Jane Wheeler's Blog - Just another WordPress weblog

more folded books – Orkney part four

Posted jane -->on 1st Dec 2018

here are our lengths of paper, painted and drawn on in the dyeing shed, brought indoors to fold and cut;

put together the whole is more. we used japanese ink sticks rubbed onto flat stones from the beach with water, and peat from the burn banks, making brushes or finding twigs and other materials to make marks.

we had embroidered squares and dyed them to make book covers

padded with pieces from the floor-covering old blankets that had been used to protect the billiard room carpet from our activities. however, on advice I left my book uncovered, and used those pieces of silk joined to other pieces to make another tsunobokuro bag. which has since gone to wrap my daughter’s birthday presents ….

but there was more –

we stitched papers into the book

from the selection in our first present of materials, from Alison – old map pieces

tracing paper, and the rubbings I had done of George Mackay Brown’s words around the pool in the garden

sewn in with linen thread

a new artist’s book. an interesting technique which needs none of the usual materials for book binding beyond aul, needle and thread.

then we worked with Alison with colour again on our last afternoon

by this time I had loosened up a great deal.

I used the watercolour tubes I’d brought, on papers from Alison’s contribution

and on this one, the vegetable dyes and oil bars she’d brought.

then I added some colour to the sketchbook from our trip

it melted the fountain pen ink

and is rather gestural instead of “filling in”

but in some cases I think I did a bit too much

however on the whole I’m pleased, and

intend to make more sketchbooks in this way

perhaps on the writing outside courses; the next one starts in January.

a slow look at the sound on our last morning, and a slow look back from a grey seal. a place to stick in the mind, and a wonderfully productive week with “sister stitchers” – keeping in touch via instagram –

I have already obtained a copy of George Mackay Brown’s A Portrait of Orkney, and ordered his collected poems.

on the subject of poems

my poem is out in the Rialto, very exciting

 

standing stones; Orkney three

Posted jane -->on 27th Nov 2018

I had not expected the opportunity to meet up with any standing stones or other historic sites on this trip, but to everyone’s delight India and Alison arranged a minibus and driver, designed a route, made sandwiches and off we went.

clever India had a folded book for us to make beforehand, an uphill and downhill island book, so that we could sketch as we drove along, preferably without looking down into our laps but taking in the stunning Orkney sinuous hills, lochs, sounds, firths and islands in a right brain drawing (that is, looking at the subject rather than the paper) the view changing rapidly meant that your hand had to swoop about, sometimes layering several viewpoints.

first on the itinerary was the broch of Gurness, just up the coast a little from Woodwick. it used to be the Knowe of Gurness, a green mound, until someone discovered a hole leading down into the remains of the broch.

probably trowes (Orkney version of troll) were thought to live in it before it was opened up, but in fact it was built by Picts in the iron age, and has the remains of many houses around the central tower

all built with slabs in a very similar way to Scara Brae in the Neolithic, which the Orkney stone lends itself to, splitting easily into large thin rectangular pieces

the entrance to the broch has many gateways and buildings stretching across the site. life here would have been crowded in a smoky claustrophobic environment.

we continued to Birsay, to the remains of a palace built about  two thousand years later, by a very unpleasant man, I think life might have been considerably worse than in the iron age for his peasants.

huge kitchens and brewhouse, plenty of chimneys, but this was fortified, and the Stewart earls, an illegitimate branch of the family, were hanged for treason in the 1600’s. by 1700 it was abandoned. a much shorter life than the broch.

just across the way

on a flat cap of land separated by a tidal causeway, the Brough of Birsay, (and how did our dear leaders know the tide would be out?) Thorfinn the Mighty, the viking earl who ruled Shetland, Orkney, nine earldoms of Scotland, and parts of Ireland from 1014 to 1065, had his base here. there are low walls designating the foundations of the settlement, complete with steam bath houses and drainage. it seemed quite basic and small for such a powerful man. but before the vikings wiped out christianity three hundred years earlier, there was a small Pictish church on the site.

then we had a scenic route around the coast

before turning inland for the climax of our trip

the Ring of Brodgar at sunset

the Viking story about these massive stones

is that a group of giants came to drink at the lochs and were caught out by sunrise, frozen into stone.

they are so huge that it’s hard to imagine how neolithic people got them there and stood them upright.

some are very tall indeed

and some are flat on the ground

we had wonderful light

it caught the heathery hills across the loch with a tinge of fire

and painted the sunward side of the stones

a lot of people have decided to leave their mark

including my initials ….

