The Countryside Museum, Hawes

On Sunday I ran a Stone Carving Workshop at the Countryside Museum in Hawes.  It is about a two hour drive from my workshop, but a beautiful drive.  It is fascinating to watch the countryside change and the styles of housing and walling alter depending on the stone and building materials available in each area.

It was a really misty/foggy start, all the wheat fields were strung with dew drop filled spiders webs, creating soft silvery swathes between the tips of golden crop.  The sun pressed hard and soon it had turned to a beautiful morning.  I saw deer in the roadside verge.

I'm always made to feel very welcome at the Museum and got help unloading my work benches, tools and stone.

Soon we were underway and after a quiet start, I was throng with visitors coming to have a go at stone carving.  There was spectacular thunder about midday and a short shower, and although the thunder continued to rumble, it remained a beautiful sunny day with some very enthusiastic carving by youngsters, and parents!

 

An Abstract Carving

A wonderful self portrait carving by this young lady sticking her tongue out!

Very proud of his letter carving.

 Carving with real verve, individuality and experimentation including lots of textures on the surface.

After a happy and busy day, I set off for home.  The sky had become greyer, steel grey and more thunder - as I climbed up out of Hawes there was a beautiful section of rainbow.  Aren't they always a wow!?

Very soon it had vanished and only moments after big rain came.  Just ahead the road was closed and I had to take a detour along a wiggly windy road back to Leyburn.  It got wetter and wetter.  Water was bursting up out of the tarmac road, breaking the surface and driving mud, silt and stone in waves ahead of me.

A farmer, up to his knees in water frantically rodded a drain in the road, but his fields were already submerged.

I was rather relieved to get home safely!  And now feeling for all those caught in this flooding.

Country Living Fair - Harrogate

Actually I should say, The Country Living Christmas Fair - Harrogate.  The Country Living Magazine has for many years held Spring and Christmas Fairs in London and other venues, but this year for the first time they are staging a Christmas Fair in Harrogate at the Harrogate International Centre from 29th November to 2nd December, 2012.

I know it seems very early to be talking of Christmas, but I have been selected to exhibit at the Fair - Stand M49, so it is very much on my mind. It is making me feel very excited, if apprehensive about all the preparation I need to do.  I'm not quite sure yet how I will design the stand to best show my sculpture and am looking out everywhere I go for ideas and suitable ways to display.  

Can you help with ideas or advice?  Should I stay white and simple, or try to decorate?  

As an exhibitor I have one or two Limited Offer tickets to give away - it is buy one ticket and get one FREE, as long as booked before 17th September, 2012.  If you would like one, or more,  please let me know.

Drawing

I read Purple Podded Peas blog today and the drawing commitment appealed to me, so I've decided to join in.  I'm a day late starting, so this evening when I had closed the workshop doors, I sat and sketched  and did two small drawings, one for today and one to catch up.  In the middle of the session it began to rain, I tried to work through it, but soggy paper and more smudging than drawing brought it to a close.

I am looking forward to this discipline and to getting something in my sketch book every day this month.

See Gabriella's blog for more details about how you can be part of the challenge.

Not sure how, but.....

My lovely sunflower plants opened their flowers today - not a hint of sun, but they unfolded and searched upwards anyway.

These are the lovely dark coloured ones, Black Magic F1 - suppose there is the answer, they are magic!  It says on the packet that I will have flowers until October.  I planted them in the corner of my vegetable bed, as they are described as being good for wildlife - attracting butterflies and insects - and also so that I can collect the seeds to feed to the birds later in the year.  However they are a perfect colour match for my beetroot, which is proving a great success!

Heavens Above

Is a delightful little book I've just treated myself to.  Heavens Above - Incisive Letterwork (Brenda Berman & Annet Stirling)  Exhilarating and imaginative letter carving in stone and slate.

Quite a title for a slim paperback, but I have turned the pages front to back at least half a dozen times, and I'm still engrossed.  Incisive Letterwork is the business name for the pairing of Brenda Berman and Annet Stirling.  

Their ingenius work with the chisel is exhilarating and great thought has gone into each expression and into the appreciation of our alphabet.  They describe themselves as 'designers and lettercarvers specialising in architectural inscriptions, memorials and word sculpture'.  For me Word Sculpture says it all.

They have very cleverly turned, what I know to be lettering, right on its head - taking an incised letter into a relief carved letter and overlaying with other letters. Gilding the sides of letters.  Taking ancient scripts and putting their own touch on the styling and subtley and effortlessly modernising.

This is lettering you really have to look at - sometimes what is there isn't immediately obvious and then looking longer and more closely gives that delightful realisation moment of what is in front of you.  It is clever and fun.   For me, very inspiring!