Viking British Isles Cruise - Stones, Carvings, Tapestry, history...

The British Isles have such deep history... as evidenced by the The Ring Of Brodgar on Orkney Island, about which I made shots of the signage as a way to take notes for this far bit of 'later', when I won't & don't remember such details like that the word 'henge' means a 'circular enclosure'. So here in four images of the signage is a fair bit of such history... should you wish to explore further along with me. (apologies for the fuzzy photo... trying to remedy...)

 

 If not, pass on by... 

 

 

 

Alice, John & Mark enjoyed this walk with Stephen & me... even as I was lagging getting back on the bus. I was busy enjoying the flexible rubber matting laid down to encourage sod to replace the inevitable wear of many feet in the soil. As a gardener I'm always fascinated by such infrastructure, & I'd never seen any construct quite like this...

(if I showed you this before, that was a teaser... here is context...as are photos below) 

 

In contrast to the wide expanse open air of Brodbar's ancient sacred stone site, St Patrick's Cathedral in Kirkwall was a rather somber Romanesque structure -- shadowy, with few windows to add light or color. One can further see that sensibility in the very sturdy seating -- handsome, if lacking much suggestion of comfort.

Some floor level-stone mullions hint at old openings toward light, now bricked-in & offering only vertical space in those memories for yet another carved stone memorial slab.

Of which there were several in similar style

I found the lettering on this stone carving in Saint Patrick's Cathedral to be "familiar" --  it being quite similar to my own style of calligraphy... my This Is It bell design from the website grbbells.com

  is an example.

There were several such memorial slabs, each of which had "scull & crossbones" images at their bases which sometimes gave me a smile...

 

 But none has a smile quite like Bro-Mark! 

 While I have long believed the Barnett name to be German, I saw it in several contexts on this trip...

As we exited a side door I realized there was a more lyrical  period in the church's decorative history in addition to the severe interior...  

I watched from our stateroom's deck as we set sail again while passing a stately manor of some kind... giving me a quiet glimpse into yet another past.  

Plus a utilitarian bookend in the form of a lighthouse. A sweet parade as we headed out to sea 

  

  

Our ship had elevators, which were often busy... so we often used the handsome stairway, with its leather wrapped hand railing... handy for rough seas I suppose, but happily we never experienced that. 

 

I continue to be entranced by the large, extremely high resolution photographs of details from the Bayeaux Tapestry which spans the large walls of the ship's stairway. The landings were big enough to host the cruise's resident historian as she lead a group of us who were interested to go along on her 'progressive lecture' while walking us down the four or five flights while she explained the various stories of the ancient fabric which is obviously not a tapestry but is embroidery of wool tread on a hundreds of yards of linen canvas... sewn only a few years after the the battle of 1066 known as the Norman Invasion, probably by nuns at Canterbury, but commissioned by the French Cathedral then being built at Bayeaux.

 

Since returning home I've researched deeper this story, which is a thousand-year-long saga in itself! Current news stories, published during the last two decades of nation-to-nation negotiations tell that  permission has been granted to allow the piece to be moved from France, where it has lived for much of its life rolled up in a churchy chest. Thus it needs a great deal of curatorial attention. The plan is that it will return to England for that restoration & a temporary period of display before being returned to its permanent display being built in Bayeaux. That our ship's designer used these images so aesthetically & effectively is another example of Viking's creative finesse at education through art. 

 

One could study the stitchery of this fragile piece of textile as it would look if I were seeing it through my jewelry studio lens's magnification.

 

 

Another connection can be appreciated by these two photos:

The ship's interior & exterior 

 

But this photo I made from our deck of the boat's wake has the true flavor of the ship's best gift to me...

GARDEN GATES...

I have long wished to be able to write on my computer in my own hand lettering. Now, with the new iPad I've recently treated myself to, I can... if not very well yet. I'm certain I will become more facile with a stylus on its glass screen, it will take practice & more exploration of various apps to facilitate better control.

Last night saw the completion of a project to build gates for the deer fence mentioned in the previous post... this morning I "penned" several pages to share my celebration & joy at the progress:

Leo Toye Returns...

I am flummoxed how to explain from scratch who Leo Toye is… being a part of me who's been mostly retired. Long ago… about 25 years...  he came along as my doppleganger when I joined a group of artists in Sedona, Arizona to revive an Open Studio venture. We decided to publish a newspaper each month & I wanted to become a "columnist" & since I, loving that image of an inky feather quill pen, had always wanted a nom d'plume... Leo Toye became my pen name.

