remembering folk

Characters and caricatures; the idealized heads of St. John and St. Paul are contrasted with grotesque heads, above them rises a cloud of faces showing different expressions. Etching by W. Hogarth, 1743 © Wellcome Library, London

The funeral procession of the Dutch naval commander de Ruyter in 1677 © Wellcome Library, London

Part of the funeral procession of General Monk, Duke of Albemarle, in 1670. Wood engraving.
1852© Wellcome Library, London

Funeral procession of a queen passing through Hammersmith in London. Etching with engraving by C. Canton after R. Banks © Wellcome Library, London

The two top photographs were taken of framed 'photo-collages' - for want of a better word - at Fiskars Museum. I've not really seen anything quite like it in the UK before. Perhaps it is a peculiarly Finnish way to document people linked by blood, institution, geography or politics? They reminded me of images that I've been collecting of visual lists for some time now, including this one by Hogarth and three funeral procession prints (all from the Wellcome Trust).

desert island

Desert Island comic book store on 540 Metropolitan Way, Brooklyn, just along the way from where I'm staying. A whole array of stuff, from very classic comics, to short run zines, posters, books and other publications that may or may not be termed artists' books. Pretty much all you could want on the subject of comics.  
And the window display there at the moment is fab! The picture above doesn't nearly do it justice. But everything is hung or constructed to be freestanding, and it just has a really lovely naive and playful quality about it. It looked like it was fun and free to make. Designed and created by Hyesu, you can see some better pictures of the window display here and its creation on her blog here and here.

Lastly the guy who runs Desert Island is also really friendly, helpful and genuinely passionate about the shop and the subject.  And it seems to be open just about all the time…

the sweet doom of the collector

The great collections are vast, not complete. Incomplete motivated by the desire for completeness. There is always one more. And even if you have everything - whatever that may be - then you will perhaps want a better copy (version, edition) of what you have; or with mass-produced objects (pottery, books, artifacts), simply an extra copy, in case the one you possess is lost or stolen or broken or damaged. A backup copy. A shadow collection.

Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover.

This book, from M - and probably also good for O to read for his collections project.

note # 3: utter

Utterances are not indifferent to one another, and are not self-sufficient; they are aware of and mutually reflect one another… Each utterance is filled with echoes and reverberations of other utterances to which it is related by the communality of the sphere of speech communication… Each utterance refutes, affirms, supplements, and relies on the others, presupposes them to be known, and somehow takes them into account.

Mikhail Bakhtin, The Problem of Speech Genres

note # 2: blood memories

Verses are not, as people imagine, simply feelings. They are experiences. For the sake of a single verse, one must see many cities, men, and things, one must know the animals, one must feel how the birds fly… One must be able to think back to roads in unknown regions…to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel, that rushed along on high and flew with all the stars–and it is not yet enough if one may think of all this. One must have memories of many nights of love…one must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window… And yet still it is not yet enough to have memories themselves. Not til they have turned to blood within us, to glance and to gesture, nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves–not til then can it happen that in the most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes forth from them.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties

And so we carry on. This gives us purpose, no matter how hard it may sometimes seem. 'Cause at the end of it, maybe we make something meaningful out of it all, and extend it out beyond ourselves and our own internal world, out to another.

note # 1

Two things to note about cats:

1. Have you ever felt your cat's purr? You know they really love you, when they trust you enough to let you put your hand on the vulnerable spot at their throat, where you can feel their purr rattle and dance.

2. When I smile at my cat, she turns her ears to face me: like she can hear my smile. It makes her look like an owl. I like the idea that a smile is more than just a visible thing, that it might have a sound too.

business

Back in a place I've not been for a long while. And just spent time looking out the window at the bird table outside. All the action and frenzy and chattering! I realised I don't care what the birds are (although I did make a list and verified markings in a bird book…), just that they're there. It's somehow reassuring to watch them go about their business with no particular plan other than to survive. It puts a certain perspective on things.

