65...A beautiful day at sea

A lovely morning over the scrap metal pile

 A very frustrating weekend spent on the computer. I have decided to go over to the other side and start a new blog in Wordpress, but as with all these techy things, one has to learn the jargon, figure out the 'logic' of the programmers and try to make it ones own. I have got so far but realise I need to spend loads more time on it, so for the present I will continue in blogger whilst I figure it out.
Still, as I left to go back to the studio on monday morning, the sun came out in a spectacular way over the rather unlovely Newhaven......

....and continued in the same vein right across the channel and into Dieppe.

I arrived back at the house at exactly the same time as a new Workawayer from Sweden,

Simon

 he is only 19 but has proved very adept in the garden so far and has come up with some good ideas for improvements. He is a trained chippy, so I'm hoping for some new raised beds next week!

Bluebell

In the studio I have had a glaze firing which has kept the studio lovely and warm for a couple of days and has helped to dry out some work which is a rush job for a gallery in London. This piece will be joined by another to make a pair and will be attached to galvanised rod and drilled into timber. I recycle blue glass bottles from Neals Yard for the internal glaze and have yet to find an efficient way of crushing the glass....at the moment I am putting it into a metal bucket and hammering it (with glasses on) so if anyone knows a better way...please let me know.

Teals Tile

Teal, a previous busking workawayer has gone back to the States, but her tile came out of the kiln this week and has joined the tile gallery on my studio wall. Her Death Cap mushroom has come out a treat.

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

64...Art at St Ouen and a busy week

Higgeldy Piggeldy Rouen

We jumped on the train and went up to Rouen to stay with some friends we met through Couchsurfing this weekend. I have been to Rouen many times, it is the nearest city to us, but I had never discovered the part of Rouen that our friends took us to. It is full of little streets with medieval houses leaning in and out all over the place...ooh the maintenance!

St Ouen

We visited a huge old Abbey called St Ouen which has had all the furniture removed and is used now for exhibitions and concerts. Indeed Patti Smith played there last night, although we didn't know that until this morning so missed it, but we did hear some gorgeous music being played from up in the organ loft.

Pink and Lilac window above the organ loft

There was a chap standing up in the loft playing a trumpet accompanied by his wife on the organ, and the sound was amazing. This place is HUGE...like the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern so of course the acoustics make sound swell. Lovely.

Tree in snow and clouds

There was also a video exhibition going on. All around the Abbey were large screens with this tree projected on, each one different and each one beautiful. This one had clouds swirling around and snow falling down on it.

Singing Ringing Tree

This one reminded me of the one from the fairy tale,

being silly with the Tree in the sea

...and this one had waves crashing around it. Mesmerising, especially if you waited to see a seagull fly by every now and then.

Lots of thrown cones

With the high pressure we have had this week, the work has been going well in the studio..i.e things are drying out, and I was able to get this commision made.

Large Angel drying out

This was the 2nd one I made, the weather was so damp a couple of weeks ago I couldn't get anywhere with it.

Laila getting no help from Houdini

I still have Laila the workawayer here, and she is going great guns in the garden. After digging over this bit of garden,

She created a new little path with some old red bricks we had lying around,

She has also been busy creating in the studio, and came up with this great green man..well woman.

golden sunshine through the gate

The autumn continues mild and glorious here. The middle of November and we are eating lunch in the garden in T shirts. The sun being so low makes everything golden at the end of the afternoon and gave Henry the chance to take some lovely photos around the garden. Long may it last......

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

63...Boats Crossing

We're all used to stopping at Level crossings and waiting for the train to pass, but as I go to and fro from Brighton to Dieppe I am often stopped by this crossing.....

Level Crossing in Dieppe

as the level crossing comes down the bridge swings around. A few years ago you often saw lads jumping on at the last minute and going around with the bridge....they've put a stop to that now, pity, it looked like fun.

Sometimes the boat coming through is huge and is on its way through to the back port for unloading, in the last few years that seems to be mainly the huge fins and posts for the Aeoliennes or wind turbines...

in the old days it was Bananas, but I suppose they are all flown nowadays.

Sometimes when the tide is high the bridge has to swing for tiny boats too....nightmare if you're late for the ferry!

