Monday 18 January 2016

In my shed


My shed, my tools and me @work.



Pictures taken between 2000 and 2016

Monday 1 December 2014

Sunday 16 November 2014

Before the pilgrimage started

Upon my 2013 visit to Canterbury I noticed the icon-like expression of some of the 
Ancestry of Christ Windows. (And the Becket window too)
http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2014/canterbury-stained-glass

I made the icon board in November 2013 from an old plywood plank, paint stir sticks and a wine box lid. This was lined with cloth from an old sheet, and gessoed.















My first visit to Canterbury was in 1976 and rather a disappointment. I was 16 and the town looked drab, outdated and backward. And that was also my first impression of England there and then. A country that had failed to update. People drove cars that belonged in a museum and food was of wartime quality. Buses leaking oil, a smell of tar everywhere. I liked the cathedral though, and entering was like stepping in a different world.  Kind, elderly ladies who showed us around and the chance to practice my school English. I still have a postcard of the Becket window, which I must have bought then -at 10p or so. it was the deep blue colour that did it, I guess. Had I already read Murder in the Cathedral by then? I don't know. Perhaps I am mixing things up with our 1978 visit (I had turned 18, the vintage cars were rapidly disappearing and the food was still bad).
The blue was even bluer than Hurricane at Romney



In 2006 - my colleague and I visited Canterbury while on excursion with our school (State Agricultural College). The lads went for beer and we went into the cathedral. I had always cherished that postcard and now I was determined to see that blue and that "helmet" again.

I had to ask one of the volunteers - where was that deep blue window? I had even forgotten it was Becket himself was on it. As he was asking whether I wanted to see Solomon or Becket my mp3 player suddenly jumped to Handel's Arrival of the Queen of Sheba.

In 2013 the food was as good as that in France. One could still spot a Morris Minor or two, but the VW Campervan had become its iconic successor. The cathedral and the window were still there, as ever.

Sunday 9 November 2014

The start of a pilgrimage

Just another idea
a prototype
the challenge




Sunday 2 November 2014

Kernow

Today (and yesterday) was a real Indian Summer.
All Souls' Day and 18 degrees!
A great day to finish this Cornish inspired Hepworthian carving

2 November 2014



















Started 21 September 2014   

















Inspired by a summer vacation in Cornwall


Toys for boys

It all started by making wooden toys for the kids.
 They got too old for that
But it still makes a nice present for the neighbours' son