Beauties of Exmoor

I've put up a gallery of my portraits from my Exmoor residency here...

Triparks preview

This weekend I made an arduous but worthwhile trip back to Exmoor for a local preview of my work from the Triparks residency. I had 5 portraits of local people wearing my Exmoor National Dress and also my 20 minute film of the project, which met with much amusement from the locals who recognised their friends dressing up and looking daft.

Themes : Exmoor, cibachrome, portrait

Sometimes I love my job ...

... can you tell from this picture?

Yesterday Newham Homes (many thanks) allowed me to go up to the top of the tower blocks you see from Abbey Gardens (see image below) and take pictures of the layout from above (all on Flickr here). As we walked over to the block the wind was enough to knock you back and I did have a brief panic about my own sanity. However after a short H&S intro I donned my hi. vis. jacket (as pictured) and we took the lift up and out onto the roof - it was REALLY exciting - and strangely not that windy at all. I used to live on the 17th floor of a similar block in Holloway but I never got out onto the roof ... it felt really different to seeing the view through a window. I was also excited to see the lift mechanism in operation from inside and out - so excited that once I came down I got a call revealing I had completely missed a meeting scheduled for that afternoon at home!

Mark Up Day

Over on the What Will The Harvest Be? Blog you can read about our antics at the weekend trying to layout the design for Abbey Gardens (this photo was taken a couple of days later, with less people and string) and about Karen's encounter with garden goddess Carol Klein.

Themes : harvest, abbey

What Will The Harvest Be? Weekend Events

The Friends of Abbey Gardens & Somewhere invite you to two weekend events as part of

WHAT WILL THE HARVEST BE?

On Saturday the 8th of November we will be leading a 'layout day' at the Abbey Gardens site. Working with string, tapes and spray paint we will be literally marking out the design for next years Harvest Garden onto the grass at Baker's Row.

It should be a fun afternoon outdoors with lots of potential for measuring and string mistakes! Liberal tea brakes will be programmed into the schedule.

We will be meeting at Abbey Gardens at 12.30 for the all-afternoon project, please wear suitable clothing and footwear, and do bring along any coloured string you have to help us mark out the beds. Children are welcome but must be supervised.

Following on from this we will also be meeting on Saturday the 15th of November to build some compost bins and a test raised bed on the site ... again all welcome. Meet at the gardens from 12.30 onwards.

Please let us know if you are planning to attend

East Tilbury Interview

I enjoyed one of my regular visits back to East Tilbury this week, catching up with Bata-ville friends at the Bata Resource and Reminiscence Centre. These are always busy events and this Wednesday they had 300 visitors! One of these was Michael Casey who has bravely set out to start a new kind of news site for the area focussed on local views. It's called YourThurrock and links to all of the clips he makes on YouTube ... you can see the quick interview he did with me about the film here.

I've also added some new images to our Bata group on Flickr, it's now got some good shots from Bata communities all over the world.

Themes : film, Bata-ville, East Tilbury, Thurrock

"One scene shot inside a freezer"

Last week was a hectic but very satisfying one, bringing my Exmoor National Dress project to fruition. I was taking a series of portraits of local people and making a short film about the process. There was a lot of zooming across moors down into valleys, in glorious sunshine. Just the ticket after a wet summer.
Here's myself (uncharacteristically holding the boom) with my crew, Alex Richardson (on camera) and Sacha Atkinson (Sound). The picture was taken by Steph Thomas, our great production assistant for the shoot, who used the time between locations to work on a very thorough risk assessment which ranged from 'attack by animals' to 'one scene shot inside a freezer'.

Themes : crew, Exmoor, Porlock, shoot

JONAGORED & AGM

This Saturday is the AGM for the Friends of Abbey Gardens and if you're interested in getting involved with our project there do come along ...

The details are on FOAG website here.

Meanwhile the Abbey Gardens Apples have been identified:

Dear Ms Pope

Brogdale Collections

Themes : harvest, abbey

A stitch in time

Here's me fiddling about with a prototype of the Exmoor National Dress.
Can't find anywhere to integrate the fantastic horse-motif Western shirt hanging on the wall, sadly.

Themes : Exmoor National Dress

Wild Flower Harvest

We had a very successful wildflower seed harvest on Saturday for What Will The Harvest Be? We gathered so many that we weren't able to process them all on the day, although we did make a start. They include: White Campion, Corn Cockle, Cornflower, Corn Chamomile, Corn Marigold, Field Poppy and Scentless Mayweed ... although I must confess we had a job to tell the Mayweed from the Chamomile.

The photos are up on Flickr here

URBAN SEED DAY II

Come & join us on Saturday September 27th for our second URBAN SEED DAY

We will be gathering the seeds from the wild flowers grown at Abbey Gardens this year - some we'll be keeping for next years Harvest Garden but some we'll be giving away. So, if you fancy a bed of wildflowers in your own garden or you've spotted a unloved patch in your local environment that could do with cheering up, this is the event for you.

I will be at the garden, with some of the Friends of Abbey Gardens group on Saturday morning from 10.00 -12.00. As well as collecting seeds we'll obviously be happy to tell you more about What Will The Harvest Be? and how our plans for the garden are shaping up.

We also have a few packets of seeds left (from the wonderful Chiltern Seeds) to give away to anyone who wants to get planting now for next season in the Harvest Garden. If you take some away on Saturday you can bring them on in your own garden (or just on a windowsill) ready for next spring.

If you have seeds gathered from your own gardens/plots do bring some along to swap.

You might like to make an East-London afternoon of it, bring a flask or picnic and join us for the Hackney Wick Festival afterwards, it's an interesting walk from Abbey Gardens to 'the Wick' and makes for a full East End double day out.

