The Drawing Board (blog)

The last days of my Painting Sale...

I'm officially out of the office this week -- but popping in briefly just to remind folks that this weekend marks the end of my Studio Clearance Sale -- with paintings offered at half their usual prices. The sale ends on Monday, Jan. 4. (If there's anything you're particularly hankering after but can't afford immediately, installment payments can be arranged....)

I hope you're all having a good holiday season, and that your New Year's Eve sparkles with magic.

 

The Tilly Report: A five-month-old puppy's first Christmas

Tilly opened presents, ate, played games, ate, ran free in her newly fenced-in garden, ate, went for a community Christmas walk with a large group of human and canine friends, ate some more, napped a little, ate again. A good day for the puppy.

And now, of course, she's wondering why every day can't be Christmas....

Christmas morning wake-up stretch, on her William Morris pillows.

Waiting for the canine Santa. "Are all these presents for me...?"

Christmas portrait.

I'm off chasing bunnies for the holidays, and will see you all again in the new year!

Happy Solstice

Lisa Stock's short film "Brother and Sister" is set in a magical, snow-covered landscape that is perfect for a dark Solstice Eve. Inspired by a poem of mine, which in turn was inspired by a fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm, the film stars Seth Harris and Michelle Santagate, with gorgeous music by Priscilla Hernandez. Shot in New York City last winter, the completed film can now be viewed online.

Lisa recommends starting with the "Brother & Sister: Behind the Scenes" clip, and then moving on to the film itself. Both can be found on the Vimeo site.

My heartfelt thanks go to Lisa and the InByThe Eye crew for turning a few simple words on a page into a dreamlike, haunting, and myth-shadowed vision on film. I feel honored indeed.

Stone Stories

My husband, step-daughter, the dog and I took a winter's walk on Scorhill Down -- a mystical slice of moorland just past the nearby hamlet of Gidleigh. Greeted by Dartmoor ponies, we followed the boundaries of a farmer's field...

...to a track leading onto the open moor...

...where a circle of standing stones...

... whispered Bronze Age secrets only the pup could hear.

We traveled on to the Wallabrook...

...crossed a clapper bridge...

...and followed its length...

...until it was time to head home...

...as the dying sun faded into mist.

Studio Clearance

I'm at the tail end of my End-of-the-Year Studio Clearance Sale -- and although the drawings are all gone now, there are still a few paintings left, offered at half their usual prices until January 1. If you're thinking in terms of Christmas gifts, email me (via the Endicott office) to discuss special delivery options. The art will be sent out from my studio in south-west England, but we have Federal Express even here in deepest Dartmoor....

 
details from the painting above (click on the art for larger versions)... 

Bear Update

                                                                                                      illustration by Edmund Dulac

The Ice Bear is up in London now. Go here to see it live....

Thursday's Song

Today's song is "Gallina," performed by Telling the Bees at The Festival at the Edge in Shropshire. Telling the Bees, from Oxford, mix traditional folk tunes with original works rooted deeply in the folk tradition -- including songs with such magical, evocative names as "Saddle the Hare," "The Language of Birds," and "The Worship of Trees." They have two CDs: Untie the Wind and  An English Arcanum (just released this month), both of which I recommend. As an added bonus, both CDs come beautifully packaged with delicate pencil illustrations by my Dartmoor neighbor Rima Staines. (Rima discusses the creative process behind these illustrations here.) Visit the Telling the Bees website and MySpace page to hear more samples of their music. 

 It is an English folk custom (particularly prevalent here in Devon) to "tell the bees" about all significant events: births, marriages, divorces, house moves, deaths -- particularly the latter. To ignore the custom is to offend the bees, risking consequences ranging from bad luck to the loss of the local hive.

The tradition traveled across the ocean to America, where folklorists recorded the custom in practice throughout New England and the Appalachian region in the 18th and 19th centuries. The classic poem "Telling the Bees," by Quaker poet John Whittier (1807-1892),  is believed to have been inspired by the bees on the Whittier family farm in Massachusetts.

Dark Angels

 

It pains me to admit that there's not a snowball's chance in hell of my getting up to Manchester to catch the Angels of Anarchy exhibition at the Manchester Art Gallery before it ends on January 10th -- so if any of you do get to see it, write and let me know if it's as fabulous as it looks. They've gathered works by 32 artists, including Remedios Varo (who inspired Anna Naverra in The Wood Wife), Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning, Lee Miller, Frida Kahlo, Kay Sage, Leonor Fini and other wonderful Surrealist artists from several countries. Fortunately there is a book for us poor deprived souls who don't get to see their art in the flesh. (I also recommend Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement by Whitney Chadwick.) You'll find a good list of Surrealist links on the museum's website, and the opportunity to add to a Surrealist poem. And the Creative Tourist blog has a video of a conversation between Patricia Allmer, the exhibition's curator, and author Jeanette Winterson.

Below, some of my favorites by Fini & Carrington, Varo & Tanning, Sage & Kahlo:

 

(Other artists whose work particularly inspires me can be found on the Inspiration Board section of this website.)

Urban Magic

Here's another sculptor whose work I like: Misako Inaoka. Born in Japan, Inaoka studied art in Rhode Island, California, and Rome, and now lives in San Francisco. Her sculpture is a bit quirkier than the Irish artist Fidelma Massey's (which I wrote about below), and less overtly spiritual, yet it too is inspired by the relationship between humankind and the natural world.

