Jane Wheeler's Blog 2014

sun-walking

Posted jane -->on 10th Dec 2014

third quarter moon high in the blue

winter sun rising,

a blinding orange bead behind my left shoulder

catching grasses seed heads

glinting through the hedge on Cakes

shining through translucent leaves

illuminating red spotted yellow maple

wind tamed

white jay spirit bird

roe deer lingering

along the woodshore

winter dawn near solstice

horizon brimming outlining

pigeons flap and clatter in branches above

walking up the wet tarmac lane into sun

with arms open and eyes shut

sun walking

immersed

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Scotland for me

Posted jane -->on 29th Nov 2014

a trip to Fife and I’m in love, going back for Christmas.

St Andrews is of course quite special

Firstly the beach, which goes on and on out past the golf course and round the corner towards the Eden estuary.

Enough visual stuff to keep one happy for a month

A lovely little secondhand bookshop where I found lots of poetry

Including a little pamphlet style book, Situations Theoretical and Contemporary, printed in 86, poems by Tom Leonard which contains this sadly ironic gem;

Scotland has become an independent socialist republic.

At last.

Eh?

You pinch yourself.

Jesus Christ. You’ve slept in again!

And it is now the home of my daughter and her husband, he’s running Waterstones and she’s teaching film at the university and little Em is happy to be running on the beach, eating kelp and sleeping the rest of the day in a quiet house right on the western edge of the town.

we had a trip up to Killiecrankie, past Pitlochry in Perthshire

It stopped raining about when we got out of the car, but the cloud and mist stayed around

Dramatically steep valley sides all clad in trees

More leaves, I did pick a bagfull of sessile oak leaves off the forest floor.

All the lichened tree trunks and wind-soughing branches

And impressive tall pines

Clouds sunk down between the ridges

Impossibly romantic and Caspar David Friedrich-esque

Tangling branches, trees black with rain

And very historical of course, plus bungee jumpers diving off that terrifyingly high bridge.

Next day was sunshine and Tentsmuir forest and beach.

A bit like Wells beach in Norfolk but without the miles of sand, instead the Tay estuary just around the corner.

The dogs found a ball amongst the kelp and driftwood

The dunes aren’t as big as ours but there isn’t as much sand on the beach, so …..

Lots of pine needles. Some wind fallen green clumps found their way home with me too.

Friends, family and a special country are going to keep me coming back.

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Leaves underfoot

Posted jane -->on 29th Nov 2014

I’ve been kept quite busy by the riches in the hedgerows and gardens this month,

all sorts of leaves that I have before had to harvest with secateurs are throwing themselves on the ground in such abundance that it’s quite strange to be able to pick up great bundles of them.

Some give different colours after the tree has shed them. The alder leaves that gave me delicate green prints only produce a sort of fawn colour after they have fallen.

luckily I saved a bagful in the freezer; these behaved much as they had fresh, and those I took from the lower branches gave green while the ones torn down by the tractor gave mixed greeny purples. This is all to the good as to be turning out sets of matching cardigans would be very sad.

A big surprise was finding the huge leaves of the Indian bean tree, catalpa bignonioides, on my accountant’s office lawn, plus a pretty sprinkling of maple leaves all round my car. with this unexpected result on a silk and cotton sweater.

I have sessile oak leaves from Killiecrankie bundled in a cashmere cardigan from a too late cancelled order, and pine needles from Tentsmuir waiting for more experiments, so watch this space.

meanwhile the long missed experience of November in Norfolk is continuing to charm.

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wrestling the haiku – seventeen?

Posted jane -->on 7th Nov 2014

5 , 7, 5 – or 3, 5, 3 – or even 1

the Japanese haiku poetry form was first imitated in English by the American poet Ezra Pound in 1913; the imagist poets, of which he was one, used the form a lot; they called them hokku

In a station in the metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

and then Amy Lowell

Twenty four hokku on a modern theme

Again the larkspur,

Heavenly blue in my garden.

They, at least, unchanged.

the beat poets, including Jack Kerouac, wrote them; here is one of his –

Snow in my shoe

Abandoned

Sparrow’s nest.

but you will notice we are already all over the place in terms of those seventeen syllables.

the essence of the Japanese haiku is that one word (a cutting word – kireji) will cut between two images or phrases, colouring or disrupting the relationship between them, Jack Kerouac’s Snow in my shoe does this, or, it can be at the end, forming a full stop. You can argue that Amy Lowell’s “unchanged” is the cutting word.

the number of syllables, 5, 7, 5 is traditional. in japanese that makes a poem which is much more condensed than in English, and a truer feeling of the haiku is given by using 3, 5, 3 in English.

however, in japanese words can be placed wherever convenient for the poem without changing the meaning, which is not so in English.

my feeling is that both 17 and 11 syllables have their charms in the English language, a frame to hang words on, but to be ultra-strict about either can be defeatist.

traditionally also japanese haiku refer to nature, or the season of the year, but now there is a perception that the images juxtaposed must be directly observed everyday objects or occurrences.

finally, thinking up haiku can be a little addictive. these 3, 5, 3 verses have been tapped out on my iphone while walking in Cakes lane in the last few days, reacting to observed plants, birds, weather, happenings.