Themes : Abbey Gardens, harvest, seeds

Heard it on the Grapevine

Anyone who travels through Stratford station (East London) may have already seen the feature about Abbey Gardens in the 'Stratford Grapevine' last week ... if you missed it you can read about it here. The newspaper is a project by artist Lucy Harrison who's become a 'friend of' our Abbey Gardens project through our shared research into the area. The sort of spider drawing on the front shows how all the people who have contributed to the paper are linked together, and is a nice map of the connections made. Each time the paper comes out I find it really cheering to see people on the (super depressing!) North London Line reading about their local area rather than the Metro's version of London news.

Themes : harvest, abbey

King of Exmoor

I was delighted to drop in to Tom Lock's workshop in Hawkridge, after talking to a nice gang of Somerset artists at the 'Reveal' event recently.
I had asked Tom to consider making a 'head-dress' for the Exmoor National Dress a while back, but as his lifetime retrospective (at Hawkridge Show, see pic) was absorbing all his time he declined....But I know real no from a 'well....no' and I had a feeling he was going to come up with something good.
Here Tom is modelling the prototype - it will eventually have little antlers in declining size all the way round. The head-dress 'ring' is made of 4 or 5 curved antler pieces carefully glued and sanded, it's quite a feat to find suitably curved pieces let alone to fix them together. What I especially like is the front-most horn, which Tom describes as "freaky" - its a tiny straight horn emerging from a misshapen, bony nugget. He'd had it for years, finding it useless for most of his work, but now has a good use for the freaky!
I tried it on and can confirm that it's actually comfy too....

Themes : costume, Exmoor, antlers

Boswell's B&B

A couple of weeks ago I revisited Coll, a Scottish Island Karen and I breezed through in our 1996 Boswell & Johnson trail blog-a-thon A Hypertext Journal. On our first trip we only had a few hours to explore around the tiny village where the ferry arrives, but this time I spent 5 long rainy days on the Island looking into family history matters (more here for the curious) and mainly browsing drenched flora and fauna (pictures here for wildflower nerds!). Anyway never one to give up on resolving a project I did cycle down to the Southern end of the Island to see Breachacha Castle apparently one of the spots that the great pair stayed during the 10 days they were stuck on Coll due to inclement weather ... I might even have to get my well thumbed 'Journey to the Western Isles' out for a re-read of the relevant section.

Smocking-but not as we know it

Today I finally knuckled down to some (dress) making, something I have a love / hate relationship with ever since the hell-and-back 10 day lock-in when Nina and I had to make our Tudor costumes for our last film. Let's draw a veil over just how long it took to get even the basics right for 1578 - well, all I can say is you try and design a fitted bodice without darts or lycra....
So - back to Exmoor National Dress - this lovely print on canvas donated to the project by Exmoor painter Maurice Bishop appeared simply as an Elvis-style cape at Dunster Show but I thought I'd better explore other treatments, so attempted my first bit of smocking with it this afternoon...
I think it's rather too stiff but nevertheless it's an interesting effect...

RIP Tomas Bata

My journalist brother texted me the sad news today of Tomas Bata's death at 93. If you have been on the dark side of the moon for the last 5 years you may not know that Mr Bata- the Czech Republic's Bill Gates slash Henry Ford - was at the centre of our Anglo-Czech road movie 'Bata-ville: We are not afraid of the future".
Our passengers and us got to meet the charming and wise Mr Bata - in fact Nina and I gatecrashed his 90th birthday celebrations in Prague Castle - which he took very well. I think it was the uniforms.
There's a good obituary here.

Themes : Tomas Bata

Horticultural Hands

In case you need any more encouragement to visit Karen's mountain top garden at the weekend (aside from me doing the teas) here she is in full Horticultural flow at the Urban Seed Day. Obviously I know, that she knows, a lot about plants but I'd have paid to hear her on seeds!

Visit Karen's mountain

When I am not Somewhere I am generally gardening.
My garden at Lawson Park, near Coniston in the Lake District opens to the public for the first time this Sunday 24th August for the National Garden Scheme. Somewhere alumni Ms Pope and Mr Olden joins us in a tearoom and documentation capacity en route for hols in Coll.
Art highlights of the day include a chance to see how the box plants rescued from local art star Kurt Schwitters' Merzbarn are getting on.
You can see more detailed info on getting to us here

Themes : Merzbarn, Schwitters, open garden, Lawson Park

Somewhere Seedlings

The Urban Seed Day at Abbey Gardens was really good ... largely due to excellent guidance to the plants on site from Roy Vickery of the South London Botanical Institute (this is after 43 years at the Natural History Museum!!)

You can read more about the Abbey Gardens site on the project Blog

Or see pics. from the day in the Abbey Gardens Flickr Group

Somewhere Seedlings

Join us on Saturday August 16th for an URBAN SEED DAY at Abbey Gardens and get involved with our project What Will The Harvest Be?

Come and gather or sow some seeds for next year's Harvest Garden and find out more about our long term proposals for this unique historic site. We'll be spending the afternoon with botanist ROY VICKERY (of South London Botanical Institute) for an informal afternoon of WILD FLOWER SPOTTING, FOLKLORE, SEED GATHERING & SEED SOWING.

We will be at the garden, which is opposite Baker's Row in East London (Near West Ham or Stratford tube) from 3pm-5.30pm. The event is free but booking is advised via our contact page.

Refreshments, materials & equipment provided. Sorry, no unaccompanied children under 14. The event is supported by Newham Council & Friends of Abbey Gardens, we will also have some exciting seeds from the wonderful Chiltern Seeds to give away.

Themes : Abbey Gardens, garden, harvest, seeds