sense of place

Jaume Plensa @ YSP

Jaume Plensa is from Barcelona. He is a polymath of an artist. He sculpts from alabaster, metal, resin, plastic, iron, video, light, letters, words and gongs. And other stuff. He stages Operas. He has made the M62 a much better place. 

In the space of approxiately ten minutes I think I recall him talking about silence as an antidote to our failure to communicate amidst the noise of our lives; the role of gongs and noise in creating community, the prominence of the sense of touch in the Mediteranean psyche, texts and poetry, classical forms, computer people, light and darkness and the common humanness of faces. 

He is stimulating and engaging. He is emotional and intellectual. 

And so is his work.

Some of it tripped me up a bit. Possibly some of it is too 'intellectual.' I am never sure about art which uses language. A number of his works are made out of words. This can be fine. A giant head woven from them uses them simply as 'materials' rather than as texts. You inhabot the words and they inhabit the work. But elsehwere beautifully crafted sculptures have quotes on them. It feels a bit T Shirty. Slogany. Great sculpture does things to space which you 'feel' as well as think about. The words make you do too much thinking and get in the way of feeling. Maybe this is part of his point. A sort of dissonance to make you appreciate the non dissonant. Maybe he just likes words. 

There is no doubt that elsewhere his work is full of feeling.

His room of classically sculpted alabaster heads is a place of resonant beauty. I'm not sure what it makes me think. It makes me feel difference and love and humanity and oneness and eternities of time and happiness and hope.  

And his room of gongs makes me feel that, just as every house should contain a drum kit, more public rooms should be full of gongs. And that more sculpture shows should include things you whack with mallets. Which is not to trivialise the art. The work evokes a sense of ceremony and ritual and subverts it with a sense of playfulness and joy. It's solemn and cheeky. Wise and witty.   

Jaume Plensa creates spaces I'd happily spend time in regularly. It feels as though sculpture, albeit the big scale sculpture YSP does so well, almost limits him. We should be commissioning him to design airports, parks and cities.   

   

fortythingsi'veneverdonebefore

Call me fickle. Call me a dilettante. Call me old. But I've been blogging here as well. Similar themes but with a particular list collating purpose. Ideas for new things for the list gratefully received. Ten down. Thirty to go. 

Slash and burn (and snooze)

In approximately 1 acre of woodland we have approximately 1/3 of an acre of brambles. And counting. Blink and they've grabbed another 1/3 of an acre or so. So we're on the offensive. But it's slow, boring work. The fire was quite fun but otherwise spending most of the day detangling, chopping, forking out roots who are quite happy where they are and generally getting scratched is not the fun kind of gardening. Emily has the wisdom of youth and opted for a woodland snooze. Smart girl. 

 

Asparagus officinalis

It is indeed official. We have an asparagus bed. A long thin strip near the rhubarb and blueberries. Featuring Pacific Purple, Connover's Colossal and Gijnlim. The crowns are weird looking things. Quite alien. We won't be eating the benefits for a year or two but it will be worth the wait.  

Planting

We're back in action. Or limbering up for it anyway. A few more beds have been prepped for summer growing. The fruit bushes appear to have survived a process somewhere on the spectrum between bloody massacre and pruning. A selection of seed potatoes are quietly chitting amongst themselves. And most importantly our luxurious (a fiver from Morrisons) new coldframe and the capacitous window ledges of Hollow Barn are now jampacked with seed trays. Carefully filled with potting compost and seeds. I've had a post planting panic that many of the seeds may not have survived a winter in a drawer outside in the potting shed. But assuming they have then we'll soon be seeing the first shoots of 2 types of runner bean, 2 types of peas, 2 types of globe artichoke, chicory, 5 types of lettuce, 2 types of squash, sweetcorn, 4 types of tomato, 2 types of kale, cucumbers, marigolds, fennel, rhubarb chard, dwarf beans and 3 types of courgette. Whichever ones show off their green shoots first will be awarded some sort of small prize. 

In bloom

Spring is springing. Life is returning. The blooming rhododendrons are a delightful surprise. And the early rhubarb is the first food of the season. We may force a few clumps as well. 

 

How local does a bee need to be before a bee is a local?