I would not dare to try to own them in such a way

even if I could

it’s like standing next to a remnant of a gothic cathedral

the mystery is clear and tangible

whether fallen or upright

the colours of the land; Orkney part two

Posted jane -->on 26th Nov 2018

some people assumed that there would not be much in the way of leaves to dye with here in Orkney towards the end of November, and that the weather would be too awful to get outside much. but in fact the weather was mild and open; some days the sun shone all the short hours it was up.

the low lying islands make the sky huge, and there is light reflected from the surrounding and interlocking water of sea and loch.

at the bottom of the garden at Woodwick House the island of Wyre is a low hump across the sound, and the sea constantly changes colour

  

and the bare trees form a patterned screen – in this case

Rousay is the pink land under the pink cloud on the horizon, caught by the setting sun.

in George Mackay Brown’s book Magnus he describes this group of islands, ten including the mainland which he gives its old name, Hrossey (horse island) “the islands shift their places around the firth, Hrossey, Eynhallow, Rousay, Gairsay, Shapinsay, Wyre, Eday, Sanday, Stronsay, Egilsay” as Magnus and his men sail/row across the sound towards his martyrdom on Egilsay

on the beach there is a thick wreath of seaweed, coloured from ochre to rust to deep wine-purple, amongst stones that are lighter versions of the same colours, and at low tide, fine grey sand, ripple marked.

from the beach you can walk back up beside the burn, as it pours over the rock steps and pools in treacle brown depths

on a path through shrubs and trees

with secret spots to hide and read a book or draw,

leant over by tree branches. from the name I suppose there must always have been trees here.

quaint post and rails – the seabird skull my addition, a find from the beach –

snow drop bulbs everywhere in bare earth and humous, already starting to sprout green horns.

at the top there’s what they call in scotland a doo-cot – a dove cote

with compartments for all the pigeon nests, providing baby pigeons for pies. whether this is a genuine really old one is hard to say, but it’s been made into a sort of pagan chapel

a quiet contemplative place

beside the sound of the rushing burn

at the gate before the bridge

and at the other side of the house there are castellated turrets – a late Victorian fancy. the gates are missing, anyway, and the path down the to the sea is public.

the hens are the rightful owners of the garden, six of them, and with no foxes they don’t have to be shut in at night.

this one is the boss, she’s twelve years old. one day they laid four eggs!

inside we had been hard at work stitching on paper, watercolour, or other special paper – some hand made. I had brought heavy weight watercolour, and it was brutal to stitch on, so mine was quite minimal. others filled up their three pieces with masses of abstract stitching and pieces of fabric.

then we made folded books, into which we inserted leaves/and seaweed

wrapped them into parcels with cloth

and after a brief cook

opened our little treasures, at the same time adding to our drip-sheets/abstract paintings (Japanese inksticks ground on beach stones and peat from the burn-side, using sticks and home-made brushes, and yes, fingers)

they looked gorgeous when wet

though this lovely rusty brown

dried to something a bit duller.

the drip-lengths were made into something very exciting on the last day.

when you work with leaves and stitches your eyes get tuned into all the fine details of the landscape

things you might walk past before, suddenly shine out at you with their beauty.