62...A wet autumnal week and Maire Genevieve Gallois

Day one of new sculpture

I've been asked recently to make some larger sculptures so started this week on this one which is exactly the height of my kiln (27 inches). I've had this one in mind for some time but put off starting because of the amount of small pieces that have to be hand rolled to build it up.

Day four

Four days later and it was building up nicely...I covered it lightly to wait out the weekend...but found it collapsed down on itself the next morning...damn! This has happened once or twice before, and usually when the weather is humid as it has been all this week. These sculptures become very heavy because of the amount of clay added to the internal form and you have to get the additions on at just the right time...too dry and the larger pieces have a tendency to fall off...too wet and it collapses. Ah well, that's what prototypes are for I suppose.

Out in the garden Laila has had more success with her creations and has been building hazel structures which will be supports for all my tall flowers next year.

Hazel and Willow forms

This is a bed which contains Hollyhocks, Delphiniums, Alliums, Gladioli and other tall plants. The trouble is it is on a slope, and the plants end up flopping down...so she came up with this. It's an interesting form in its own right and will look good all winter while it's waiting for the flowers to grow.

Near my town is a little village called Petit Appeville. I have passed through it many times, but hadn't discovered these windows until this week when some French friends took me to see them as they knew where the key was hidden to get into the church. The windows were made by a really interesting woman called Maire Genevieve Gallois who was a Benedict nun for most of her life. Until much later on in her life she concentrated mainly on drawings.....

one of the stations of the cross

but people found them unsettling and disturbing and they were not really regarded as art until she was discovered by the art world when she was in her 60's.

Figure with beret

This was also about the time she started on her stained glass. The figures in these windows are really different from the usual that you see. They are charactures of people that she knew, and are funny, strange and often cross looking..especially in the first image I posted here. It seems strange that these amazing windows and drawings are hidden away in this little church with only the locals getting to see them on a regular basis.

Mist in the autumn trees

This has been a very unusual autumn. Three weeks ago we were swimming in the sea, and even now it is incredibly mild. The night temperature has been almost the same as the day and I still don't have the wood burner on in my studio.

This weekend though has been windy and the leaves have all come down with a 'flump',

Mistletoe trees

This has left all the Mistletoe exposed on the trees. People when they first come to Normandie often mistake these for large nests....they seem to particulaly like Poplar and fruit trees. This year there are loads of berries forming whereas last year there were almost none...on ours anyway. I expect someone will say that it's a precusor to a cold winter...but more likely to do with the spring I should think.

November Artichokes

The garden is also confused by the weather. The Artichokes which had started dying back, started up into growth again, and produced a second crop of small heads....which we enjoyed with lemon butter this week. I have also picked a lovely bunch of roses, and the clematis has a couple of large purple flowers out on display.

A silver day at sea

However the most exciting thing of the week for me was on tuesday when I caught the ferry back to France. Alongside the ship was a pod of dolphins jumping from the water, they were exactly the same colour as the sea and sky in the picture above. I was so excited I shouted out, and all the passengers on the boat ran to look...I'm suprised the boat didn't list to the side! I couldn't get my camera out in time...I was too busy watching...so you will just have to imagine them.

61...AAF Hampstead and La nuit blanche

Lara arranging stand

Back to Brighton this weekend and had to pop up to the prestigious new Affordable Art Fair on Hampstead Heath as all my small sculptures had sold at the private view and I had to load my trusty trolley up with more and hot foot it up to renew the display.
This fair is a well known international franchise but this was a first one in this location. It looked great, spacious and light with a really well curated collection of artists and galleries. It was busy and buzzy and I spent a happy couple of hours looking around. While I was there, Lara (my agent) sold the last Little Artichoke on the stand, and the lady who had bought it over the phone, came rushing round to pick it up, and bought me a lovely artichoke that she had seen for sale at a  local greengrocers, what a lovely thought.

Pheonix installation

This week the clocks went back, and in Brighton to celebrate this fact we have a white night. It is only 3 years old, but is already becoming a hugely popular event, and the streets were packed. I think this started originally in Amiens, France...but has spread to other French and British cities.

Dolly mania

H and I wandered around the streets enjoying all the different shows. Here we saw a couple of funny Dolly Parton trannies belting out her most popular numbers from balconies above the crowd...everyone was dancing. We also popped into the alternative (everything in Brighton is alternative!) village fete where I joined in with some Jive lessons.

