Celebrating

Today I posted the final parcel for my birthday. A couple of weeks ago I completed sixty years of life - something I still find impossible to believe, but I do seem to have done quite a lot, so it might well be true. Anyway, I wanted to celebrate.

There was a problem there in that I dread being the centre of attention in any way, and also I have long passed the era of parties. That was several episodes ago. But I needed to do any something special - a present to myself really.

I decided that I would adopt the cream bun approach: when one works in an office or whatever, whosever's birthday it is usually has to take in a box of cream buns to hand around. So, I decided that I would give a cream bun - in this case a piece of my work which I particularly like - to everyone (with whom I'm still in touch) who made a significant positive contribution to my life.

It was tremendous fun doing this, and it was a joy to receive the responses as presents.

Sometimes

Sometimes there's such a strong feeling of story in a building. So strong that it haunts, and tugs,... persisting, somehow familiar,until one day the story will settle itself in the mind like a distant member of the family. Glimpses of incidents, memories of encounters, speculative explanations, slippery, not quite ... but always.

Seduction

I find artists' books seductive. Is it perhaps because they are such personal items, meant for individuals to handle and view on their own, or perhaps shared with one other only? Or is it that from a maker's point of view a book of one's own is unique in a way that another painting, quilt, or whatever is not?

We took my nephews to the V&A Museum yesterday. The main purpose was to visit the China Design Now exhibition which we all enjoyed. A bonus was the Blood on Paper display: a free exhibition of artists' books. With rather selfish delight I was in heaven. (Not so heavenly for the boys - they were a bit bored by this, not seeing the point of the works.)

It was rather an inevitably frustrating heaven, however, because of not being allowed to turn the pages. 'Do Not Touch' was prominently displayed everywhere, when touching was exactly what we wanted to do. The Matisse book for instance had the same spread shown in the display as in publicity pix - they might at least have shown another spread in the photographs. I longed for a reproduction book of photographs of the spreads which visitors could peruse. I suppose that that expense would have meant the display no longer being free. But how I wanted to weigh the lead pages of Kiefer's books in my hands, to run my fingers over the seductive curves of Caro's metal forms (some people had, and the smudges were disfiguring), to handle the silky fabric pages of the Bourgeois, curl up and read the Rego illustrated Jane Eyre, etc.

I very much enjoyed the idea of and the video showing Danger Book: Suicide Fireworks. Anish Kapoor's Wound was less of a book, but high on the list of seductive objects. Blake Morrison's article in Saturday's Guardian is an informative and interesting comment on the exhibition. Many of the 'books' are 'published' by Ivory Press, founded and run by Elena Foster. Of course with conceptual art being so un-collectable in a way, these objects are becoming ever more sought-after.

Even I have turned my hand to the form. Well, my duo-didactic friend and I used to give ourselves exercise projects, a few of which were to use book forms. In summer 2003 I made Everyone a star.I took a copy of T.S. Elliot's The family reunion (a play I studied many years ago) and 'altered' it. I liked the idea of combining the Chekov play title Three sisters in the concept of the piece - thinking about the drama queens that were embodied in the three sisters comprising my mother and her siblings.The book consists of a cover and three spreads made by stitching pages together, cutting out parts and leaving odd phrases which appealed to me, using buttons, heat transferred figures, and bits and pieces of fabric, and some plastic pouches with fibre samples. A hodge-podge really.The figures are loose, joined only by the hands meeting through the pages - or at least that is the theory. When flattened to be scanned the hands do not touch any more. The principle is best shown in the scan of the first spread where the back of spread 2's hand can be seen. I would spend much more time on it if it were to be a serious piece of work rather than simply an enjoyable exercise.It was great fun to do, but also frustrating because it cannot really be displayed. It has deliberately to be taken and appreciated, spread by spread, and in this case the execution is too slapdash and the content of the work itself too superficial to be worth serious examination. But as an exercise it was extremely valuable, and I still from time to time think about elements of the work and its making.

One thing leads to another

Rembrandt: Bathsheba at her bath (Louvre, Paris)

When I come across someone or something new that attracts me greatly I become voracious for information. The Internet has become food for this hunger, but sometimes there is a frustrating bare or almost bare cupboard.

Last September I encountered the work of Charles Matton for the first time. A conceiver of tableaux, a photographer, a sculptor, and a film maker, there is a dearth of information on the web about him. Not nearly enough to satisfy me, and so when I discovered that his wife Sylvie had written a book: Rembrandt's whore I scrambled along that path of enquiry.