"My interests arise from the boundary between what we call natural and artificial," says Inaoka. "I observe the physical and social environment in detail, to find hidden beauty and peculiarity-- things such as a cell phone antenna in the shape of a pine tree, birds that are not native to the area, or moss growing in a crack of cement sidewalk.

"The nature I notice survives in different forms, by adapting, adjusting and mutating to its new urban setting. This manipulated urban nature strongly influences my recent works. I emphasize the subtle details of surviving nature and exaggerate their illogicality to cultivate my own version of invented creatures and landscapes. My world is not a creation of total imagination, but is a projection of the reality in an absurd form."

Substitute the word "fantastical" for "absurd," and it seems to me that one could say roughly the same about the survival and adaptation of myth in the form of urban Mythic Fiction (a.k.a. Urban Fantasy, of the Charles de Lint sort). I love all these art forms, both visual and literary, in which magical imagery adapts itself to the modern world.

Visit Inaoka's website to see more of these critters, exhibited at an installation at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2008. The sculptures move, which you can see in the little video of the installation.

 

Sunday Walk

This weekend, my husband, step-daughter, and I took young Tilly on her first really long walk, to a moorland valley at Belstone (a nearby village), next to a roaring, rain-engorged river. As you can see from the photos below, she thoroughly enjoyed the walk...and is looking forward to a life-time more of them in this beautiful, rugged, mythic, ancient corner of Dartmoor where we live. 

Ice Bear Update

Back in July I posted on the Ice Bear project...and today, at last, is the day that the Ice Bear finally makes his world debut. Here's the latest news from Mark,Todd, Nick, and the rest of the Ice Bear team:

The Bear is going up in Copenhagen today, timed to coincide with the big UN Conference on Climate Change; the Bear's next appearance will be in London's Trafalgar Square on Friday, December 11th.

And after that? No plans are confirmed just yet, but it's hoped that the Bear will tour around the world. This depends on finding more funding, of course -- both organizational sponsorships and private donations, large or small. If you or your organization can help, go here to learn more about the project, and here to become a Friend of the Bear.

As we speak, four of my Chagford friends -- Roger & Claire Ash-Wheeler, Yuli Somme, and Yuli's daughter Kesella (who has been working with Todd as part of the Ice Bear support team) -- are traveling by bicycle all the way from Chagford to London in order to raise money for the Bear, and to join The Wave (the big climate change march). You can read Kesella's blog about the journey here, and sponsor them (it's not too late!) by dropping a line to: kesella@icebearproject.org.

In the video above, Mark Coreth and his team begin the creation of the Ice Bear Skeleton. Eventually this turns into a life-size polar bear skeleton in bronze, which in turn is surrounded by a life-size carving of a polar bear in ice. "Anyone who comes to see the Ice Bear will be able to touch it," Mark explains. "And then they too will become sculptors as they shape the melting ice - symbolic of how we all have the power to affect our delicate environment." 

Updated to add: You can watch a live stream of the Copenhagen Ice Bear here.

Queen of Beasts, Mother of Birds, and more . . .

 
Thanks to a link on the 5preciousthings blog from Scotland, I've fallen completely in love with the magical creations of the Irish artist Fidelma Massey, who works in stone, bronze, and ceramics from her studio in County Wexford.

Massey draws inspiration from world mythology, astrological symbolism, and the spirituality inherent in nature. “I don’t feel that there is any separation or conflict between the divine and the concrete world," she says. "The spectrum flows from spirit through matter and does not exclude humans.” 

To see more of Massey's exquisite mythic art, please visit her website.

Thursday's Song

Last week's song from the Native American singer Joanne Shenandoah reminded me of a similar sacred tradition of song and chant on the other side of the world: the magical yoik songs of the Sámi, the indigenous reindeer-herding people of northern Europe, whose traditional homeland extends across Norway, Finland, Sweden, and into Russia. 

Yoiking, notes music journalist David Ward,  "is not so much folk song as ritual, a sometimes trance-like expression of the identity of a person, place or animal. Its melodies sound simple and fragmentary but the techniques used in singing them are not." Traditionally, yoik was sung a capella or accompanied only by a single, shamanic drumbeat -- but today yoik has blossomed into a number of different forms as it's taken up by contemporary musicians across Scandinavia and beyond.

The song above is performed by The Girls of Angeli, who hail from one of the few remaining pure Sámi-speaking villages in northern Finland. They've been performing together since the 1980s, recording their most recent albums under the name Angelit. Below is a more contemporary piece by the Swedish-Sámi singer/songerwriter Sofia Jannok, whose influences range from  yoik to pop and jazz. The song comes from her most recent album, Aššogáttis (By the Embers).

Go here and here to read about the yoik tradition, and here for a guide to contemporary yoik musicians and websites. More information on the history and cultural heritage of the Sámi people can be found on the Galdu website.

Sad news

On November 18th I learned that my friend and colleague Robert Holdstock had been rushed to hospital due to a sudden infection, and he's been much in my thoughts and prayers ever since.  He died on Sunday morning, leaving his family, friends and admirers on both sides of the Atlantic stunned and saddened by this loss.

Born near the Romney Marsh in Kent, Rob and his partner Sarah made their home in London for many years, where he wrote magnificent books rooted in Celtic, Nordic, Gothic and Pictish history and legend. Rob knew the landscape of myth and folklore as thoroughly as the streets of his London neighborhood, and his "Mythago Wood" sequence of novels are modern classics of mythic literature.

The fantasy and mythic arts fields will miss him. And I'm going to miss him too.