 

sister stitchers in Orkney outlands: part one

Posted jane -->on 23rd Nov 2018

another magical place in the space of four weeks – Orkney – and a wonderful retreat led by India Flint and Alison Mountain of Big Cat textiles in Newburgh (where I have been for several really good courses, taught by the likes of Michel Garcia and Larry Thomas as well as by India)

arrived in the dark after a flight from Aberdeen to Kirkwall which caught the last of the light with views of the Moray Firth, Caithness, the Pentland Firth (complete with ferry ploughing a pale blue wake) and the interlocking islands, sounds and firths of Orkney, so when I parted the curtains at seven am and saw this out of my window I was in love with the place.

we stayed and workshopped in Woodwick House, an Edwardian very Scottish looking country house with a kind of tower attic and stepped gables and crenellations wherever possible. it still has its beautiful but draughty sash windows, but also bits and pieces of more contemporary text and some quite good paintings, in a simple plain decor that felt comfortable and un-posh, not imposing anything except an awareness of the Orcadian tradition of ancient and contemporary art and poetry.

the fact that there are quite tall and old trees in two shelter belts running down each side of the garden to the beach of this little bay (“wick” means bay) is unusual on these bare and windswept islands. they are mostly sycamore, salt-hardy and tough, a non-native tree which thrives all over the UK. the pool in the photo is part of an installation of sculpture and poetry (not sure when this was made) and around its rim are words written by George Mackay Brown, one of Orkney’s most famous poets. some letters are sadly missing, but part of it reads –

drink here voyager about to depart
on the salt sound
Eynhallow

Eynhallow is one of the smaller islands in the group just off the main island here.

we began with a fancy-restaurant-standard supper made by Alison and India, setting the ball very high for the rest of the week.

the next morning down to the serious business, working on paper with Alison, splashing vegetable dyes about on paper,

and continuing to layer up with pastel, oil pastel, gesso, more paint until the whole thing a bit soggy, then we folded our large sheets into books

put more onto the nicely reduced and framed sections

I discovered that pastel in layers with the translucent dyes and also darker ink-depth mark making

and then working over the top with more pastel

gave very pleasing results. I am wondering about a bit of fixative when I get home though.

for the first textile phase, led by India, we were given a strip of old wool blanket to stitch and add more fabrics to.

I was really quite minimal in my stitching compared to most. one had no idea where this was leading, by the way!

by the end of the morning however far we had got, our rolls of blanket went into a pot or rather a huge fish kettle of burn water (a burn runs down under a bridge at the entrance to the garden and along its edge, the water a coppery clear caramel from the peat) and a little “iron water”, to steep and relax in some heat.

we had the afternoon to wander, and bring back leaves, seaweed, stones, twigs and anything else we found to add to the stitching.

bundles duly went back in the kettle for an evening boil-up

identified by tied on additions which make these little objects full of character before you even start

by the morning they had cooled down and we had our christmas present moment of unwrapping, with many oohs and aahs, much excitement.

as India fished them out

starting to unwrap mine

then they all dripped on the line

you can see how much of the landscape is imparted

eventually dried in the boiler house

we made bags. here is mine, a tsunobokuro bias-stitched envelope or sack on our expedition to some of Orkney’s ancient sites later in the week.

the stones of the Pictish broch at Gurness

their lichens and weatherings

echoed in the colours and textures we were able to obtain with the dye processes and the pigments and paints on paper during the week.

 

the fortress of the high powers

Posted jane -->on 28th Oct 2018

the last day of the course at Ty Newydd was a trip into Snowdonia, hill-walking with storytelling and heightened speech.

we drove up the Nantlle valley from the coast on the Anglesey side

through the pass to a high reservoir

where we stopped so that two of us could deliver their invocation/heightened speech in the spirit of place

the weather collaborated and while the utterances were in progress we were enveloped in a hail storm.

we stood close together like penguins keeping warm in a snowstorm. reading from an ipad covered in melting hail was quite a feat, having climbed up a very steep little hill.

although the weather was uncomfortable at times, it would not have been so atmospheric without the huge fast moving clouds and intermittent sunshine.

we drove on to Beddgelert, refreshed and warmed ourselves, and those able to march up hills and scramble over rocks continued to Dinas Emrys, to encounter dragons and fortresses.

it’s a National Trust site. I am not normally fond of carved wood things on walks, but this dragon bench is very fine. the scales on its back stood up five inches proud of the spine, its tail, with similar scales, made a a complete three hundred and sixty degree turn at the other end of the seat, and huge claws splayed out at each end. Here Eric (Maddern, one of the course leaders) began his tale of Merlin’s prophesies at Dinas Emrys, taken from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. the story features the welsh red dragon defeating the saxon white dragon.

