A GATHERING WE WILL GO

 Penny  (Back Valley Seasons) commissioned one of my small niche carvings recently and asked me to do a post with  photos showing where I find the objects that go into them.

Many times it's a case of 'the early bird get's the worm' so we set off to weekend markets at the crack of dawn.....

.... to arrive there when stall holders have just set up their wares.
Our favourite market is just under an hour's drive away and begins at 6.00am.

Sometimes I find small or unusual pieces on street vendors tables...

.... at scrapyards and junk shops throughout KwaZulu Natal

Vintage furniture dealers out in the country...

Wherever we go we are on the look out for shops that sell old bits and pieces, though it's becoming harder and harder to find the bargains. We live in hope...

Beach gathering is my favourite pastime. Husband goes fishing on three coasts..... North, South and the most beautiful of all, the Wild Coast in the Transkei. When I can I will tag along and we holiday at the Wild Coast at least once a year.

Up at dawn to catch the ferry across the estuary ....

to the other side where I spend the whole day walking....

.... sifting through shells

searching for solitary cowries in sand hollows and pools

collecting driftwood 

... and pebbles.

GOOD SALES AND GOOD BOOKS

Detail of Niche Door by Robyn Gordon. Wood Carving 63cm x 70cm x 6.5cm (24" x 27")

It's been a lucky week! Three good sales and a parcel of new books arriving on my doorstep.....



A little breathing space to page through my new books before starting my next carving.

Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective, is the most beautiful book! Lee's work is strikingly different to anything I've seen before. At first glance these pieces look like metal sheets patched together but they actually consist of canvas and scavenged fabrics stretched over welded steel frameworks, stitched with wire. They are extremely powerful and one wonders where these ideas came from. What inspires an artist to create something like this?

.

An article by Diane Calder gives a little insight .....

"As Bontecou worked in her studio, her short wave radio broadcasted threats of attack by (cold war) terrorists or news of horrific events in Africa. Fear and anger that she had felt as a child, about the Holocaust, began to surface. “I’d get so depressed that I’d have to stop and turn to more open work. Work that I felt was more optimistic--where for example, there might be just one single opening, and the space beyond it was like opening up into the heavens, going up into space, feeling space. The other kind of work was like war equipment. With teeth. Not many people realize that. But the funny thing is that those canvases ended in German museums or Israeli ones. Just where they belonged, without my saying a thing. One of those pieces went to the Jewish Museum in New York. It was a sort of memorial of my feelings. I never titled any of these. Once I started to and it seemed to limit people to a certain response, so I didn’t continue.”

Read Nancy Natale's excellent post about Lee Bontecou, here.

Amazon link, here.

"The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable." - Robert Henri