In the hedge

Bullfinches fluting

Clouds piled high

Winter geese

Calling through the sky

Northerly

Frigid air

Blurring rain shower

Quickly gone

Umbel spokes

Tall bleached skeletons

Summer’s ghosts

Brown woodcock

Flies over my head

Twisting wind

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winter’s precursor

Posted jane -->on 6th Nov 2014

in Cakes lane, I can hear pink-footed geese calling in the sky, hidden by tall hedges.

a sudden rain storm blurs the frigid air.

November, winter’s precursor, is here.

there’s still just enough strength in the sun to warm your back, but it’s a low sun and it drops down into dusk early.

turning the clocks back finds us with uncanny quickness in the dark of cold winter afternoons. we light fires to combat the dark and the cold, especially huge communal bonfires. the sparks fly up and the flames crackle to banish evil spirits and keep ours up, to revive the memory of summer heat. the rural custom of men in dresses with fiery torches marching round the village in the dark banging drums and pots and pans, is a defiant gesture to the dark, bravado against the implacable night.

last night a huge white moon hovered low over the garden, its cold light illuminating frosty grass, all colour bleached out. perhaps this winter will be cold enough to kill off the bacteria of the fire blight that ruined my apple and pear trees last spring.

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getting round to stuff

Posted jane -->on 15th Oct 2014

so much to do, in so many different directions, but I am getting through it. one of them was to photograph the new pots properly, and to do that I had to finish tidying the bases where some still had debris stuck and also take off the chunk of pot from the back of one of them, using my dremel drill. this is the makeshift studio – basically two soft boxes on neon lamps, and a black-to-grey vinyll backdrop pegged to a ply board propped against my stool on my worktable. there’s a lot of ambient light too, as this is right underneath a very generous skylight and next to double doors which are fully glazed.

I use a small camera, a lumix DCM camera which is a point and shoot, and gives me a much better quality photo than my old SLR which I got rid of. I don’t use a tripod, because I don’t have the patience to keep resetting up – I need the flexibility of just waving myself around in front of the pot to find the best point of view.

so I got some nice dramatic full views

like these

but some interesting (I hope) close-ups

which I want to counterpose

with all the other things that are whirling around in my head at the moment

as I feel it is all interconnected

in ways which are very important to me

perhaps in ways which I can’t put into words that well

and that fit together visually better

trees, leaves, earth, clay, wood-fired pots,

leaf prints;

all these shapes and textures

and colours

the sky, the air, the light, the whole

experience of being in this place

and looking, sometimes in ways as focused as my lurcher scanning the landscape for prey.

the ash from hard woods that Nic threw into the kiln and that streamed like molten lava down the shoulders of my pieces, and the shells that were pressed between pots, and the plough lines that I combed into this bottle’s shoulder, combining to make new things

leaves

soft fractal shapes

and landscape lines that bend according to where you are

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the chocolate shop

Posted jane -->on 30th Sep 2014

and before I leave I have to go back here –

a very special shop, with the most wonderful smell

in the arcades around the corner

it’s all very belle epoque

with the hot chocolate cart steaming gently on the pavement outside

and the setting is good enough to eat too …

while your purchases are wrapped up like christmas presents

and there is that most old fashioned of shop items

a cashier in the corner.

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Paris fashion week for Spring 2015

Posted jane -->on 30th Sep 2014

in Paris again for fashion week. it seems a long time since I did a Paris post

this is the view from the apartment window. we are above and opposite the Tuilerie gardens, very beautiful views of the Paris skyline, the Eiffel Tower, and all the rest, but awful traffic noise with the windows open. and it has been so warm we have had to have the windows open. this morning I can smell the traffic as well, and there is a bit of pollution haze on the horizon.

the collection is very happy in this lovely well lit apartment

and the group we have is all on the artesanal end of things, very small producers

like Christine Birkle of Hut-up

with beautiful dresses, coats, tops … and funny felt animals

I love her happy whales

and we have Aurore Thibout this time,

with beautiful silks dyed by artisans in Taiwan

wonderful tailored casuals and more formal things by Miao Ran from Milan

Colomba Leddi’s crisp and fresh printed cottons which are very special

and Stefano Poletti’s beautiful glass jewellery, made in Paris from special materials. these pieces are from mirror made in Murano, engraved and cut and mounted by Stefano here.

the apartment has some nice bits of furniture, like this art deco shelving unit

and an art deco cabinet – most of the furniture is tidied away for our week’s exhibition though.

the building is pretty special too

marble, wrought iron, the original cage lift

stained glass, parquet floors ……

the alternative is to show in a gallery in the Marais, cool and fashiony, but small spaces with concrete floors, no civilised private areas like we have here, with out lovely bathroom, kitchen …. and the views.

we are still very very sad to have lost the house that Philippe had before, but in lots of ways this is better for the light, and for the position, just opposite the big tent shows in the jardin de Tulieries.

