30...Round and about in Longueville

This weekend I have been showing my work at a small exhibiton in the village. The private view was on friday night, and is a different affair from a PV at home. For a start no one gets a drink until some speeches have been made. This entails all the artists standing together, usually with the mayor or similar dignintary starting off proceedings, and then all the artists in turn talking about their work. It can take quite a while...and not even a glass of wine to hand! Although asked, I managed to avoid having to speak this time...what a terrifying thought, speaking french to a group of people I don't know. Still, it was all good fun, and I got to meet lots more locals who have seen me cycling around for years but didn't really know what I got up to.

Looking through Quince blossom to my studio

I heard them say on GQT last week that the blossom has been particulaly splendid this year and I have to agree. I can't remember a time when the spring looked so good as this year, perhaps partly because it was a long cold winter...or it seemed like that because of the early snow in november, but whatever, it does seem like a really lovely spring.

Hazel window in hedge

My friend Hamish comes out once or twice a year and sorts my hedges for me. Not being a person to to do anything conventionally, he makes little windows in the hedges to frame certain aspects of the house or garden.

Orchard in front garden

Many houses in France lay their front gardens to vegetables or fruit...I love this idea, and this is one of my favourites. It is on the route I cycle from Dieppe, and I think it looks just georgeous.



looking south down the Scie



looking north up the Scie



On the way to our house you have to pass over a little river. It is kept really tidy and clean down there, as most of rural Normandy seems to be, and is a great place for a picnic in the summer.

Hamish's houseboat

Last week I had a 'Warmshowers' cyclist staying with me in France. He is an American, touring through France and Britain on his bike. He came back to Brighton with me and I took him down to see my mates on the houseboats in Shoreham....well, you can't come all the way from Americay just to see the usual tourist sites eh?. At the moment I think he is wild camping somewhere in rural Wales, eating cold oatmeal and fish from cans. Hope you're keeping warm Ryan?!

http://finstowings.blogspot.com/

29...Hoddern Primary School Sculpture Garden

Today I officially opened the lovely sculpture garden (mentioned in the last blog) that has been created at Hoddern primary school. This has been a great project, and the garden is fantastic with living willow structures, a large sculpture created especially for the school by Anvil Ironworks, and these flowers made by the children.

We had a proper ceremony and cut a ribbon, making it a real event for the children. I think they really enjoyed it and hopefully it will inspire some of them to continue to enjoy making in the future.

This was only able to happen because of their enthusiastic teacher Nicola, and a head teacher with a progressive outlook.

It was great to see them happy and proud of their work.  Well done all!!

Find me now over at http://theceramicgardener.com

28...Ceramics and Education

 

Ceramics have been with us for thousands of years. As soon as the first person picked up a lump of clay and realised how pliable it was, it has been shaped and made into myriad forms. It is more versatile than any other medium....and the longest surviving. 

But the real magic of clay is the alchemy that happens when something is put into the kiln. It transforms from a handful of mud to an object that can be used daily or a beautiful piece of art.

In Britain we had a wonderful period when studio pottery thrived, through the 50's to the 90's, but since then ceramics in schools, colleges and Uni's has suffered from budget cuts and whole ceramic departments have vanished. So, last year it was great to be asked to do a workshop in a local primary school.
The art teacher of these children is a lovely, enthusiastic lady called Nicola. They have a small kiln in a cupboard at their school, and she was keen for the children to experience making and firing something themselves. The project focus was South African flowers and I had coincidentally been to SA just a couple of months before, so I had plenty of photos to show. The idea was for the children to design a flower, and then I would come in and help them make their design. All the flowers would then be put on metal rods, and displayed in the new garden created in the school grounds.  The workshops were hectic....the time alloted for art even at primary level is low, and we had 3 hours for 50 children to make a flower each. However, mad as it was, we managed it and the children were really excited, especially on the 2nd workshop where they were able to paint bright colours onto their flowers. We had just about 100% success rate on the flowers...amazingly, and poor Nicola has spent most of the winter glueing all 50 flowers onto metal rods. Anyway, next friday I will be officially opening the garden and I can't wait to see all the flowers together.

