both), all my cousins had horses, but my mother is somehow immune to their charms (and that of any other animal). I’ve been reading my great-grandmother’s journal where she writes about how she gets so absorbed by reading that she doesn’t want to eat or sleep until she finishes a good book, which I completely understand. I have never read a book while riding a horse though.