we walked on through woods on mossy paths and up and down stone steps

the hill we were walking to is probably a volcanic plug; it sits between the higher mountains – on the west side Moel Hebog, which blocks any view of Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) itself, and on the east, Grib Ddu with Moel y Dyniewd higher behind,

in the valley of Afon (river) Glaslyn

we passed waterfalls – this the biggest, with its pool of blue stones

and a huge quartz block, a pulpit stone

then more stone steps as we climbed higher

through wood

and pasture

higher

with views of wooded hills

and bare mountains

until we reached the narrow neck of land

and the steep path

connecting Dinas Emrys

a very defensible precipitous path, looking down to the Arfon Glaswyn valley

coming down, after the rain which began soon after we got to the top, I slid on my bum over the steepest rockiest part, it seemed safer.

here the view of the lake

looking down to Llyn Dinas

at the top at last, to sit in the square of what are probably the foundations of an eleventh century tower, and listen to the last part of Eric’s re-telling.

below the tower is a hollow place with a pool, a natural amphitheatre. it was choked with rush and the ground covered with bracken, but Eric has been clearing it, and now the eye is open. in one of my favourite children’s books, written in 1959, the Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff, this place is reimagined as the mountain hideaway not of Vortigern, but of Ambrosius, the son of the leader Vortigern betrayed when he brought in the saxon warbands led by Hengist and Horsa. she uses the name Dinas Ffaraon and translates it as Fortress of the High Powers. Emrys is the Welsh version of Ambrosius, but it also means immortal one. her description of the approach, from the lake, although it’s not the way we came up, has the same feel of mystery and magic. “The path squeezed its way through, and plunged on upward. In the softer and more level places it was a slithering quagmire, at others it ran out onto bare, mist wet rock” and she places Ambrosius in the hollow place at the moment of meeting the main character, Aquila, “on the edge of a little hollow with the gleam of water at the bottom of it” Aquila hears the notes of a harp from buildings in this hollow, and finds Ambrosius within.

re-reading this book I get the feeling that Rosemary Sutcliff was quite an influence on my own writing; her strong sense of place, and detail of plants and animals make her fiction intense and vivid.

as we searched out fallen wood for our fire, and Eric dug away rush and turf from the stones, it began to hail. nevertheless the fire was lit and we ten uttered our heightened speech to our chosen entity; to the lost eagles of Snowdon, to the Green Man, to Pan, to Rhiannon (that was me), Artemis, Myrddin, Math, Sophia, Thor, and Taliesin.

although we couldn’t see Snowdon from the reservoir because of the cloud, when I left Wales the next morning I caught a glimpse of it, covered in a light dusting of snow, from the Porthmadog bypass. it’s on the very left edge of the photo and soon the cloud covered it again.

a Welsh setting

Posted jane -->on 28th Oct 2018

and a quite extraordinary week for me, really quite out of my depth.

this is Ty Newydd, the National Writing Centre for Wales, also, David Lloyd George’s last home. he lived there for the last three years of his life and died in the library in 1945, overlooking Cardigan Bay; he is buried a little way down the road into Llanystumdwy near the river Dwyfor.

it’s a beautiful place, both the lane and the river, and the woods that surround them.

tall sessile oaks and ashes line the drive

the garden is full of trees – here a huge maple

and the light everywhere mellowed by autumn leaves

it seemed to me a very colourful landscape

here enhanced a bit by the hipstamatic app on my phone

but still, there was a glow that I’m not finding back in Norfolk.

the course I was on, Heightened Speech, was sub-titled “a Spell on the Tongue” and was just one in an annual series of storytelling courses that have been going on for about twenty years, led by Eric Maddern and Hugh Lupton. almost everyone had been on one before, some people have been attending them for years, and are professional story tellers.

as I haven’t even got one poem by heart I did feel a little bit of a fake.

