LETTERS FROM AFAR

Souvenirs of the wounded by Hugh Shirley

Those who have spent time in boarding school will know how important receiving post is when living far from family and home. Every lunch time we would all congregate in the quad while a prefect read out the names of those with post. I will never forget that feeling of euphoria when my name was read out. It was wonderful to receive one letter but two, three or four would make me feel quite giddy. Some of the girls received thick bundles of envelopes tied up with string and others would wait for days or weeks without receiving any mail at all.


I found this image on Tumblr.

My mom was always very good about sending a few letters a week. Some envelopes were thick with cuttings from newspapers and magazines, pressed flowers, snippets about the goings-on at the farm, jokes and anything she thought would cheer me up. I was not a happy boarder!


Out of Context by Janet Jones. See Janet's website here.

Valentine's day at boarding school was an important occasion which we all looked forward to because the prefects intercepted the post and actually opened and read the cards out in front of the school. Some of the messages were rather steamy and others were extremely soppy which would have us all rolling around on the floor with laughter. 

Kathryn Frund. See more of Kathryn's work here.

Cecil Touchon. See more of Cecil's work here.

Love Letter series by Crystal Neubauer. Read about the series at Crystal's blog, here.

"The series is built around a stack of love letters found stashed inside a wall in my mothers childhood home.

All of the letters are written to Gerald "Jerry" from his sweetheart Mary, as he travels around the state in the late 1920s looking for work. In the end Mary breaks Gerald's heart by telling him she can never be the kind of girl he needs her to be for marriage.

Background is comprised of original pages of love letters, which have been sampled by the mice and ravaged by time. Other elements include texts, cloth, objects and photographs relevant to that time. " - Crystal Neubauer

Photo mosaic of a carving I did for someone living far from home. See my website here.

SLATE, SEA AND SKY

Sea by Susan Barnes. See more of Susan's seascapes here.

I was browsing through Douglas Robertson's blog and found a poem by Norman Bissell from his book Slate, Sea and Sky. I love the poem and it fits well with the theme of this post.

Weather I by Susan Barnes. See more here.

Sounds

Sometimes here
it’s hard to tell
the sound of the wind
from the sound of the waves
or the sound of the waves
from the sound of the rain
or the sound of the wind
and the waves and the rain
from the sound of my breath.

- Norman Bissell

Drawing by Douglas Robertson. See website here.

Douglas Robertson writes, "The poem is a fabulous wealth of ideas for me, the lines evoking strong moods and images of the sea, and stirring many personal memories and experiences of the Atlantic coast of Scotland."

Caain' Whaals by Douglas Robertson. See website here.

Most of Doug's art is inspired by the sea and poetry. I love his drawings of whales and most of all I love his carved wooden whales. Browse through his blog , here and read about Sounds, the triptych he is working on, inspired by Norman's poem.

Douglas Robertson's beautifully carved wooden whales. See blog here.

Moon by Susan Barnes. See Susan's work at Green Hut Galleries, here.

The Space Between the Light by Kathryn Frund. See more here.

A Connected Solace by Kathryn Frund. See more here.

After the Storm by Amadea Bailey. See more of Amadea's work here.

Wind from the Sea by Andrew Wyeth

FRAGMENTS, SCRAPS AND REMNANTS

Temple Codex Cloth, Part II by Mathew Harris. See Mathew's website here.

Mathew Harris was the first artist who came to mind for this post. His beautiful textile pieces have captivated me since I discovered his works-in-progress on Flickr.

Echo 3 by Mathew Harris. See website here.

I enjoyed this article by Michael Brennand-Wood.

"On my last visit to the studio we sat and talked about the latest suite of drawings and cloth works. At certain junctures, allusions would be made to specific references, images pinned to the walls of the studio. I listened as my eyes began to drift around the room, I felt as if I were in the pages of a giant sketchbook. I noticed photographs of crumpled aeroplane wings, chipped wall surfaces, Japanese Temples, old texts, scraps of cloth and paper, tiny experiments in cloth and pigment, skeins of thread, waxed papers bound by reels of linen. The walls and floor were stained, marked with the outline ghosts of previous pieces. Colour was everywhere, puttied whites, ochre reds, sepia, sooty blacks and fugitive slightly blurry marks. The quality of the colour is very specific, everything is ground, stained, dragged, it may look old, worn but all of the cloth and paper surfaces have been treated, worked into time and again until the fabric is a virtual map of the processes that shaped its existence. - Michael Brennand-Wood

Aoyama Notebook 4 by Mathew Harris. See website here.


Thinking about fragments, shards and offcuts of past artworks ....
rejuvenated.

Remnants and scraps which might have been discarded or pushed to the back of a drawer or to the bottom of the rag-bag or wood pile .....
re-invented as artworks.

A delicious thought!


Authentic Movement 2 by M.J. Cunningham. Leslie introduced me to M.J's work. See more here.

Lisa Jurist's layered work is amazing! See blog here and etsy shop here.

Seth Apter. See Seth's blog here and Etsy shop here.

People Say .... by Cheryl McClure. See more here.

Fragment 2 by Maximova. See more here.

Fragments by Christian Burchard. (Thin slices of warped, bleached and sandblasted madrone timber). See more here.

Takamaya Dai. See more here.

Mosaic by Rosalie Gascoigne. Fragments of decorated china, tins, timber, printed art reproductions on board. See here.

David Neale Jewellery. See website here and blog here.

Photograph by Yehan Wang. See website here.

THE LISTENERS BY WALTER DE LA MARE

Components I by Terri Brooks. See blog here.

THE LISTENERS by Walter de la Mare

"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grass

Of the forest's ferny floor;

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller's head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

"Is there anybody there?" he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller's call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

'Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—

"Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word," he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Solent Moonlight by Kurt Jackson. See more here.

Gina Louthian-Stanley. See blog here.

Moonlit Canyon by Gina Louthian-Stanley. See Blog here.


Full Moon and Vessel by Lorna Crane. See website here.

Red Moon by Lorna Crane. See website here.

Tangie Pape Belmore. See website here.

Imbi Davidson. See blog here.

Growing in the dark by Jeane Myers. See website here.

Cheryl Taves. See website here.

Environmental series No.7 by Carol Staub. See website here.

Portal by Carol Staub. Website here.

FOLDING, UNFOLDING, ENFOLDING

Box of Autumn by Eva of Tinctory. See blog here.

I read of someone writing poems on handmade paper, folding them into origami cranes and leaving them all over London, to brighten someone's day.

From origami cranes I pondered over writing a blog post about folding paper .... or fabric .... canvas or metal. I thought of folding dog ears in a book to keep one's place .... and unfolding. My thoughts inevitably wandered over to wrapping, unwrapping, folding, enfolding...... Thus, this post was born :-)

Necklace by Eva of Tinctory. See shop here.

Film Star by John Latham. See link here.

Painting is an open book by John Latham

Between Folds/Encyclopaedia by Francisca Prieto. See Website here.
Mary Bogdan. See Flickr photo stream here.

A favourite image I've posted before by Sarah Mitchell. See link here.

"I enjoy the process of folding the paper, sewing the signatures, and the fact that from this repetition, surprising new things can emerge... " - Sarah Mitchell

Romance by Cara Barer. Website here.

Blue Lotus by Jenny Gifford. Photo by Lianne Burton on Flickr, here.

Tiny wrapped parcels by Kwang-Young Chun have intrigued me for a while. Photo by Jasmine Trabelsi on Flickr, see more here.

I love these metal packets by Kyleen Jeans. See link here.



Folding by Katherine Chang Liu. See more here.