Friday 14 December 2012

Exhibition Opening


It was the opening last night of Wildness Between Lines at Leeds College of Art.
I have one of my graph drawings in the show, along with the complete weather archive and a few of my books. The weather station has also been set up in the gallery.
Lots of people braved the freezing cold weather to enjoy a glass of wine and collect a lovely little exhibition catalogue - and i saw a few people i know.

It is a group show and each of us have used the Bronte sisters in some way to influence the making of artwork. Artists in the show are: Catherine Bertola, Su Blackwell, Bristow & Lloyd, Victoria Brookland, Paula Chambers, The Hellars, Victoria Lucas, Lisa Sheppy, Aymee Smith, Stephanie Vegh, Simon Warner, Marci Washington, Teresa Whitfield, David Wilson and me.

There are some really beautiful works in the exhibition, so try and get along if you get the chance. Details of opening times are below.

Tuesday 11 December 2012

Wildness Between Lines

 

One of my Bronte graph drawings, the completed weather archive and my collection of tabbed Bronte books are going to be on show in Leeds from this Friday.

Wildness Between Lines is at Leeds College of Art  (on Blenheim Walk) and runs from 14th December until 2nd February 2013.
It is open Monday - Friday 10am - 4pm and entry is free.

It's the preview on Thursday night 5 - 7pm - if you fancy coming along?

The lovely weather station from my residency at the Bronte Parsonage Museum will also be on show in the gallery - it'll be good to see that inside as a remembrance of the project.

The images above are of my Bronte books, tabbed where every reference to the weather is found: Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, The Professor, Agnes Grey, Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Shirley and Selected Poems.

http://www.leeds-artexhibitions.co.uk/

Monday 10 December 2012

I Finished Shirley!


"This is an autumn evening, wet and wild. There is only one cloud in the sky, but it curtains it from pole to pole. The wind cannot rest; it hurries sobbing over hills of sullen outline, colourless with twilight arid mist. Rain has beat all day on that church tower. It rises dark from the stony enclosure of its graveyard. The nettles, the long grass, and the tombs all drip with wet. This evening reminds me too forcibly of another evening some years ago - a howling, rainy autumn evening too - when certain who had that day performed a pilgrimage to a grave new-made in a heretic cemetery sat near a wood fire on the hearth of a foreign dwelling. They were merry and social, but they each knew that a gap, never to be filled, had been made in their circle. They knew they had lost something whose absence could never be quite atoned for so long as they lived; and they knew that the heavy falling rain was soaking into the wet earth which covered their lost darling, and that the sad, sighing gale was mourning above her buried head. The fire warmed them; life and friendship yet blessed them; but Jessie lay cold, coffined, solitary - only the sod screening her from the storm."

Shirley by Charlotte Bronte written in 1848 / 49

I finished it! All 627 pages of it. I admit there are some nice passages in the book, however i found it a really hard slog - like trying to get up a featureless hill on your knees in the rain. Sorry.
This does mark the end of reading Bronte texts for the project though - that's all i've read more or less for a year - so i am in a dither as to what to read next...