JOIN JANE CONTINUING TO MAKE SENSE OF ART
And this month Jane is sharing her summer of art experiences.
Once a teacher – always a teacher! Not only does the desire to educate stick with a teacher – but also the way the year works! Even though I am working throughout July and August it still feels important to get that summer holiday feeling and use time off doing fun and interesting things. The weather this year has encouraged inside venues – so I’m going to share with you some of my varied art experiences this summer.
Actually the first was bathed in sunshine – a visit to the ceramics centre of Sicily, Santo Stefano di Camastra – a village completely dominated by fabulous ceramics. The photograph below shows the front of the train station.
There are several large ceramic producers – we went to one of the largest and they were very happy for us to wander around watching the processes. Here is a short video clip of a potter starting with the lump of clay. The clay they use is locally produced.
Sicily’s most famous pieces of ceramic are the Testi di Moro – these vases are extremely ornate heads – to be found in most Sicilian homes. They come in many sizes and styles.
These vases date back to the 9th century when the Arabs dominated Sicily. The legend behind the vases is that a young girl fell in love with a Moor but was devastated to find out that he was married. So, determined that he should be hers, she found him one night, chopped his head off and then used his head as a vase for flowers on her balcony! Definitely a crime of passion!
The Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden near Dorking was a new find for me. It was refreshing to find this incredibly tranquil garden focusing entirely on the sculpture and the garden environment – no gift shop or tea room! The contemporary sculpture is varied and blends beautifully into the woodland walks around a collection of ponds.
The Russell-Cotes Museum and Art Gallery on the cliffs overlooking the beach at Bournemouth was a great wet day activity.
In 1897 Merton Russell-Cotes started building a dream seaside house for his wife, Annie – he gave it to her for her birthday in 1901, an extraordinary late Victorian mansion lavishly decorated with stained glass, incredible wall moldings and housing their enormous collection of art – collected on their travels around the world.
Whilst much of the house is a museum and gallery of permanent exhibits there are gallery areas for temporary exhibitions. I very much enjoyed ‘In Her Own Voice – The Art of Lucy Kemp-Welch’. Lucy Kemp-Welch was one of Britain’s foremost equestrian painters from 1890s to the 1920s. One of her most well known ‘jobs’ was to illustrate the 1915 edition of Anna Sewell’s ‘Black Beauty’. This is a fantastic exhibition – beautiful paintings and lots of social history.
This exhibition is on until 1st October.
And to round off the summer – a day touring artist’s studios for ‘Hampshire Open Studios’ and this year a friend and I did the Fordingbridge / Ringwood bit! A fun day seeing so many different styles!