It seems I have always practiced calligraphy, remembering many posters made for High School campaigns & events, not to mention all the placards & signs for the department store where I worked after classes. Early on I gave-up my cursive... picking up my father's version of writing with a curious mix of upper & lower-case, mostly block letters, gradually coming to love writing all in caps, long before that became digital screaming. But then... I've always been a bit of a screamer.

 

Leo Toye's name is a literal description of my visual logo… that lion on wheels. The format was graphically columnar, of course. The medium was ink, thus the title TUSCH... meaning ink, most specifically the "india ink" with which I had a rather deep relationship, using technical pens to write my journal in that permanence.

I had danced, work/playing, with graphic design those middle years [early 80's] in Sedona, creating logos & labels for other businesses, so when we conceived making a monthly tabloid as our publicity organ, which declared a quaint anodyne to the slick-cover-magazine-culture supporting / supported by the galleries, I was there with a black & white sensitivity useful to newsprint.

 This is a drawing I made for the front page of one OPEN STUDIO issue:

Leo surfaced on my mind's drawing table & evolved in small body of work of which I've always been proud. Leo could use words in a way which mixed studious years of evolution inside the many covers of my habit to journal with something attempting visual poetry. While I was angry he could be enigmatic… I did indeed like having a doppleganger to blame for my excesses!

Three of the columns:

We eventually became mired in the publishing & the group wore itself out. Leo mostly retired, yet "we" kept writing in my journal & doing the occasional bit of calligraphy or design. I still frequently refer, in many stories & much history, to Leo Toye when I'm playing with words & ink.

Now, after some long periods of neglecting my journal, in part due to having become computer literate, as they say... believing I would journal digitally. I did not, for numerous reasons, mostly because the computer seems to lack similar intimacy as pen-in-hand fosters deeply private thinking. The keyboard supposes capability of publishing, while the ink flows from my hands in very different mental processes involving more soul somehow...

I have recently returned to that inky process which I realize as being important, if not imperative. I can only allude to the many stories I would tell, but this is still just the introduction to Leo Toye, who  seemingly spontaneously resurrected himself when I volunteered to write a publicity piece for our upcoming Spring Vashon Island Artist Studio Tour. As I began making notes for an article in pencil I quickly found myself drawing the words as interactive shapes rather than sentences.

This is Leo Toye's art, a certain visual poetry... calligraphy making a composition of literate words & drawing dancing more lively than typeset on the page.

 The work begins in pencil on paper:

Then a tracing on drafting film, also in pencil:

The drawing is then traced in ink on film:

This stage was scanned into a program & finished digitally:

Notice that the lines about "grace" were replaced by digital "ink work":

Click the "read more" button if you would like to view the columns as larger images... 

CHTHONIC TIME...

This slicing view of Tahoma last week captures something of recent moods of intensity focused at depth, drawing down attention to discerning what might be missed with the distractions of what sometimes considers itself "whole".

Time happens for rocks as well...

While I live now on a cliff of an Island of alluvial fill left, a bit too loosely piled, perhaps, while a glacier retreatingly melted only several thousand years ago, I've spent many years earlier meditating the history written in Arizona rock cliffs... eons of alternating oceans & deserts laying down parti-colored layers of sediment & dune, water & wind. Limestone intermixing sandstone... all before having become sculpted by wind & rain over eons more to make the spectacular spires & canyons of that territory. There is then the scattering of lava from the much more recent, yet now ancient, volcanoes which are the San Francisco Peaks above Flagstaff, known these days for skiing.

Time happens at so many speeds... place finds itself only in movement.

The slice of this spell of deep time carving wax is similarly dramatic. I do not fight these yearning impulses when left to my own schedule. While Stephen has been in Philadelphia I have been waxing irregular inside the sort of time it takes to move the mountains of wax... or so it seems from inside my magnivisors, those head strapped hooded lenses I wear to bring my vision down into the macro ranges necessary to carve the wax masters for bells, or earrings or rings... one of each has been current on my bench.

To get to scale useful to my work I must admit my gargantuan sensibilities, which often prove clumsy with a ruinous stroke of the tool. I study the flow of moods as I study the flow of material... positif-negativf again.

