A New Walk Discovered

Exploring the lanes around my new home I discovered this magical piece of woodland along the lane past Mabe Church leading down to the lake .

Oak :the frame of civilisation

The oiling process on two of the routed panels .(see left)

24th July 2008
Oak :The Frame of civilisation by William Bryant Logan (2005 W.W.Norton and Co. )
The latest find in books which seems appropriate in many ways one being that I am waiting for the frame to be made for my oak screen the three panels of which are now sanded and oiled .I really enjoyed the finishing process particularly the hand sanding and remembered that I had used wood in my work in the 70s and brought back memories of being taught to saw and sand wood when I was a child by my dad who was an avid DIY and woodworker .
Had I realised how bad the second piece of ply was I would have sent it back it was very warped which meant cutting it was very problematic as the CNC router measures the depth of the wood in order to do a cut -through ) and the back has large red stains on it. So out of two 8by4 sheets, because of various problems and mistakes rather than getting both designs cut I only have one screen .
Anyway back to the book.
It seems that the oak has been on this earth longer than we have and is the primary tree of the fores . It has provided not only its wood for building (houses, ships, casks, bowls, to name but a few), and fuel but food for us and our animals .
It seems that acorn bread can sustain you for several hours and was far easier to grow, gather and store acorn and the bread made from it than the wheat we grow today.
“Balanoculture” was prevalent for centuries all over the world .
The old word for oak in Tunisia means “the meal bearing tree”.
The Koreans still eat acorn products .
Manna is a distillation of oak sap is eaten by the Kurds , Iranians and Iraquis .
In Corsica , Sardinia and North Africa bread is still regularly made .
You can buy acorn oil in Spain and roasted acorns as a snack.

revised design

My revised design has been laser cut onto paper prior to routing . Although the effect is more stylised it is more stable and has a better balance than previous designs .I now nee to decide on the scale and size of the panels ready for routing on monday.

screen developments

I am still working on my designs for a routed wooden screen and realising that  testing visually  onto  paper is not enough as when the design was then lasercut onto paper the faults in terms of stability and composition are far more apparent .

BT

I now have internet HIP HIP HOORAY after 5weeks of almost daily phonecalls to BT and now I can get on with my work again !

Printed fabric

Dyed and discharge printed tree fabric layered over my armchair as an example of home furnishing .

Catch Up Time

16th July 2008










Got a lot to catch up on .
Tricky the black cat had to be put to sleep the day after I came back from “up north” or even “up country” which was I have to say rather devastating she was 13 and Jon’s cat a farm kitten from Lancashire, a Lancashire lass so to speak who loved the open fields and catching things so spending her last few months here has been ideal . I still see her sitting on the kitchen windowsill in the sunshine or stalking in the long grass . She is now up in heaven with Jill who is looking after her (but that’s another story).

The ongoing saga with BT internet continues having been promised it on the 11th of June and a million phone calls since most of which take at least an hour and end up with me either furious or in tears and still no further on but with another promise from some disembodied voice who promises that this time it will be all sorted within 48 hours and then nothing happens !!Which is one reason why the blog has not been happening !!

Similar frustrations with my screen design the more I look at it the more needs changing and the more mistakes I make or the computer does ie wont let me work because the scratch discs are full (cats in the computer ?) or I forget to save the images and then the whole thing crashes and I lose all the work I have just done or I have so many different versions and think I know which one I am working on but leave a couple of days in between and I cant find it ! Learning photoshop is a long slow and painful at times process . I think maybe I am more hands on but haven’t even been doing that ! I am actually ready to give up at this moment in time and move back to the frozen north except that they seem to have been getting better weather than we have at times recently !

So what’s been good ?
London lots of highlights there :
The Vand A courtyard (great scones at the cafe as well !) installation by Jung Ho Chang using recyclable plastic paving blocks (see image above).
London's largest living room in the courtyard of Somerset House .(See image above)
“Skin and Bones “ at Somerset house : Fashion and architecture
Psycho Buildings at the Hayward :Artists and architecture
The RCA show .
“Up North “ seeing friends and helping with Morgans Open Studio weekend .
Local artists from Silverdale and Arnside on Morecambe Bay who open their studios once a year
The summer show at the Royal Academy with Ron Arad,s “Egg” and a million other drawings , prints(the seem to be the most lucrative one of these days I will submit something for it ) , paintings and sculptures ,opposite Fortnum and Mason who apparently have a garden on the roof and are bee keeping up there in order to collect their own honey .(information gleaned from an overheard convesation on the tube : How green is that !) There is a lot happening on the roof tops of London in terms of wildlife peregrine falcons , ground nesting birds thriving up there something more to research but I have no internet and am meant to be “ make , make ,making “but I am not doing that either !
I have been doing a bit of drawing my favourite pursuit is to go to Trebah and have tea or coffee and a scone (enormous and fresh ) and draw the birds that
come down to eat the scone , blackbirds, robins , sparrows and finches so far so cheeky and then walk down to the sea and draw a bit more !I am not sure how good it is to feed them scone as some seem to have a foot problem growths around the toes , is that related ?Maybe I will take seeds with me next time.
Books
Wildwood A journey through trees by Roger Deakin well written and full of interesting snippets about Environmental and cultural concerns around woodland and its many pursuits , creatures plantlife and more .Opening it at a random page just now this quote from Gulliver’s Travels appears
“He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers , which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed , and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers .”
(like now …totally whimsical )
“Wildwood is about the elements of wood as it exists in nature , in our souls in our culture and in our lives .”