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sky blues

Posted jane -->on 21st Sep 2014

I have made my indigo vat, at last, almost three months after the workshop with Michel Garcia at Hat in the Cat. I didn’t get blue hands this time, I decided I didn’t want to be wearing blue nails in Paris next week, so I sweated disgustingly in rubber gloves.

I was actually rather nervous; I had contacted all the other attendees and asked whether the henna decoction should be strained – the consensus was no – but as I put the henna powder straight into hot water it went into lumps, so I had a rather steamy time mashing it up, and it didn’t get a chance to fall to the bottom, as Michel had said. but anyway, I put it all together – managing to lose a couple of marbles into the vat, and it looked just the same as the vat Michel made in Newburgh. the rest of the day was spent in dipping and rinsing garments,

two cotton bought things, a dress and a hoodie, to lower the ph a bit for the silk, and then five dresses, including a bought slip for my daughter, and a linen cardigan, and then at the end, when it was tepid a cashmere shawl with the moose and tree embroidery. a whole washing line of vivid blues, and the shibori in sodden lumps, waiting to be steamed in the new pressure cooker – which should preserve the creases.

everything was only dipped once, as it was quite strong, and I wanted sky blues, not dark blues, for my next spring collection. I am keeping the vat in the pottery workshop where the blue splashes don’t matter and it will be preserved from frosts, and using the long hose-pipe and various buckets and bins outside for the rinsing. that is not going to be an option in really cold weather.

the vintage kimono pieces I bought on ebay dyed up really well, with their various woven

and dyed and printed patterns taking on new intensity.

given a stronger more coherent feel by the indigo

some of the prints were obviously acrylic and took no dye

and the damask patterns became more three dimensional

the two dresses I made with the japanese silks were a lot of work so I was holding my breath,

but I’m really happy with them

and feel confident about being able to make more

the fuji silk dress pleated into shibori was a success I think, I love this soft blue

and the dupion dress that Molly (my new part time seamstress) made

became rather special with the same treatment.

now after rinsing them and washing and rinsing again they are fit for the collection. It takes quite a lot of rinsing, this indigo thing.

and I have some cardigans to go and find leaves for, and another fuji silk dress shibori-tied waiting for what I hope will be a green dyebath.

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norfolk firing two

Posted jane -->on 9th Sep 2014

and the last of the unglazed pots in my workshop got fired at last .. there are some left, mostly rather old and unloved. they are handy sometimes as kiln-fillers though. this time I thought I would try starting reduction earlier to see if I could get a more even spread of clay body reduction through the pack.

however it was a bit silly to hurry and put the cones in too thick a piece of clay and not get it entirely dried, as the clay blew up in the first hour of firing, and it had to be a by the log book and pyrometer firing, not what I prefer. often that means over or under-firing as the temperature bears very little relationship to the state of glaze melt and heatwork is time as well as temperature related.

and the bits of clay get everywhere, as here on the edge of the bricks under the arch at the front. luckily as the glazes were all very dry nothing stuck except for one little bit which popped off easily. it would have been a different matter had it been a kiln full of chun glazed pots.

a very nice sight when the first few bricks were out

a corker, or a cracker, or whatever ..

the one next to it on the right, was one which had a huge popping out of some foreign body after it had been glazed – the damp made whatever it was swell – probably lime (how that got into the clay I have no idea, I don’t use plaster in my workshop, or at all) I chopped it out, and re-glazed the top to give it a chance, so it has a good side

and a bad side

another picture of the chaos produced by a little damp clay when you put the burners on quite high at the start and jump to four hundred odd centigrade in an hour

in that back corner was the third tall bottle, which also came out well. this one had a history too – I glazed it with the dolomite/copper/tin glaze that’s on the first piece, then changed my mind and washed it off – but not completely, then glazed it again with the “rust accretion” glaze.

nicely reduced at its foot – but that was the only pot which had a foot of toasty reduction, all the others were pale. I think although I started reduction early, it wasn’t a really strong, smoky, stinky reduction.

the clay body is my speckled mix, whereas the one next to it, the first one out, is fireclay, with a lot of grog. anyway, pleased with that one too.

this listening pod has a great inside to its ear

I dribbled the black iron oxide over it and then glazed it with the dolomite glaze. what good things I have got with that oxide over the past year or so!

the same thing here, though the low early sun has given everything a golden glow which is not quite accurate.

better colour later, this is everything.

now I have to start making again, small bottles I think, I have plenty of everything else.

I leave you with my favourite. rather than being one of the boyz, she is an elegant person with a completely individual style of dress, of statuesque build, great dignity and grace.

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