Winter returns

All photo's from Winter 2010, near my parents house.
Top 3: Frosty Umbel, Dried Rosebay Willowherb, Village House.

After a pretty consistently mild and gale filled few months Winter, in the sense that we are used to it here in Scotland, has finally returned. The gales have stopped and even the strong winds have eased in the last week or two, such a relief. This week much of the country is blanketed in snow so it seemed fitting to post some snowy shots (from 2010), though the snow seems to have missed us here. Instead we are getting hard frosts every night so a lot of the plants, especially the supposed annuals, that had been unnaturally surviving the winter are starting to peg out. I was thrilled they lasted at all so losing them isn't too sad, and their winter longevity meant I was able to get an extra season of cuttings to replace the Summer cuttings that didn't all do well. It's good to get a proper run of cold as it keeps things like greenfly from getting out of control outside (let's not get into my neglectful plant care which has allowed them to flourish inside!).

More Winter Colours

Indoor Hyacinth is more vivid than than outdoor plants in January

This was about 2 weeks ago, still in flower but determined to fall over at every opportunity. I usually grow them in soil and can pop a skewer in as support, not very attractive with a hyacinth vase. Out in the garden the pinks are paler, which fits well with the grey greens and frosted leaves.


Clematis stems with their own brand of winter beauty

Hydrangea Petiolaris (Climbing Hydrangea) has straddled the shed roof.

Clematis 'Markham's Pink' seed head

Osteospermum (perennial)

Frosty Hebe, the one I posted the frosty close-up of the other day.

I intended to do a big post of art that looked liked winter gardens but I need to sleep, here are two, hopefully I'll have time for more later in the week but family are in town so I may not blog much.

The work of paper artist Peter Gentenaar looking like a winter flower.

Paperstring chandelier by Nithikul Nimkulrat.

Pulsatilla - bud to seed

Pasque flower - Pulsatilla Vulgaris, April-June

Seeds are often as beautiful, or more beautiful, than flowers, as is the case with the Pulsatilla. Last year I only had one flower/seed-head, this year I had lots, waving softly in the breeze. The Honesty has been amazing this year too, with some of the clumps developing purple seed-heads, which have kept their colour even after 2 months. You can see a few are still the usual green colour at the back. See my garden in detail here.


Honesty -Lunaria annua

Beside La Brea Tar Pits

LA Trip, March '08,
Planting around La Brea Tar Pits, colour in the soft evening light

I've not internet access until Tuesday so I'm scheduling photo's for each day I'm away.

High ground

The remains of seeds and snow hide in the spaces between huge boulders.

Nasty Virus

Top: Honesty on a morning sky
Bottom: Lichen & frost on the water butt

The sun is shining!
The wind still blows but it is a nice fresh wind, one direction, no big gusts. I think it must still be gusty higher in the sky because all the tracks from the aeroplanes are wiggly, no straight lines, suggesting the wind keeps blowing them off course a little.

Today feels like a fresh start after a very disturbed week. Mr P caught the vomiting virus that has been going round the UK this winter. No-one likes being unwell, but he particularly hates it, more than anyone I know. Being laid so low it fell to me to do the looking after, which presented many logistical difficulties given my own ill health. I had my first trip to a supermarket in 3 months. He had to drive me (with a bucket at his feet!) and then had to wait an interminably long time while I did the tiny shopping that should have only taken 10mins. I think I took 1hr, clinging to the trolley like my life depended on it.

Thankfully he was off food so I was only buying herbal teas, some basics for myself and tins of chicken soup for when he felt able. I never knew there were so many kinds of tinned chicken soup! Ironically he'd decided to give up his favourite Covent Garden Chicken Soup (which was all gone, hence trip to the tins aisle), after watching the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Chicken Run series. Visit the Chicken Out website for more details. I liked that Mr P was planning to be more organic about his occasional chicken consumption (I'm vegetarian), but I couldn't find any organic chicken soup that day and neither of us were in any fit state to go searching the city. Sorry chickens.

The worst of the virus has passed and by some miracle (and obscene consumption of echinacea and vits) I managed to not catch it! It was touch and go, Mr P and I have always had very sympathetic guts. Every time his guts churned I would burp and my tummy would turn over. So much so that I couldn't sleep last night and feared the virus was upon me. But no. I find that whole thing so strange. He used to get problems with his belly when I had my really severe cramps.

My work: Pic 'n' Mix 1990/94

Seed pods, Edinburgh Botanic Gardens 1992


'Quality' 1992, word based layered image
cartridge paper, tissue, tape, acetate, charcoal, ink, dictionary photocopies

I found some old plastic sleeves with photo's in them. I only took very quick snaps so you can see the reflections of light and my red top. You can click to see them larger, though they are very fuzzy.


Various Pieces from the early 90's

As well as these pics from an old file, I also found some contact sheets of other work including the following two, the 1st is a very large recycled copper pod, the second is phase one of a perpetual calendar which got left in a locker at college along with a whole ton of other work because I forgot the combination on the lock!


Copper Pod and Perpetual Calendar, 1993/94

I was so stressed after the Ceramics Dept. broke my degree show pieces that I gave up on the ceramics aspect and forgot about the locker entirely. When I returned the next year they had been emptied, so it was quite a treat to find I had a photo of this half made. I still have the little carved wax animals that were going to be cast as part of this piece, it was all tied in to animals on a medicine wheel.

