marine green bracken brown

Another New Year.

Late December 1989, five Edinburgh friends  took off from no 42 Marchmont Road for Cornwall, in a hired Renault "Energy", though Jonathan may have joined us in Exeter. We`d hired a cottage in Tregony for 5 days and, like some dysfunctional version of The Famous Five: showing off, cracking jokes, speaking in "Cornish" accents,  we spent those days exploring the cliff walks and beaches. 

Renault Energy

 We wove past abandoned tin mines, signs for clotted cream teas.  To a soundtrack of the Proclaimers, the Doors, a Bach  violin concerto. The sun shooting light beams onto the ocean. Black and white track, marine green and bracken brown.

St Michael`s Mount

Crossing the causeway to Saint Michael`s Mount we walked around the rocky perimeter  looking for a route onto the island and were confronted by a black-leatherclad bloke:  "Clear off !" he said menacingly. We were five varieties of indignant: passive to aggressive; liked to think we weren`t used to property being guarded so possessively 

New Year`s Eve.  Pub and Church

Stumbling drunk  from the pub`s warm light, after the New Year`s Eve bells, we walked widdershins round the dark churchyard, glad of each others` company, genuinely thrown when organ music emanated suddenly from the church, its windows casting kaleidoscope colours onto the gloom.

St Ives. New Year`s Day 1990

 Sitting there at the pier`s edge, at the year`s precipitous edge. 

The sun shone warmly, seagulls wheeled around our sandwiches. During one long moment Kate shielded me from the drop. Andy smoked his cigarette. Sandra gazed out onto the harbour

Jonathan, full of an elemental joy, ran towards us. 

*

Into the Night

Back door carpentry curtailed at sunset I found two new double A batteries and put them into the  head torch, stretched it over my head and took off, up the logging road. Though only early evening there was no glimmer of day left and as I ran the torch  threw a thin wavering elipse onto the ground; a blur of pale yellow light dispersing the black. The beam jarring to my rhythm. Its shudder my running mate.
I ran into the night, away from familiarity, the forest  a wall of darkness on my left. A mile along the way I imagined I heard faint footsteps behind and felt a familiar shrill creeping along my spine. Fear is such a distorting impulse and, ignoring the urge to look behind, I ran on into the growing darkness.. Sounds of the Bold burn and surging winds dominated my senses. My logical self felt no anxiety while my ancient self, honed over millennia, felt sharp-toothed dangers and supernatural presences residing in the shadowlands.  Fear rises and falls like wind.

Another mile and, at the junction of three roads, I stopped and turned off my torch. I stood in the blackness, exposed, breathing its sounds, feeling its greyshapes on my skin. I observed myself projecting imaginings onto the void, while seeing, experiencing,  that the landscape, the forest, was benign; indifferent. As I became part of the forest, no longer battery-casting darkness aside, my night vision emerged. Like a drowning man I swallowed the black but found it life-giving.
Dark tree masses harboured sleeping deer - Home.
Brook burblings, a song.
Star light: eternal presence.

Scavenger

Mornings and evenings are chilly. Autumn is here.We need fuel for the firebox.  I walked up and down the north west sloping woodland hunting for dead wood to cut and carry down. The tree tops roared quietly like distant surf at low tide, and over and far above geese honked. A luminous, numinous skyscape. Too cold now for the swallows.
I harvested from a long dead, stretched out birch storm victim. I then went home for a camera:

             

Assemblage

These cracks are bothering me. The limitations of this single woodblock bother me too ! However as a technical exercise the process is interesting and challenging. And, since experiencing a lot of satisfaction and encouragement in constructing yesterday`s sculpture/bench, I`m reminded of the liberating potential in an assemblage approach: Where can I remove bulk (and sheer weight) from the birch legs ? where and what further elements can be added ? (  having a  functional dimension ticks another of my internal boxes.)
This makes me view the above piece as possible donor-parts-potential if either the grain-splits or the subject matter defeat me in the end...

In doing, clarity will come

I`m really pleased to have incorporated the hard-won birch trunk with the ruminating and handless elm horseman figure (who, in setting forth, achieves some level of insight on his travels ). There`s a bigger piece in this but in the meantime I like that there is a birch bench in the hallway upon which laces can be tied, velcro strapped.

 I am pleased that serendipidy brought these two wooden elements together. I`m also aware that my holiday days will end tomorrow and with them, some of the capacity to fashion, dwell on and play with these objects and symbols.

 

Running Horse

The ears went; lobbed off more or less accidently but with an awareness that there was a growing touch of rat or pig about them. This irrevocable earlessness left me scunnered, so I left the woodblock and went away to pick up my daughter at the yard where I could stare at Fudge and Frankie - ruminate on how their ears met their heads, the sheer length and flexibility of them.   Hacking away again, there  now developed a similarity to Janosch`s Hase mit die schnellen schuen, but I think the wooden horse`s ears, pinned back in its running and leaping, protectively overlaying the girl`s head, will "work". I don`t mind if it doesn`t resemble a horse too much (and no doubt ears pinned back like this on a real beast signify extreme distress.....) The girl will be facing roughly forwards; straining  towards the action - hands not grasping the neck, but held outstretched on either side, giving her horse its freedom.

Oak Wood

I tried in vain to retrieve the piece of wood I cut a few months back. It is now more tightly wedged than ever, despite (or because of) my best efforts with a long improvised lever. Down again in the broadleaf woodland by the back road, tired,  I stumbled upon a hefty chunk of oak, remnant of chainsaw harvesting, and, walking around the block, wondered if this might do.

Now, as I take advantage of a stretch of free days, I wonder why I don`t have a chainsaw, because hacking out lumps of wood to get at any shape is very time-consuming. But  a girl on a horse is emerging, slowly. I think of Marino Marini`s horses and riders,  of Marc Chagall`s dream paintings, and of my daughter. 

Slowly emerging

Marc Chagall