Blackbird

Blue tit

Chaffinch 

Coal tit

Collared dove

Goshawk (perhaps…)

Greater spotted woodpecker

Great tit

Greenfinch
House sparrow

Nuthatch

Robbin

Starling
Tree sparrow

Woodpigeon

One thing I find rather frustrating about living with cats in a seaside town: birds just get driven away. You don't often hear them or see them.

Think I'm back to thinking about birds a lot these days as we seem to have a rogue starling swarm in our little town at the moment. I've not seen if before - they arrived after the big storms and I wonder whether they got a little blown of course. As a team, they are so flamboyant and gossipy! They seem to have different spots in which to congregate at different times (and I never seem to have my camera at the ready). Just now outside my studio window on a telegraph pole: my cats are driven nearly insane by them.

Part of it is also to do with the fact that The Art of Lost Words is due to be shown at the University of Plymouth in the spring and I'd quite like the opportunity to revisit some of the ideas a little differently. Skirr - here I come again.

brass tacks

 

I'm trying to understand what my work is essentially about. This is the final shortlist that I've put up on my studio wall. I'm not sure whether to feel happy that I'm getting somewhere in nailing it, or depressed that all these words are linked by me!

a new label deserves a new post

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four things

It seems I need to remain focussed.

I'm all over the place at the moment. Too much paid work and not enough quality thinking time.

Thought I should make things a bit easier by setting some parameters.

Four things I want to work on in the immediate future (in order of priority):

• A submission for the launch of the UoP Message website and book 

• Ten missing days project

• Shadows

• Boats, maritime things, naval history, pirates, crockery

There are no pictures on this post. This is to scare me into activity. Best get on then.

the invent-ory

I'm so excited. For over a year now I've been meaning to put a .pdf download link on my website so that people can read the article I wrote for Ultrabold magazine back in 2008. Finally I've done it - and not broken my back (and my laptop) in the process. And doorways suddenly open! The potential is huge.

If you're interested in reading the article, called The Invent-ory: Words on Imagined Repositories, Endless Indexes and an Exercise in Collecting Beginnings then please click here.

boundlessness

Split into an examination of lists that are finite and those that are deliberately without end, this is a pretty good summary of the visual list, albeit quite classically biased. Nonetheless worth a look at if you're at all interested in taxonomy, systems, collections and the neverending. I am.

To read a review of Umberto Eco's The Infinity of Lists, click here.

notes in sketchbook

 History is silent.

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Sculpture exists in time.

You walk around it.

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Where narrative is prompted and defeated at once.

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Sitting quietly in a space between hesitation and action.

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Both empty and promising.

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a number of animals kept together

Watching Birds, James Fisher, Pelican Books, 1940.

words that never get used… but which ought to be

Cassell's English Dictionary

chapters or perhaps-titles for works

~ Talking Machines - Past, Present & Future
~ Forcing Things into Form
~ The Air About Us
~ False Ideas & Foolish Inventions
~ Going to the Farthest Limits
~ Seeing Through Mist
~ Measuring Sound
~ Waiting & Seeing

Inventions, H. Stafford Hatfield, Pelican Books

thinking home

~ A country lounge-about room for outdoors-loving moderns
~ A boudoir for an exotic beauty
~ A country living room for the stay-at-home mother
~ A dressing-room bathroom of unlimited extravagance
~ Backgrounds for blondes
~ Backgrounds for brunettes
~ Embellishing backgrounds for women of fading beauty
~ Enter Madame

The Personality of a House: The Blue Book of Home Design & Decoration, Emily Post, 1930.

daily small risks III

Talk to a hunter at dusk on a lonely country lane.

pause under glass vol. V

Notes on slumbering under a glass shade:
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Static.
Preserved in aspic.
Hiatus.
Respite.
Holding breath.
Pause.
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All that is precious, encased. Glass domes denote value, consequence, substance.
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Recognition of the passage of time is avoided, by preventing dust from landing on the object contained within glass.
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Wardian case: protected glass houses for ferns.
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Tableau vivant: silent, motionless group of people, to be admired.
(Kate Matthews Collection.)
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Statues.
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other people's various small pieces of ocean

Cut postcards in sketchbook