I was researching moon lore and mythology which related to a lot of my work. In doing so I found out my animal totem was a Wolf and, given my love of wolves, I got a bit side-tracked by the book Earth Medicine. Reading the description of 'wolves' (Birth date Feb 19 -March 20) was the clearest most accurate description of myself I have ever read, both the good and the bad aspects of my personality. I must look it out again and see if I've changed since then.

My work - ceramic pod brooch

3 pod brooch, ceramic & titanium, 1993
(actual piece hangs vertically)

These, like so much of my work, were meant to be glazed white on the outside but when I realised glazes were environmentally un-friendly I stopped glazing anything. Instead, I biscuit fired them inside one of my large copper pods while I was annealling it (that's when you heat the metal to make it more pliable for working). I burned some paper in each pod to create a smoky dark interior. Some pieces were later painted instead using other people's leftover paint. Because they have only had a low firing they are still quite breakable and proably unsuitable for wearing, but I liked that. I fired the other groups fully but I kept this set like this as a small sculpture with the real fragility that found pod cases often have.

Autumn berry bounty

I forgot these were in my pocket all week, some went dark, some shrivelled, some were too gross to show.

Seed Project 1992 - b&w drawings

I drew these while I was in Canada using photo's from my time at the herbarium in Edinburgh. The plan was to screenprint them. As I'd become very Eco I didn't want to photographically expose the screen because of nasty chemicals at various stages, so I drew them to work as stencils on the screen, hence the boldness (they are much crisper than they appear here).

I'd love to see these printed up. I Gocco'd them as Christmas cards but stupidly didn't keep any, not realising I'd never get round to printing them. Of course, it's not too late, they've waited 15yrs but they are miraculously still in good condition.

Huge cones

If you go down to the woods today...







The hedge is gone :0(
But the new fence is pretty good compared to what was originally proposed. It's a good height and there is enough soil to get some nice thing growing up it over time. Till then, we shall just have to appreciate the birds further afield in places with huge cones and lovely grasses.

Seed Project 1992 - seed bundle

Seed Project 1992

Melanie, just for you, I had one more photo I took last week when I found the old portfolio. Some time in the future I'm sure I'll stumble on the full collection (there were 100's) and show more.

I remember swooning when I found this because they were held in a net and nets were such a key part of my work at the time. I'm a bit obsessed with nets really, to the annoyance of Mr P who isn't even allowed to throw out the net bags that fruit, onions and garlic come in.

I used to collect old fishing nets washed up on the beach (especially the blue ones) and after a trip to a museum in Germany I became fascinated with the craft of net making. Plus it tied in so nicely with my love of macramé, well, I was a 70's child after all and loved nothing more than going through my granny's macramé magazine's and making hanging plant pot holders. I started making a huge macramé room divider when I first moved to my new house but quickly realised I would need mountain and mountains of string, so I just hung lace panels instead. I still hoard string so maybe one day I'll have enough to make it.

Ok back to work, the floor is still not laid, wah, unforseen problems etc. but fingers crossed there will be progress today.

Seed Project 1992 - alien seeds

Some seed photo's from my studies at the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens in '92. I had never seen anything like these before, the ones above (8 in the original photo) look like little bats heads, or aliens (Yoda/E.T.), and are responsible for some of my stranger looking artworks. Crappy picture quality, I must get my negatives digitised.

My Metalwork - bowl

'Mermaids purse' bowl (detail) 1993
(real shark eggs shown for scale)


'Mermaids purse' bowl filled with water
Approx 40cm across

I was looking out an old ceramics photo for Paula and I remembered I said ages ago I'd show a some mermaids purse (sharks egg) inspired metalwork of mine. Photo's are of out of focus photo's from years ago, not ideal but you can kind of see the shapes.

I still have this bowl. I love when themes I've been working with interconnect, eggs and pods, and the sharks egg is both in it's way. Then the aquatic element, and the fact that the common name, here at least, is mermaids purse, and mermaids are another of my themes.

I made this from scrap copper (and old hot water tank) with fused edges to add to the decayed feeling that I like in my work. I used the silver dust that people made when sawing their earrings to fuse onto the 3 bumps in the raised detail. Me and my 3's.

No thunder today! Lots of sun and rain in equal measure.

Pictures not words - green outside

My Neck Ceramics

These are old photo's I'm delving into now so you can see my ceramics. My good stuff, which was for my degree show (1994) was all smashed 3 months before my show, before it was even fired! I couldn't believe it, and no-one ever confessed to it.

I had made thousands of little porcelain pieces, mostly long slim pod shapes, that were to hang in clusters as part of light sculptures and to be grouped with my metalwork pieces into jewellery and small sculptures. I never even took photos (who knew they would be powder the next day). All that work gone. And I knew I could never make it all again in time, I didn't have the heart. So instead I went BIG making huge copper shell pod sculptures from scrap copper (ever the recycler).



So no pics of my good work, but instead these pieces which I made in '92, blimey, time flies. They were designed as neckpieces and pins to hold essential oils so that when you wore them the heat of your body would warm them up and the smell of the oils would gently be released. Unfortunately I was a bit ahead of my time since only art students and people into alternative medicines were remotely interested in them.

The forms came from studying vertebra and other bones found on the beach. There is something intriguing to me about bleached bones, they are so perfect.

The piece on the left ties in with my fascination with women's bodies! Mine was in a state at the time and I had period cramps that could floor me for weeks (turned out I had endometriosis but it took them 8 years to work it out!). I got really interested in simplified female forms, mummies, russian dolls etc. I still work with these things in my more 'arty' work but I'm not posting any of that, it's too personal just now. Do other people get like that about their work? I can happily post pics of things I make for friends but my 'serious' stuff is harder to put out there.