Recording, Weaving and Thinking Gardens

I have had a few days away from my studio to put the finishing touch to my work on tapestry artist Jilly Edwards exhibition Sense of Place: a woven record of a journey. As the exhibition is 350 miles away in South Devon I made my own journey last week across one of the loveliest parts of England in springtime, Worcester and Gloucestershire. These are the counties most associated with fruit growing in the UK and this past week was probably the zenith of blossom time. It’s also been my joy on this journey to visit three exceptional gardens and two remarkable buildings. As I attempt to write about all this I realise I have hardly begun to process all I’ve seen and experienced; it will probably be weeks before I can make proper sense and order of the pictures and ideas in my head.

Three colours of Hyacinthoides @ Hestercombe

 

In Just Spring

If there was ever a poet that held a monopoly on Spring poems it is must be e.e.cummings. When I started to think about descriptions of this joyous season half a dozen poems suddenly sprung unbidden into my mind. My favourite can be read here. Spring is like a perhaps hand (which comes out of Nowhere) . . .

Sheila Hicks 'Kilometre 177' - work in progress

 

Eastertide, Simnel Cake and a Sense of Place

Today is Easter Monday, and as the greeting goes at Wakefield Cathedral just 300 yards from my studio, Christ is Risen, He is Risen Indeed! Although I no longer celebrate Easter I find it hard to ignore its presence in the life of my family or in the vivid memories of past Easters spent at Stanbrook Abbey in Worcester.

The chapel by Pugin at Stanbrook Abbey

 

Music, writing, weaving, walking – Lines by Tim Ingold

Back on a Thursday in February, when there was still snow on the ground, I took the train to Settle to conduct an experiment. Let me set the scene. It’s early morning at Leeds station and the train for Carlisle is filling up with ladies and gentlemen of retirement age tempted by an amazing ticket offer to travel the famous Settle to Carlisle railway, one of the most beautiful train journeys in the UK. I’m sitting there beginning to feel a little uncomfortable. Perhaps it is the notion that as a composer retirement and that freedom to wake up in the morning and not to have go to work is unlikely to be something I’ll ever experience. A composer I studied with in the late 60s is 102 and still composing! But that aside, I’m looking forward so much to this day out, a walk to Attermire Scar on the outskirts of Settle.

The walk under Attermire Scar