Further on down the line I have been corresponding with a lad from Northern Ireland called Colm who has been researching organic form in clay. This is obviously a school with a healthy ceramics department as he has produced a lovely piece of work based on the juxtupositon of a chestnut and a morel (wild mushroom)

 A gold star Colm!

















By the time you get to University the choice of degree courses that offer ceramics specifically is now confined to england and wales...scotland has lost all of theirs...and even then it is more likely that you will have to choose a 3D course and specialise in ceramics. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as you will get a more rounded education, but it does mean that tutor hours for throwing are exceedingly low, and it is a skill hard won, especially if you are trying to teach yourself. In my opinion it is definitly one of those 10,000 hours skills. So, this is why I offer places to work exerience students, it's great to be able to move them on really quickly after a few weeks of one to one tutition.....and if I'm lucky I get a lovely student like Jade to help me with my own work.

During the time that she was here she made some lovely bowls,

and after practicing her round forms,

made a couple of great teapots!

This week I had a new little sculpture finished...it's based on a chestnut rose hip. I'll be showing these with my other new sculptures in my Open House in May. http://www.fivewaysartists.com/

Chestnut Rose Hip

In the garden things are hotting up. I planted loads of seeds this weekend..most of the veg that will get me through to autumn. Already in the raised beds are cabbage, lettuce, strawberries and beetroot bought as plugs from the market. All my gardening knowledge is gleaned from books, Gardeners World and endless conversations with my buddy Jane. It's hard sometimes to know quite where to start with it all, especially when you're trying to keep a hectare in some sort of order...but when something you have read about works out well, it's so exciting! A couple of weeks ago I had a couple of Rhubarb leaves poking through, and an old chimney pot sitting around, so I thought I would have a go at forcing the Rhubarb. I popped the pot on top and put a lid with a large flint on top (saw Monty doing that) and lo and behold, literally a week later the Rhubarb had filled the pot and pushed the lid off,

The structure in the background is our pallet palace

Last autumn I invested in what seemed like a huge order of bulbs...in this space of course they didn't go very far, but I've been excited all winter in anticipation of them coming up.

And here is one of them looking just like a pair of pink frilly knickers!

27...Working....working and carnage in the kitchen

With so many shows coming up, work in the studio is full on at the moment, there is hardly time for anything else. Last week I sold a large sculpture that I had earmarked for the Chelsea Flower show, so I had to squeeze in time to make another.....luckily with Jade my student here I was able to do this.

putting last petal in

Ceramics is a slow old business. The sculpture above will take weeks to dry out as the moisture in the middle and underneath takes a long time to come out  and can't be rushed. This means that the studio is full of drying out sculptures covered in plastic and we have to be careful how we move around as they are so delicate at this stage.

One of the things about living in the country is the continual battle against the wildlife trying to get into the house. Last week it was this little fellow,

carnage in the kitchen

he got into my mouseproof cupboard in the middle of the night...found his way along a pipe under the insulation. Then he gnawed through several boxes and packets before eating his way into a bag of walnuts, taking them out one by one and piling them up in a corner. Of course he hadn't figured out how he was going to get them back along the pipe. This went on for hours...but I couldn't do a thing about it as I am terrified of them...don't even like looking at them (they run up your trouser legs or go for your eyes!)  Anyway Jade caught him the next day and got rid of him in the woods...now we have to re proof the cupboard and the traps are set in case he sends his mates along.





I couldn't resist another picture of the woods. At this time of the year everything is manageable in the garden and I can just look around and enjoy it. However all the trees are covered in their green fuzz of buds about to burst open and soon the bushcutter will have to come out for the first time. But for this moment I can just bask in the sun and the view.

26...Shrines and Beautiful Normandie

Mary in a box

Although a secular country now, many if not all french villages and towns have these shrines built during the time they were a proudly Catholic country. Some are rather interesting designs...........

