Horlicks festival

                                                 

I think this is what our local annual huge wine festival should become, or they should move it in accordance with the changing climate pattern.
Toques et Clochers (Chefs' hats and bell towers) is Limoux's biggest yearly festival and put on as part of Sieur d'arque's (big wine producer) yearly auctioning of wines.
The event is held on a Saturday in March, which apart from on a few occasions is inevitably cold, grey and drizzly. Maybe it's just me but I find the idea of wandering about dressed in a fleece, clutching a glass of chilled chardonnay rather than a warm mug of something, not enticing.
I have been to about two T et C when the sun has been shining - this makes all the difference: warmth, street bands looking cheerful, terrible art a pleasure to look at, and of course 'la degustation' (tastings); a glass or two or five seems so much more attractive when you're not verging on hypothermia and clutching a hot water bottle.
One of the features of the festival is the art competition, which these days promises a handsome first prize of 1,600 euros! not to be ignored . . . I have won third and forth but not the hallowed first, apart from another category of 'painting in the vines'. I did win first prize but I think it was more to do with them being impressed that I had hauled a huge plank of wood into a field and sat in a howling gale for three hours.
Ezra (son) has won first twice in the children's category; this year, being eighteen and all, he decided to go for the big one.
After much procrastination he got down to the task, shut himself away and produced this lovely thing. I had it framed and dropped it off, knowing without a doubt he would gain at least 4th prize.
The week arrived and Ezra would ask nonchalantly about the post every day: 'did anything . . . you know, arrive?'
It didn't. So, yesterday, I braved the elements; drove, parked and walked a long way, thus avoiding standing about queuing for the shuttle bus, and paying for many tastings I wouldn't wish to carry out, as it was about six degrees.
I found the exhibition space and . . . well, I shall say no more other than I wonder if a certain amount of pre-tasting, tastings were undertaken before judging got underway . . .
I bought some chips, walked back to the car as bus-loads of fleece-wearing people were arriving, and planned what we both might produce for next years competition.

                                         

                                                       
                                                        Ezra's paper cut - no prize (sob)

                                                      

                                                                         1st prize

                                                       
                                                                      2nd, I think 

                             
                                              HAPPY NEW YEAR !       

Wayhayyyy! 2016.
Onwards and forwards: projects, writing, art, music, cooking, gardening, walking, travelling, New Year's resolutions - already failed with: no tea first thing in the morning, very small amounts of sugar, and no swearing.
Good walking however, with dogs and husband, house cleared up; New Year's greetings sent, chocolate avoided and tricky re-write to now attack . . .

Art in odd places

Most car parks are fairly unmemorable but this one on the outskirts of a small French town, whose name I can't recall, was most memorable for two reasons. One, that there was an overladen peach tree of the yellow variety (think the ones that appear in tins) that no one seemed to be interested in harvesting, and we were interested - out came the bags from the car for just such an opportunity. A memory to store up for winter - fuzzy-skinned, sun-yellow peaches, plucked from a tree in about forty degrees as the cicadas whirred manically all around.
The other reason for the car park's notability was this art piece.

A bollard with a special knitted casing. Why? Not the cold evidently, and generally metal bollards wouldn't need a knitted protection against climate. Protection then for someone's car who was in the habit of repeatedly crunching into it? Possibly going by the bent nature of the post but I can't imagine a thin layer of wool would make any difference; a wrapping of loft insulation perhaps, or a gaffer-taped sleeping bag if you were really anxious - and judging by most French cars, and ours, no one's really that bothered by the odd prang.
I think it must be a statement: a woolly phallic statement about territorial parking rights or maybe it's an example of a new phase of Free running - Free knitting in the environment. Anyway, it works well with the experimental garage door painting.

What is art?

Remove this, (after asking nicely) attach it to a vast, white wall in The Tate Modern, et voila - ART.  I especially like the small cat hole cut into one of the rusted panels.
I think I've blogged about them before but The Boyle family did just this, in, I think, the 70s except rather than removing whole walls, paths, etc, they would recreate (and perhaps some of them still do) down to the last spider and dust mote, a small section of the planet's surface, after pinpointing it on a map and going there to presumably take a lot of photos.
Actually I just looked up as to how the process was devised - large world map, blindfolded participants and darts . . .

Here's a link to The Boyle family's work.

http://www.boylefamily.co.uk/boyle/about/index.html

unwitting art

What is the point of trying to create art I thought to myself as I stepped back from this wonderment, backlit by the morning sunshine. It's all around us; created by us, knowingly or otherwise.
The person who concocted this gate did so out of necessity: keeping dogs in or out, people in or out, whatever, but they made it from what was available; probably from that fly tipping site I noticed just down the road.
If I passed this in the Tate, hung in the main gallery, or in a dare ye to enter gallery near Bond street, I would have admired it as I did this morning, for its colours, its random construction and sheer boldness. Whether it had a price tag of seventy thousand pounds or it was about to be loaded into a skip, it was art either way, to my mind.


                              



I'm writing a book at the moment set in 2090.
Here's an extract set in a shouting-house (auction rooms) after the early 21st century furniture lots have been sold.

Art

I would love to be able to nip into the Tate of a weekend, but . . .
Anyway art is all around us; you only have to go to buy a couple of replacement lightbulbs and a bag of fertilizer and . . . voila, in the car park of 'Tridome' someone has installed a terrific piece entitled: 0.081.

Night train window.

Painting from a two minute sketch during a journey from Poole to waterloo. In fact a very tedious journey that involved a bus in the middle, and standing in the drizzle with lots of sheep-like people (including me) saying: "Where are we? Is this the right bus? I need a sandwich."

History

Ooo long gap. Have been very involved with 'La rentrée, and all that entails in France. College rather than school for boy person, new school of music pupils for the tall one and endless lists of things that have not been achieved after everything went a bit 'baggy' over the long holidays.

All house appliances decided to give up in celebration of the tax fonciere bill, and much time has been spent trying to fix things in Cuban style with some success . . . never throw out your 18 year old cooker as it attempts to shuffle off this mortal thingamy, take it to Parchemin (excellent recycling place in Limoux for those not familiar to it) where they will probably manage to repair it.

Anyway, history, yes.

Everything is history, is it not — the sentence I am writing will be history as I put in this full stop.

Not quite the falling of the Berlin wall, but some sort of history.
The painting here is the second in the 'train window' series — based on a sketch I did from a train in 2006 from London to Poole. The forms seemed to suggest mainly the greys of travel through London outskirts and industrial areas around Poole. When I had nearly finished the painting I found the 2006 diary and looked at the day. Oddly it been a 'greys' day, in weather and the fact that I was going on a quickly arranged journey to see my mother who had suddenly become seriously ill.
Historically it was an important day for me. My mother is normally of a strong constitution, and the uncertainty of what awaited me was a new and worrying feeling. Although the sketch was created by hazard - my hand trying to capture lines of passing buildings and structures, the anxiety seems to be captured in the turbulence and spikes of the image.

Everyman is a cormorant, sometimes.

I was trying to find an image of the cover of my book, and uploaded this by mistake.

As it's from the inside of the book I'll leave it here.

Its title is above, and the subject concerns those times when we feel that it's all just a bit too much.

When Mark (husband and over-doer) is challenged thus, he reminds me of a cormorant drying its wings — a gesture of hopelessness, a shrugging of the shoulders; not that birds generally have shoulders, and probably not feelings about the impossibility of everything.

Time to stop. Need to watch DVD episode of Life on Mars. We are addicted to it at the moment.