| Christine | Farmer |

 

Yesterday evening I went to hear Richard Hamblyn talking about his book Extraordinary Clouds, in which he presents photographs and descriptions of unusual natural and man-made cloud formations: the ones which did not make his earlier book on cloud classification, The Cloud Book. The talk was part of the Birmingham Book Festival and was introduced by Edward Morris whose book Constable’s Clouds, which examines clouds in art, is unfortunately out of print. Types of cloud covered included enormous lenticular clouds and sonic boom clouds, and the talk was illustrated with some amazing photographs from Hamblyn’s book, including ones taken from inside the eye of Hurricane Katrina, and satellite images of thousands of contrails over areas of the USA, and indeed the theme of man’s impact on the skies was returned to several times during the evening.

Another theme of discussion was that of the depiction of clouds in art, and whether artists such as Turner and Monet painted the actual skies that they ’saw’, and could their works therefore be used as accurate record of past skies. This was very interesting when considered alongside the decisions Hamblyn told us he had to take regarding the exclusion from the book of photographs which may have been ‘photoshopped’ or with otherwise dubious provenance. Of course anyone who has tried either to draw or photograph clouds will know that what we see up there often doesn’t appear in the same way when it is ‘captured’.

Many interesting visual and other phenomena were discussed alongside clouds during the question-and-answer session, including the Brocken Spectre, in which one sees a solitary figure envelpoped in a kind of rainbow-halo suspended in the air. The phenomena gave rise to a legend mentioned in Confessions of an Opium Eater and elsewhere, and is said to be peculiarly eerie since even if one is standing within a group of people one only sees one ’spectre’. This is because, as was explained to us, each person creates one’s own spectre in the mind, in the same way as ‘we all create our own rainbows’. At which point Edward Morris pointed out that the entire daytime sky is one large ‘optical effect’ and that we only return to ‘reality’ at night-time, which I found to be a very interesting statement and has had me pondering ever since he said it.

The whole evening was very thought-provoking and interesting and in the absence of photographs of any ‘extraordinary’ clouds, I’m going to illustrate this post with photographs of some of the skies I’ve seen from my studio this past summer, which has been a wonderful one for cloud-watchers like me:

   

  

   

  

   

Cloud Appreciation Society 

Clouds in my drawings and photographs

| Home | About the Artist | Contact | Galleries | Subscribe to Blog |

 

Yesterday I went to look at some of the finds from the recently-discovered ‘Staffordshire Hoard’, which are currently on display at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. The hoard is Anglo-Saxon in date, around 700 AD., and was discovered just a few months ago on farmland by Terry Herbert, a man using a metal detector. One of the most important archaeological finds of recent years, it is on display for just a few weeks at the museum, so despite a three-hour queue I really felt I had to go and see the exhibition.

Pages from the brief exhibition guide:

  

The hoard weighed over 5Kg., and comprises over 1,500 gold items mainly related to weaponry, including sword hilts and dagger pommels. However, the five cases of finds on display give more of an impression of a fine jeweller’s than an armoury. Each tiny sparkling item is lit with small spotlights, and some are viewable through magnifying glasses. The workmanship displayed is quite breathtaking, with the finest filigree, inlay work and amazingly detailed zoomorphic and abstract designs. The work is so fine that it is not readily appreciable unless you are really quite up close, which makes one think of the admiration the original owners must have had for this detailed work. The tiny scale of the pieces is not obvious in any of the published photographs I had seen before I made the visit, which are of course enlarged in order to illustrate the designs. However, I’ve now seen some of the videos of the recovery taking place and the scale is much more apparent in these (see link below).

The finds on display, while including some of the well-publicised items - the cross, the Biblical inscription - are only a small percentage of the whole, and I can quite understand the emotional reaction of those who first came into contact with the find. I can only imagine the impact of the entirety, and wonder how it will all look once it is properly cleaned of the Staffordshire earth which clings to most of the pieces. The display continues at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery until the 13th October, with special late openings (see previous link for details). I would imagine that the queues are shorter during the week, or if you get there early on a weekend (I arrived after lunch on Sunday).

The Staffordshire Hoard website, which has lots of pictures, information and videos, including this amazing video of pieces being recovered from the soil: BUFAU video.

Staffordshire Hoard Appeal just launched, to help pay for acquisition and care for the hoard.

| Home | About the Artist | Contact | Galleries | Subscribe to Blog |

I recently visited the ‘Tale-Pieces’ exhibition of the work of the self-taught wood engraver and naturalist Thomas Bewick, at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. ‘Tale-piece’ was Bewick’s amusing name for the extremely small engravings (just an inch or so in size) which he used to finish off chapters of his books on Natural History.

The magnifying glasses handed out as one enters the gallery really are necessary, as it is astonishing the amount of detail which Bewick captured in these tiny vignettes. The works, displayed two to a framed page, mostly depict scenes from country life, including fishing and more domestic activities, which bring to mind folk-songs and ballads. But there is also something darker yet simultaneously whimsical in the images of trapping, flooding, graveyards, and crumbling ruins with their portentous Latin inscriptions.

What amazed and amused me most was the almost surreal nature of some of the imagery: a couple on a galloping horse encountering a gargantuan leaf was perhaps the most arresting, along with a monkey staring into a shaving mirror. But the one engraving I’d been really looking forward to was the one in which Bewick had carved a reproduction of his own thumb-print as the main part of the design, and it did not disappoint. Prepared to go hunting for the hidden fingerprint with my trusty magnifying glass I was delighted as it appeared, large as you like, taking up almost the entirety of one of the smaller pieces.

 

Needless to say with my love of the surreal and the miniature, to say nothing of Natural History and engraving, I’ll no doubt be returning to the subject of Thomas Bewick at a later date. Meanwhile, you might like to visit the webpages of the Bewick Society, and their blog, Tale-Pieces. And I highly recommend a trip to the exhibition to see these engravings for yourself if at all possible.

Thomas Bewick ‘Tale-Pieces’ continues at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham until the 25th May, after which it can be seen at The Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle.

| Home | About the Artist | Contact | Galleries | Subscribe to Blog |