Monthly Archives: October 2014

Carol Peace – a quiet space

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Block People1 &copy CarolPeaceThere’s an unexpected sense of lightness to Carol Peace’s work. Her figures float, soar, skim – sometimes suspended from giant fish, occasionally riding personal balloons, or just  gazing outwards – mind apparently occupied elsewhere.

Yet her materials are decidedly solid in nature – gleaming bronze or earthy clay – fixing her sculptures well and truly to the ground. It’s a juxtaposition I enjoy, and connects in a way to Carol’s thoughts about herself.

“I don’t remember much from early childhood,” she says. “I know I also liked cooking and horse riding so it could have been either of those instead of art. Sometimes I think I should have been a farmer, being out in nature all the time. My granddad and uncle were farmers and I did work on a farm after college and went from rougher (basically wedding in a massive field) to ploughing in one job… Perhaps I’ve missed my vocation!”

However, it was art that eventually stole her heart. “I remember copying drawings out of books a lot when I was little – I was always drawing,” she comments. “Later I spent a lot of time in the art room at school – it may have been because the teacher was good and very encouraging and the fact that is was a quiet space. I don’t remember feeling lonely or bored as a child so that’s probably a sign that I was quite self sufficient.”

Reading_Figure © Carol Peace

She continues to relish the psychological aspects of sculpting, painting and drawing,

“There is quietness and space,” she says. “It can be fairly tough on the emotions – I always work honestly so it’s brutally direct sometimes, but I don’t mind. People often think the work is very calm and peaceful – I think they see the feeling I experience when making, but not the difficult starting points.”

On a tactile level, it’s the clay that Carol loves, “together with the process of changing something so fluid and fragile into bronze, something that will last forever. I am quite practical so I like the physical nature of sculpture, but I have a growing lust for painting as well.”

Carol draws inspiration from a wide range of sources, including travel, which she says helps her see things far more clearly. “It’s like when you start looking, your receptors open up. You can’t expect to make art unless you are really looking all the time. You can’t make art in isolation. To live life as a tourist, even at home, enables you to see things. Through time, familiarity and repetition a new place can become home but it’s good to keep wide-eyed.”

Nature plays a distinct role in this, particularly trees and leaves. “There’s that moment when the first red is coming into the trees and the lime green is leaving. You can’t just be busy, busy, busy all the time. You need moments in normal days to appreciate things.”

LookingRight_withB__CarolPeace_CoworthPark

Carol continually seeks the stimulus beyond the habits of everyday life. “I’m not very good a routine,” she says. “I find no comfort in it at all, I like contrast. At the moment we (Carol and husband Graham) are experimenting by living half urban with the hub of traffic and distant train noises and the sound of screeching skips being dragged across yards and half in the middle of nowhere on a hill, in a field…it’s magic. Each time I go to the other place it is new and exciting, and I can see it afresh.”

Increasingly, Carol has been finding herself creating art with family at its core. “I see my ‘Family Tree’ painting (above) and realise its not a family tree at all its just about parents and me. The orange pair of leaves is them, as strong and intense in colour as the land. But I am a leaf. They are leaves.”

When asked to define her style, Carol says: “I work clay like I would a charcoal drawing, the texture is often defined by the pace of working, there are areas of focus and areas that fade or are less detailed. I put bits on and take them off all the time. I could never be a stone carver.”

She adds: “Sometimes there are marks over the work from the tools I use – they show direction of movement, and sometimes they are like deep scars. The way I work is a response to being alive, from the basics of the blood pumping round inside you. Like drawing form observation it is a direct and intuitive response so I don’t feel it’s a style its just how it comes out!”

Carol is opening up her artist’s studio (Unit 5.3 Paintworks, Bath Road, Bristol, BS4 3EH) to the public from 6-16th November 2014, with a Private View on Thursday 6th November 6-9pm. On Friday 7th November, her studio will be the setting of a special literary night, ‘Travel, Identity and Home’. Find out more here.

The writing workshop Writing From Art takes place in Carol’s studio on Wednesday 12 November. Find details here.