here’s the back of the house, looking out over the lawn to a small gate where there’s a footpath to the sea, about a mile and a half away. some of the accommodation is under the same roof as offices, libraries, kitchen, dining room – which is the medieval heart of the house, the old hall where we did a lot of the work – warming up body and voice, and taking the oral tradition up its “ladder to the moon” from riddle and nursery rhyme, to the heights of invocation and praise-singing

via Lloyd George himself, other speechmakers like Martin Luther King

curses, charms and spells,

prophesies, song, poetry

and storytelling. stories were told from the Welsh Mabinogion, from native American and First Nation Traditions, Aboriginal Australian, from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, from India, and further east.

the course was a rich smorgasbord of magical worlds and the voices are still in my head

writing outside

Posted jane -->on 12th Oct 2018

the autumn writing outside course led by Dr Jonathan Ward has started at Cley Norfolk Wildlife trust visitor centre, accompanied by the sounds of returning migratory birds – especially the pink foot geese.

we went to the beach and the marsh at Salthouse. the last swallows were there, swooping over the grazing. Also a marsh harrier.

and sea asters everywhere. Aster tripolium has fleshy leaves to retain fresh water in its brackish environment. my Reader’s Digest complete spotter’s guide (the go-to reference book on my shelves) says it was a popular garden plant in Elizabethen times. it also supports a solitary bee, not mentioned in the afore-said guide, the salt-marsh bee, which feeds exclusively on sea aster, leaving a larder of pollen in each tiny burrow it lays an egg in. I came across entomologists catching them and a parasitic fly which lays its live larva in the burrows on Sunday at Morston.

the tide was very low, exposing sand at the bottom of the shingle bank

etching fern-like patterns as the waves sucked at the steep edge.

the marsh grazing supports all sorts of plants and animals, in the sweet ditches and the brackish channels.

we’ve also been to Wiveton Downs, which I have never got around to visiting since I was a teenager living in North Walsham. it’s one end of the Blakeney esker, a famous glacial ridge formed by a sub-ice-sheet stream first excavating a channel in the glacial till and then dumping sands, gravels and water-worn stones until it becomes tens of metres higher than the surrounding land after the ice sheet (itself up to a mile thick) melts. so this is a remnant of ice action which ended 10,000 years ago. I went there on a school geography trip some time in the 60’s. there is a clump of tall beech trees near the road which reminds one of Paul Nash’s paintings of beech clumps.

between fortifications of gorse one can see 360 degree views of the North Norfolk coastline. picking up snaky gorse roots, I was reminded of the other name for this feature, a Serpent Kame, for the meandering shape the stream cut.

interesting dwarfed flora on the dry sandy, stony soil up there. this is a blue type of fleabane, Erigon acer.

we also found a tiny geranium, stork’s bill, Erodium cicutarium, with its long pointed bill-like seeds.

the esker has been quarried for its sands and gravels, and its cobble stones, but is now a site of Scientific Interest, and grazed by cattle to keep the gorse and scrub at bay.

this week we visited Blakeney Eye, an island of shingle and sand in the marsh which has got so close to the shoreline that it will be eroded away in the not too distant future.

the channel of the Glaven has been moved to the landward side of it now, but it was the subject of an archaeological investigation recently. probably not a chapel but some kind of medieval  building, and earlier activity, including a Saxon bracteate gold pendant, a typical early germanic form of personal decoration. are those eels?

the marsh grazing behind the saltmarsh,

and the reed beds, are semi-wild places perfect for spotting birds – we heard bearded tit with its wire-string pinging call, saw a reed bunting, and a mixed flock of brent geese, probably with some greylag, by the sound of it.

the salt marsh has dry spots, like this hump of marram

and an odd space like a sea garden, shingle floored, and sheltered by the high bank. I have to miss the fifth of these wonderful outings, as I’ve got five days in Wales, at the Ty Newydd writing centre, for a story-telling course, which I will immodestly tell you I won as third prize in the Rialto/RSPB Nature and Place poetry competition.

but two more to go. delightful, and with a lovely group of people most productive. you can see the writing from the summer one near the loos in the visitor centre.