On seeing one of my favourite paintings as the cover illustration my decision to buy the book was endorsed. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, which has an excellent translation. It is in the style of a thought diary of the protagonist: Hendrickje Stoffels, known as Rembrandt's common law wife. She was illiterate and filled with superstitions, and we get a simple yet clear view of Rembrandt's life and tribulations as well as the daily practicalities of his painting. The book fills in so much of the background of life at the time, and Rembrandt and his household's problems - those largely caused by the presence of Stoffels as well as by debt and then illness.

I was moved by the book in the way that I was not by Deborah Moggah's Tulip fever. I have not read Tracy Chevalier's novels - I've never really been drawn to do so. But I am extremely pleased that my curiosity about Charles Matton led me to his wife's work.

Now of course I'm filled with a need to know more about both of them!

a different dimension

Isn't it strange how someone often mentions a topic that is buzzing round your brain anyway? This happened with Jude's comment on my last post. She said that '3d is so different, I have often wondered how to go there.'

Me too, and I have been thinking about that on and off for quite a while now. The cylinder is a form which attracts me greatly. The above is just a reference snap to try to help me think about what I could possibly do that is meaningful at all. My favourite 2d representation of the cylindrical form is in the photographs of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Their industrial portraits blow my mind - and their water towers and gas tanks particularly. For me the forms could not be bettered in two dimensions.

Anthony Caro also does a mean cylindrical curve, and of course there are many wondrous works in ceramics. I have a particular weakness for the 'wonky' cylinders of Edmund de Waal. This is my 'blind' drawing of our E. de W. coffee cups.
But I have always despaired of finding a form for my own particular expression.

The closest I have come to a feeling that perhaps there definitely is some means for me is when I saw the collection of Louise Bourgeois' Cells at the Tate exhibition earlier this year. I broke through the frustration of the bald attraction to the geometry of the cylinder to the beginnings of a personal understanding or clarification of a way to get to the form. As ever, although the intellect provides the door for me, it's the emotions which hold the key.

So although, like Jude, I'm not sure how to get to 3d in my own work yet, I've by no means given up.

A pleasant reminder

Zoe Rubens: Dawn appearing (small sculpture made of metal and ceramic)

While looking for something else (isn't it always the way distractions begin!) I came across a few cards I'd bought years ago when visiting Cambridge Open Studios. The cards are prints and photos of work by Zoe Rubens. I loved her work when I saw it, and subsequently a friend bought a couple of small pieces of hers.

The work reminds me very much of drawings I used to see presented to me as a publisher at book fairs on the Continent, the fabulous work of Charles Matton which I encountered in Paris last year and of course of Alexander Calder's Circus sculptures in wire. I am gradually sending off various cards and postcards that I've accumulated, but there are some with which I do not want to part. These are definitely included in that group.

Not only do I love the pieces pictured and the prints, but I also have that itch in me that wants to make three dimensional work. My work would not be the same in appearance, but the spirit appeals greatly. This is an itch I love to scratch.

And now for something completely different!

Woken by what I thought was hail, I looked out of the window and this is what I saw!It's ages since we had really snow lying deep and crisp and even like this. It's an event I love in winter because it covers up all the messiness in the garden, making the place look delightful.

The grape hyacinths are managing to stay upright.But this year's gloriously abundant alpina looks a little swamped.The birds were silent during the falling snow, but now are coming to life again.If you click on the above photo, and look really carefully about halfway up you will be able to see Mr Blackbird jump-flying up to get at a piece of fat block. I put a feeder up where my mother can see it from her chair, and we have observed that Mrs Blackbird has learned to sit on top of the fat block 'cage' and eat at leisure; whereas Mr Blackbird still flutters up and grabs!The greenhouse is wrapped in a blanket, but I need not worry about my seedlings as they will appreciate the intense light once the roof cover starts melting. And the sweet peas will be grateful that I was not swept away with enthusiasm by the warmth of Friday, and did not plant them out!

I'm fascinated by how the colour in the photographs changes according to whether I'm facing towards or away from the sun. It just goes to show what an effect it has that perhaps one does not notice so much when there is not a huge expanse of white to point it out.

This part of central southern England usually gets very mild weather, somehow avoiding any extreme, so I wonder what drifts and blizzards others are experiencing.

Sunshine-y day

The first jacket-free day this year! I'm definitely looking forward to bare legs despite dire warnings of snow (!) in parts of the UK tomorrow. Today we enjoyed a day wandering round the Hillier Arboretum in the warm sunshine.The sun was incredibly warm, and the buds were almost opening right there, stretching out in the heat. However, down at our feet the dew was still wet after midday. What glorious conditions for the plants. Not bad for us too!The magnolias were the particular stars, but there were so many others pushing their way into the picture.