Are you an artist or do you know an artist who would like to be showcased on SkyLightRain.com? Get in touch at judydarley (at) iCloud.com. I’m also happy to receive reviews of books, exhibitions, theatre and film. To submit or suggest a review, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud.com.

Writing from Art workshop

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Girl with Wings cr Carol PeaceSadly, due to a family emergency, Carol has needed to postpone this event. Details will follow.

Ever felt moved by the art you see around you, but not known quite how to capture it in words?

Spend an afternoon in a working sculptor’s studio with experienced creative writer and arts journalist Judy Darley, and find out how to turn what you see into fiction, poetry and journal entries.

The Writing From Art workshop takes place from 2-5pm on Wednesday 12th November 2014 at Studio 5.3, at Paintworks, Bristol. Book your place here.

Surrounded by the sculptures and drawings of internationally renowned artist Carol Peace, you’ll have the chance to engage with Carol’s work and with art in general, and use it as fuel for your own creative endeavors.

Come and write, learn, and feel inspired by art.

“I am very inspired and influenced by other creative forms, such as words and music, so it makes sense to me that it can work the other way round too.” Carol Peace.

Participating costs £12, which includes tea, coffee and biscuits. Please bring a pen and paper!

For more information on the workshop, feel free to contact me by sending an email to judy(at)socketcreative.com.

Midweek writing prompt – street signs

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Mardyke Ferry Road cr Judy DarleyHave you ever noticed how many street signs there are? All these indicators to inform us where we are, and in some cases, why. I took a stroll recently and snapped shots of a couple, the first because the place names are just so evocative – it’s almost like a found poem. The second caught my eye and made me smile because it prompted a vision of the poor disappointed person who’d mistakenly turned up with a tent and now had no idea what to do.

Sorry, no tents cr Judy Darley

I suggest that you pay attention to the signs you pass, and take note of any that provoke a response in you. Then imagine the place they lead to, and make that the setting for your tale. Alternatively, feel free to write something in response to either – or both – of the signs shown here.

Note: this definitely works best if you don’t know the street the sign leads to too well. A healthy quantity of ignorance can leave space for your imagination to unfurl!

If you write something prompted by this, please let me know by sending an email to Judy(at)socket creative.com. With your permission, I’d love to share it on SkyLightRain.com.

Cox – a small poem

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Cox apple cr Judy DarleyDid you know that today, October 21st 2014, is World Apple Day? Created to celebrate the riches and variety offered up by British orchards, it’s the perfect excuse to bite deep, crunch loudly and allow sweet juices to spill over your lips and run down your chin. Bliss!

To mark this day I’ve written a small, slightly sensual, somewhat sinister poem that tweeters on the brink of being a haiku.

Cox
With your knife I slice
it quite in half, revealing seeds
that resemble tears.

Midweek writing prompt – writing from art

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Stargazer by Robert Llimos photo by Judy DarleyIn around a month’s time I’ll be leading a creative writing workshop at Carol Peace’s sculpture studio on writing from art, and I thought I’d give you a sneak preview.

The pictured sculpture is actually Stargazer by Robert Llimós, snapped in Barcelona when I visited in June. I chose it for this post because I know Carol retreats to the Catalan city at every opportunity to draw inspiration for her own art.

I also particularly love the contemplative quality of this piece – it makes me think of beautiful fantastical children’s books involving journeys across oceans and into the stars.

Consider what might be going through the mind of the boy, what his fears and hopes might be. Throw in a detail from a child you know or knew (yourself as a child, perhaps) – a passion such as playing football or eating popcorn – then turn your impressions into a prose poem. Discard any bits that seem trite or clichéd, and explore further the sections that ring particularly true. You might be surprised by what takes hold.

If you write something prompted by this, please let me know by sending an email to Judy(at)socket creative.com. With your permission, I’d love to share it on SkyLightRain.com.

Poetry – seen and heard

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Speaker cr Judy DarleyWritten and performed poetry are often classified as completely separate genres, but until you start to place words on a page, or step onto a stage, how do you know which one you are creating? Here Joanna Butler attempts to untangle what it is that sets written and spoken poetry apart.

It’s possible to become a poet almost by accident

First things first, not every poet starts out by making it their life’s goal to become a poet, performance or otherwise.