 

the end of summer

Posted jane -->on 2nd Sep 2018

BIms and I have been walking at Morston twice in the last couple of days.

Bayfield, although beautiful, has a lot of flies at the moment; I find them really annoying.

on Friday I had an appointment with my nearest bit of coast, a collaborative project with Coast to Coast to Coast, the hand sewn poetry journal I’ve had a poem published in twice.

lots of poets whose work has been in any of the five issues went to their bit of coast and wrote two to four lines which will be used by Maria Isakova Bennett for an installation during her residency in Aldeborough’s Lookout

an unbelievable sea of cars was parked at Morston on Friday morning – the seal trips doing fantastic business on perhaps the last day of a lot of people’s holiday. we walked along past all the boats motoring up and down the channel, and out onto the saltmarsh.

we went again this morning as the weather is still perfect, and for Bims it’s great at high tide – the area she can run in is limited, and she can have a great time sploshing around on the edges of the tide. she’s wary of deep water – although she did fall in a big creek this morning and got nice and wet all over. and she meets people and other dogs in a neutral situation where there’s plenty of room.

although it was warm she had the opportunity to cool off

and pose while sailing boats cruised up and down, and all the birds were perfectly safe from her

we haven’t been there much but I think in future will make more use of it.

I haven’t done any painting this August, the writing has taken over a bit, but I have been making up some big canvases, reusing stretchers, and this painting started in 2002, has resurfaced.

it already has some areas of very thick oil paint which have cracked

and interesting textures over the foundation size of rabbit skin glue

I have had it up in the studio for a couple of weeks while i thought about it/avoided it

today I got myself together and decided that it would be less intimidating flat on the table

and like that it proved much better for gestural mark-making

pushing the brush around with thick oil paint

and working over the old surface with limited colours.

a bit of scratching back through with the palette knife

thinking about fields of sunflowers and constellations and sun/moon

and long grass and blue reflected sky at Morston

so here we are. 46′ x 60″ or 116 x 152 cm. now I can let more colours and textures get into my head for some more big paintings. tomorrow we have a demo of working with pastels in the village hall – I’m sure that will help as we are to have a go ourselves.

print and words week 2

Posted jane -->on 29th Jun 2018

so when you have strips like this and your tutor says she thinks you should slice them into even narrower strips …

you think for two minutes and then you take the risk ….

and stick words on and fold …

and then the print looks even more like manuscript illumination

and you cut up your poem

and find the words are so much more brilliant isolated on their long narrow pages

like jewels

and you print more in an afternoon of adrenalin

and more ideas are offered

that you need days more to explore

and at home

you tear and fold what you printed

and cut up another poem

that you are in the middle of writing

hoping this process will clarify

its labour-pains

and then

you have two more concertina books a little more resolved

being pressed between boards

to flatten and many thoughts towards more.

print and words week 1

Posted jane -->on 29th Jun 2018

I’ve just taken part in two workshops with Tara Sampey and Jonathan Ward (he leads the Writing Outside courses I’ve been doing at the Cley Wildlife trust visitor centre)

these centred around a walk through fields and a holloway in Edgefield, Jonathan’s home patch.

we collected words and plants

and chatted

sharing a sense of wonder at the small details – overnight rain had collected on these funnel spider webs and turned them into a constellation of shining drops around the black hole of the spiders’ traps

it seems that we have not had rain for weeks and weeks, but there had been some showers (that was about ten days ago)

and the swallows were hawking low over green barley fields

linnets and whitethroats singing in bushy hedgerows

a sad very dead pair of elms loom over a small meadow pasture full of insects

the hedges full of pattern making us greedy pickers beautiful things to print with

back at the hall we were shown how to roll ink onto the gel plates to make monoprints

the mind-bending part is how to make use of the negative image produced by the first print, and the delicately detailed positive which comes after you peel the plant material off the plate

some of the images reminded me of medieval manuscript illuminations

the really exciting part is when you start printing a negative in a different colour over the positive, off-setting

and generally playing about with part of the plate …

so we went home excited, to play with words at home and make some texts which could be combined with the images

« Previous Entries