Fluffy clouds

 

Fluffy clouds, mares tails and con trails at Spode today. I loved the way the sky was crossed and patterned with clouds. The sun was quite low and now we have moved into autumn it took on that crisp shimmer when the heat of summer has all but been extinguished from the sky. The warmth seems to wash out of the blue and it becomes a deeper hue.

Round about the skeletal remains of parts of the spode site sit like dinosaur ribs, shed of flesh and skin, one gaunt necklike chimney sits upright looking out over the landscape of rust and broken bricks.

All this hides the beating pulse of creativity, artists, ceramacists and other makers populate the various untidy buildings. Glass and clay, paint and photography, laser cutting and architecture. All of them dwell under the fluffy white clouds, mares tails and con trails.

Next weekend we are having an OPEN studio. On the 6th and 7th of October.

Admission is free from 11am to 4pm. You are welcome to come into the studios which are open to the public. There will be much to see including a new exhibition of people’s work on the theme of transition. We are at the Spode site, Elanora Street, Stoke, Stoke-on-Trent. The way in will be signposted.

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What day would I go back to?

All the days in our lives,

Stretch out at first, then shrink,

Behind us, gone.

No rewind button for life,

No voicemail recording our every word.

Gone, long ago,  barely remembered. ..

What day would I go back to?

To hear parents voices again, and tell them

How much I loved them?

Or the first day at school, tell myself not to be so shy?

Trying to make perfume from rose petals as a child

Or older, wiser, learning to drive.

Time travel is a one way street, into the future.

If I could go back I would be pleased to meet you again.

Maybe visit a few less railways,

And see the sea a few more times.

Go back to holidays in Devon.

If I could go back I would say,

Don’t take that awful job,

Stay safe and well.

Don’t waste your life for a pay packet,

Let’s live and love.

 

Youdraw pictures

Imagine a website where you can only draw in a small oblong in portrait mode. Imagine you only have a thick and thin black pen and a thick and thin white eraser. Then imagine drawing complicated images with only these tools.

That’s Youdraw, I don’t go on it anymore because my old computer is defunct and my tablet does not let me use a proper stylus pen.

The images above are my drawings, taken from the site and then changed in Photoshop so that I could colour them.

I found it captivating to be able to use the site to  draw so many ideas. The shape was better suited to portraiture, but you could fit landscapes in, abstract ideas, botanical images, anything black and white. Some of the artists there could draw incredibly detailed pictures, one person at least built up a huge interconnected picture of 100 images, maybe more.

If you go and have a look at Youdraw.com you can see what is there now.  I’m not sure if its still taking images. The plan was to collect 500,000 drawings to publicise the population explosion on Earth.

Hopefully I will go back and draw there again one day.

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Studio time?

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I have not been in for a while to my studio. I haven’t settled in. I was OK for a while, but I cocoon myself at home. I wish I could relax and fit in better there.

I find myself going out to other places drawing or painting. But I’m not knuckling down to work. I hope I can break the spell and get on with things. I seem to be half enthusiastic and half despondent. It’s maddening.

I have other reasons that I’m struggling with, but I’m not going into details. Just added frustrations that make things difficult.

Does anyone else feel like this!? Or is it just me….. I have ideas but don’t act on them. People must get really fed up with me being so lacadazical.

Then of course there is the attraction of places like this…am I noise in an empty container? Well I will put this down and try and break free…for a while…

 

The contents of my kitchen

Are in my living room!

Its 10.21 am, and I am surrounded by “stuff” from the kitchen, pots, pans, plates, potatos, peas….ok enough p’s.. although I am a bit “peed” off.

We were promised that work would start today, well it was a bit of a vague promise along the lines of  “all being well”. Being a little naive about these things I expected the workman to arrive, possibly very early, to begin the job. But having seen numerous tv make over programmes I guessed it might not happen.  Especially after he didn’t answer his phone to me, so I have resorted to leaving text messages.

Having a husband with anxiety issues has made things doubly difficult. I cannot bin a lot of things because of his attachments to them. To be honest I’m also not able to let go of some things either. We have had to look at everything and decide what to keep and what to bin or give away. I’m posting photos …the heap of stuff is minus the bike parts which were in two of the cupboards.

What would you do in this situation?

UPDATE

Things were sorted out and we now have a starting date. I had assumed there was a problem when in actual fact it was a genuine mistake. However my excuse is that because of my husband’s anxiety things can seem far worse than they actually are.

 

The empty box at the front is for the cat!

 

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