“Writing and performing poetry was not my life’s ambition,” Joanna Butler say. “I always loved reading and listening to poetry when I was younger, and poetry and performance were always connected in my mind because of Shakepeare. But being a poet just never crossed my mind as being a career choice.”

Joanna comments that she “seriously underestimated poetry’s seductive power over the course of a life. I got to the age of thirty-five and poetry just fell out of me. It had slowly been creeping up on me all that time.”

Joanna began by writing poetry, but felt that “it just seemed like the words wanted to get out into the world and be heard – not just stay within the pages of a book.”

Let the poetry out

Of course, there is a distinct difference between poetry being read aloud, and poetry being performed, but in either of these instances the poet makes contact with their recipients that goes unnoticed when confined to the page.

Joanna feels poetry as  “a physical impulse in my chest. A compulsion to capture something in words and share it with someone else – an aching to make a connection.”

And that’s all before the writing even happens. “It feels like something that has to get out,” she says. “Then my job is to craft it into a form that can then be given to someone else. To share moments that strike me as amazing.”

Don’t take yourself too seriously

Joanna sees herself as the audience when she’s writing poetry, as opposed to preparing to perform. “I’m more interested in how the words sound to me. I have my fantasy audience, of course, when the writing’s not going well. The audience are big, appreciative and have come specifically to hear my work. This usually allows my ego to have the free rein it wants, enables me to stop being too serious, laugh at myself and continue to play with the writing and avoid mentally stiffening up. “

Expect conflicts between the ‘writing poet’ and the ‘performing poet’

While for Joanna, the writing poet and the performance poet are both parts of her, she admits that she’s met poets who hate performers and performance poetry and performers who think poets are the dullest people on earth. Everyone has an opinion and they always will. I don’t worry about it too much. I just do what feels right to me.”

Embrace the fear

However experienced you are, getting up on stage to perform poetry can be terrifying.

“I’d worked as an actress and drama teacher so I had a personal history of performance, but you need a different kind of courage to take to the stage with something you’ve written yourself,” Joanna says. “Always the worst moments for me are when I realise I am performing after another poet whose words have just blown me away. That’s tough. There’s nothing else that makes me feel like my own work is suddenly inadequate, when half an hour before it seemed like it could stand up to anything.”

But, she adds, this fear can be useful too. “Afterwards, moments like that actually drive me forward in my own work. One of my best moments was when, six months after a reading I’d done in Bristol Central Library, I bumped into a guy who’d been in the audience. He told me he couldn’t get a couple of the poems I’d read out of his mind. He could recite some lines word for word. This was after one hearing. That was pretty special.”

Joanna ButlerAbout the author

Joanna Butler is a multi-disciplinary artist who produces poetry, prose, songs, sculptures, photographs, films and live performance. She has given poetry readings at Bristol Poetry Festival, The Poetry Cafe, Covent Garden, Bristol Folk Festival and Tate Modern. She has made spoken word recordings of her poems ‘twisted history’ and ‘Snowstorm’ with musicians Paul Nash (North Sea Navigator), Doug Bott (Angel Tech) and Ian Wood (Cubeshiner). Joanna is currently developing an inter-species performance art project with dancers and horses.

Joanna will be performing her poetry and short prose at Travel, Home & Identity on November 7th 2014. Get tickets here.

Midweek writing prompt – voyage

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Edith Grey, Bristol cr Judy DarleyImagine your character is setting off on a journey. They’re preparing their boat and packing up all the belongings they hold dear, kissing loved ones goodbye and thinking about a voyage into the unknown. They may be afraid, excited, eager to go or reluctant. They may be running to, or away from something.

But here’s the catch – you can’t write about the voyage itself, only the days or hours running up to that moment when they cast off and let the waves take hold, wind in the sails, harbour mouth ahead.

Can you create a full tale, beginning, middle and end, action and consequence, conflict and resolution, personal development, without your character actually leaving shore?

Give it a try. You may be pleasantly surprised by what such narrow constraints bring out in your writing.

If you write something prompted by this, please let me know by sending an email to Judy(at)socket creative.com. With your permission, I’d love to share it on SkyLightRain.com.