Pink Jesus



 The one in our village has just been painted and he has become very salmon pink!

Suddenly, sunny days here have bought a lovely warmth and the countyside all around us is blooming.



Cherry Blossom



Apricot Blossom

In my garden every day brings new suprises.

Wood anenomes, Celandines and Daffs

The whole of our woods are a carpet of these flowers...I forget every year how georgeous it is.



St Germain d'Etables

Over the hill and not far away is a wonderful viewing point where you can sit and look up and down the valley. On the other side of these hills is the Avenue Vert where you can cycle from Dieppe to Paris. We last did this cycle with friends in June a couple of years ago, and in parts it was like cycling through a little paradise.

Jade my work experience student is back for another two weeks, so tomorrow it's back into the studio for a full on week of potting and gardening.

25...Pond cleaning and keeping warm

The weather has been glorious this week, although freezing at night the days have been so sunny and bright that coffee and lunch have been outside every day, and I almost have a march tan on my face. It feels like the growing season has started too. In France everyone grows their own veg, and because of this there is a huge trade in plug plants at every market you visit. So for all the usual veg, lettuce, brassicas, tomatoes, strawberries, etc., you just buy 12 or 24 little plants and pop them straight in, Easy peasy and sold just at the time you need to grow them. This leaves more time for growing on seeds of more unusual varieties.

Somewhere in here is a pond

The improving weather has spurred me on to cleaning out the ponds. A bit late perhaps in the season, but I couldn't face it when it was colder. Anyway, there was no frog spawn yet so I went for it. This pond was more sludge than water, and by the end of the afternoon, so was I. Hundreds of grumpy newts headed for the hills and at the bottom was the hugest yellowest frog I've ever seen. It'll all look lovely again in a week or two.

In the studio work continues at a pace. This week I've thrown these two large 'Angels'. One of them will be a blueish colour, and the other I'm still thinking about.

I'm keeping myself warm in the evening by crocheting a blanket.

This is an ongoing project. Winter time I sit in the evenings listening to the plays on R4 (french telly doesn't do it for me) and knitting lovely jumpers. There is always wool left over, so at the end of winter I crochet some more stripes onto the bedspread...it keeps my knees warm too!

24...Does art transcend language?

I have been living in France on and off for 30 years, and trying to learn the language for most of that time...very slowly. I have a very poor knowledge of grammer (70's schooling) and a reasonable vocabulary can only get you so far without a sound understanding of grammer to back it up. This means that making friends over here is also a slow business, especially in a small town where people can be anxious about engaging you in conversation because of the effort needed to keep the conversation going. Last year however, I organised an mixed exhibiton of Brighton artists and we showed at a Chateau in the next town. This got some local publicity and all of a sudden people were able to identify me as an artist. As far as they were concerned, this probably explained a lot! But it has meant that people are now more chatty...they know what they can talk about and next month I have been asked to show my work in the local Expositon d'Art at the Salle des Fetes, which means the chance of meeting more like minded people.
One of the local artists that I met through doing the exhibition at the Chateau de Bosmelet is a lovely lady called Gabrielle. She is a painter, and teaches art in Dieppe. She also organises many of the local exhibitions. She does that difficult thing of trying to work, look after a family and make paintings...I never know how people can do all three..what a juggling act.

Anyway, here are a couple of her paintings,

Le Fichu Rouge

La Bonne Mere

She also nipped over to my studio yesterday and drew me while I was constructing a sculpture

It's my hair she wants in the painting really!

Meanwhiled the action in the studio is hotting up. I'm still keeping to my daily list of things that have to be done before I can stop for the day.

This week I had a glaze firing out

and a bisq firing in. Sometimes packing the kiln with my spiky things can be fraught, they are not always easy to fit in and can end up perched on wobbly shelves.

Next weekend I will showing with Four Walls at the  Affordable Art Fair in Battersea. http://www.affordableartfair.com/
http://www.four-walls.co.uk/