Years ago, in Sedona, I designed a hinged lily earring in two sizes. The smaller of those has had production problems which I am aiming to solve by re carving it. I began this wax last year, but have found the focus again toward finishing it. It fits nicely on a dime, to give you some scale.

The ear wire is fat in the wax because I can more easily finish it down to size after it is cast into sturdier metal. It is quite too fragile to refine in wax.

As perhaps you can visualize, it is inserted into the lobe from the back, the wire clicking into position so as to present the flower facing forward. While they always sell, I do not wish the bother of keeping them in stock, given the problems in the original. I trust this new version will allow them to be produced more gracefully.

Another extant design, for a frog ring has long wanted to be available in larger sizes. That is an essential consideration in designing rings: fingers & hands are perhaps the next most facile parts of the body after the face for expressing individuality... coming in a variety of sizes & proportion. One size does not fit all, if you remember the rings in Cracker Jack boxes. OK, I show my age. But after years designing custom rings I am cautious about involving myself again with the vicissitudes of fitting objects so precisely to such wildly organic variety, much less matching each with its own personal taste atop that!

Part of what I like about bells is that they is not quite so specific to the body...

I have been bringing this rarefied, focus back to the THIS IS IT bell about which I've written in earlier posts, these are shots showing the subtle progression as I refine each of the 126 glyphs as sculpture to hold as legible forms against the requisite degradations of molding, casting & polishing processes of production. The better I anticipate problems the easier all that might be...

I've spent three decades trying to teach my willy-nilly artist self that... Is this it?

From the vantage of Soundcliff I collect images of goings-on. I intend one day to post showing the variety of boats which pass by. Something more than a weeks ago I heard a repeating helicopter several times before looking to realise it was hauling a secession of utility poles. By the 4th or 5th time I was ready with my camera. I read later in the local paper the rarity of such obviously expensive method.... required by the remote stretches of our coastline, reached often by narrow roads not accessible to haul such lengths by truck.

That is synchronous with the process we are going through to have a leaning pole, holding our electrical service, replaced. The truck to deliver it has made it down our short road... the pole lays in the ditch, waiting for the crew which will commandeer our lane for the several hours necessary to set it... at their whim.

What must be the logistics of flying such poles in front of my camera's eyes?

Narrow segments of intensely focused time have allowed me to begin toward harvest several designs long on my books... I still study rocks.

SANCTUARY... solitude

Some years ago I was gifted a piece of calligraphy by it's creator, Sally Jackson. It has mostly lived in my flat drawers along with a fair accumulation of stored drawings, watercolors, prints, the archive of my own calligraphic history... too much art to live with actively displayed... plus a quantity of various kinds of unworked paper I've collection over years.

This bit of illuminated poesy has, however, cajoled itself into freedom numerous times as I've heard its invitation to bring out this gilded "M" twining a tree not yet timber with which to build, much less to burn, more than my curiosity, perhaps.

For some reason now is one of those times I ponder such clues with an enjoyment which has only matured over a decade & a half.



My... My land...



My land is bare of chattering folk;
The clouds are low along the ridges,
And sweet's the air with curly smoke
From all my burning bridges.

Dorothy Parker
Learn about her here: http://www.davidhouston.net/page35.html

Reconnection with Sally has just today surfaced, after any number of years, finding her by email through her aunt... a bell collector. She has written to tell me news of her retirement & gives me permission to share her work here.

I'm looking now toward cautiously deciding to have it framed. It may yet go back into the drawer during the deep cleaning which is immanent to this Open Studio season. However, I might instead choose to hang it in some temporary manner, thus to help me hold its current massage...

Ive found myself making resonant confusion of Sanctuary with Solitude. No real surprise to those who know I have loved long periods of that... & still do.

Obviously I'm still celebrating enigmatic smoke from the several bridges I burned bringing me to live with my madly social partner.

Addendum -- 14 January 2008:

Sally wrote to explain about the materials in the Sanctuary piece: "The support, i.e., the paper, is a German laid paper called Niddegan. It is known for the wavy laid lines, unlike most laid papers which have straight lines. You can probably see them most clearly in a raking light, since the piece is in a mat. The lettering is in italic and was done with a sumi ink using Mitchell nibs. The trees are painted with gouache. The gilding is 23 carat gold laid on gesso in a process that has not changed since the Middle Ages."