Audience at Sallis Benney theatre watching clubbers on West Street

Later we joined an audience at the art college theatre who were watching an experiment run by the noise abatement society with a member from the 80's group The Human League. They were playing ambient music from many speakers situated in West Street in Brighton and filming the results while simultaneously streaming them back to the theatre. There was a body language expert there who was giving us the low down on how people were reacting to the music, and discussing whether it was changing behaviour. West Street is not a place where you would casually wander on a saturday night, it is full of very high spirited, often quite drunk youngsters who are out for a dance, a laugh and maybe a bundle....it has ever been so. So it was funny to watch the reactions to the ambient music all around them, and certainly it all seemed relaxed, clubbers and police, while we were watching. Maybe this idea could spread and calm down saturday nights in city centres?

Open market party

On the way home, we popped into the local fruit and veg market and found a full on party with DJ's and art installations. It was great...really good music and atmosphere...with a typical alt Brighton crowd. Plenty of ghouls and zombies having a bit of a dance.

Knitted bollard cosy

When we finally headed for home, we saw a row of bollards that someone had thoughtfully knitted some cosies for.......

60...Summer tiles and more guests

Detail from new wallpiece

Autumn is here, the students are all back at Uni and I have time and space in my mind to do some new designing now. I have got several new projects in mind, one line of which is a series of wall pieces. These are not always easy to display and sell, there is not yet a familiarity with hanging ceramic on the wall, nevertheless I like them myself and it makes a change to work on a flatter plane.

Blue Bells drying

I am also working on several commisions. The forms above will be glazed with a crystal white glaze and filled with crushed blue glass. Once attached to steel rods and mounted in wood, they will sparkle in someones garden.

Kieran's tile...guess his profession!

As ususal this summer, all my visitors have made a tile for the collection on my studio wall.

James's tile

I love these little self portraits.  This one was James who featured in an earlier blog...he is cycling around for a couple of years raising money for the McMillan fund. Last heard of in Budapest.

Hannah's house

Kiku's witch

Mika's dormotory

The girls who come to visit every summer get better and better with their tiles and now work on little 3d sculptures too. They have to take those home with them of course.

Teal's Death cap tile

Teal our visitor from last week was convinced we had poisoned her with wild mushrooms....however she survived to make her tile.

Teal and Laila hedging

Another Workawayer this week, Laila from welsh Wales who is staying for a while......

Houdini

mainly because of this little fellow who was rescued from a life in a cage in Greece, but who can't go back to Britain until 6 months after his jabs. We are now getting used to having our slippers and gardening gloves retrieved.

59...Mushroom season and help in the garden

Destroying Angel

This weekend we have been out in the local forest foraging for mushrooms. We took some friends with us and made sure they knew the fatal mushrooms (above) to avoid before looking for edibles. There are 3 main mushrooms to avoid, all part of the same family (Amanita) and called the Death Cap, Destroying Angel and the Citrina. Even eating a small amount can kill you......slowly...over about 6 days, so it's good to know which these are right at the beginning.

Cleaning mushrooms for lunch

It is a little dry at the moment for a really good crop of mushrooms, a few days of rain will bring them all up, but nevertheless, we found a large amount of Trompettes de la morte and a few others to add to the mix.

A couple of weeks ago I joined another website called Workaway, which is a site for people looking to work around the world in exchange for food and accomodation. I always need help in the garden so posted a profile, and this week my first helper arrived,

Teal

This is Teal, she is from New York state and has been working on a farm in Belgium, and is now helping to get my garden into order. She arrived with a guitar and a great singing voice, so there are strains of music drifting in from the bathroom or garden as she works...lovely! Another lady arrives on tuesday...with a little dog she has rescued in Greece so at this rate I will have a show garden in no time. What a great scheme.

Blue seedcase

Three new sculptures out of the kiln in the last couple of weeks,

Green seedcase

These two are destined for the new Affordable Art Fair in Hampstead at the end of the month. If anyone would like to go, please contact me through my website  www.francesdoherty.co.uk

Spidery Poppy

This one is one of a new range that are designed to go on the wall. The next one I am going to make will be based on the Echinacea 'Green Jewel'....it has the most gorgeous centre, I'm looking forward to constructing that one, once I've got the long list of sculptures made that are being waited on.

Oh I musn't forget.....Hi to Ryans dad Mike who I've been told reads my blog from across the pond in Americay.....How you doing?!