Every hayfever season I vow to go and get jabs in the winter. And forget. Last summer someone told me that local honey helps reduce the effects of hayfever by helping you get used to the local pollen. Lovely Mrssenseofplace bought some local honey. Its very tasty. But how local is local? I'm guessing that Bradford may well have very different pollen to our pollen. According to Mr Douglas it doesn't matter much anyway. :( Better forget to have some jabs then. 

 

Dig it

The first chance this year to put spade to soil and tidy some vegetable beds. In places this involved the rather depressing task of removing the last vestiges of the winter crops the pheasants and frosts drove to an early suicide. RIP sprouts. RIP PSB. But after the rather back breaking clearance requirements of our arrival last year they otherwsie feel satisfyingly easy to make weed free. This may be just the time of year. There is a lot of time between now and planting out in April/May for them to become positively lawn like. Next weekend I might cover them over with cardboard and tarpaulin but for now they looking satisfyingly neat at the edges and uniformly awaiting some cultivated companions.  

Reflections

At the end of 2009 moving to HB was still contemplation. I seem to remember posting some rather grand visions for what I hoped 2010 might hold. So what does the year look like with the benefit of hindsight rather than foresight?

Well pretty good really. 

Admittedly lots of things remain on the to do list.

There hasn't been much foraging. We found and ate some wild garlic with some help from Matt. And picked a lot of blackberries. I got some great photos of Wharncliffe fungi but a mix of lack of confidence and lack of time meant we didn't get as far as identifying the garden fungi for edibileness.

There haven't been any chickens either. I'm pretty keen that our own fresh eggs will be on the way by the summer but still a bit nervous about the responsibility and the carnivorous desires of local foxes (and dogs). The bees can definitely wait. 

Oh and asparagus, blueberries, globe artichokes, another row of apple trees, a walnut tree and a hazel coppice may or may not get planted before next winter. Planting anything requiring too permanent a location might have to wait a bit longer as plans to build another barn to add to the house will mean 2012 might be a bit of a building site.  

Lots of things we'll have to call 'learning from experience'.

What should have been an abundance of early planted broccoli and sprouts was, average at best. Tomatoes from the collapsing greenhouses were also pretty poor. And I'm not sure we'll be trying again to get anything through the tough winters we have up on our Yorkshire hillside. We planted up several beds with potatoes, chicory, leeks, kale, cabbages, cauliflowers and various other stuff that might just make it through the darker months. Not when you're up against our local pheasants and night time temperatures in November of -12 you won't. I'm pretty sure the expert digging and pecking pheasants were the worst culprits and the iciness just the finisher. At least someone got fed. 

Oh and we realised the importance of time well spent. Reducing the seven hour lawnmowing marathon on arrival to a more manageable 3 hours meant it was even fun on some summer Saturdays. But there are more productive things to be done. So a ride on mower /speedmachine is now on the wishlist. And we might then spend as much time planning, planting and growing species rhododendrons, magnolias, rambling roses, clematises and anything that can bring vivid colour to the new borders we'll create. Oh and the pond. We'll plant something in the pond.   

But overall lots of things felt like achievements.

After spending the whole first part of the year in limbo waiting to move, then finally getting an overgrown cottage garden to unleash the spade on in May once spring was in full bloom, getting anything growing felt like a success. We had good crops of peas, runner beans, french beans, courgettes (which we sort of forgot to pick so lets call em marrows), lots of varieties of potatoes, some broccoli, loads of good lettuces and rocket. We also had lots of perennial stuff offered up with very little effort. Apples, raspberries, strawberries galore, black and red currants. 

And our store cupboard (and food memories) are testimony to a good harvest. Pickled beans, ice creams, marrow and ginger, blackcurrant, strawberry, raspberry, blackberry and rhubarb jams, cassis liqueur, elderflower cordial and, fingers crossed, a small barrel of cider due to be bottled sometime in 2011. With any luck we can have our first few bottles in the company of friends around the campfire. And our lovely new daughter. Thanks and best wishes to all our campfire companions in 2010. And here's a cider tinged toast to many more in 2011. Salut. x  

 

Snowy winter

It snowed. Which was beautiful. The cold snap brought with it night time temperatures of -12 degrees. Which had a fairly solidifying effect on our already precarious water supply. Lowlight of the winter was immersing my arm to shoulder depth in a frozen water tank to try to refix a now defrosted alkathene pipe. 8th time lucky. Uncomfortably numb.