Poetry

We spent some time in Pembrokeshire last week, mostly around the cathedral city of St. David's. I love the sea, so for me it felt like coming home. Having bumped into illustrator Jackie Morris on the beach, we had a long chat about the direction of our work...I have so many sketches dreaming of becoming weathervanes, so I can't wait for the new gallery & studio to be back in order. I also seem to have adopted a new obsession with wild flowers after strolling the coast path with the dogs. Most people come back from Pembrokeshire in love with seals, dolphins & puffins...

The charming little rabbit weathervane has now left for Virginia, and the apple shipped off to Norway as well, so the studio is all but empty as we finish building work. Spending days in the office where I found an old poem of mine:

oh the winds they are so great
rattling at the garden gate
knocking at my kitchen door
as they blow across the moor
whistling through the trees so high
pushing clouds across the sky
spinning round the weathervane
I hope these are the winds of change

Okay,okay slightly simplistic & the first line is even a bit Monty Python ("oh Lord you are so great, so absolutely huge"...wasn't Eric Idle great in the closing ceremony of the Olympics!), but the Dartmoor days were when our kids were small. Surely I was reading Maurice Sendak's
Chicken Soup with Rice: A book of Months:

"in March the wind blows down the door
and spills my soup upon the floor
it laps it up and roars for more.
Blowing once, blowing twice
Blowing chicken soup with rice."

hear Carol King singing it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syAtmgKqc9c

Cardinal Letters

The extra-large apple weathervane is now nearing completion, with the leaf and stem fixed in place, and only the arrow left to attach. We starting assembling the cardinal letters (N,E,S, & W) yesterday, finishing this morning & then headed into Hereford to collect the last bits of kit for next weeks demonstration. The city was considerably quieter today than yesterday when the Queen paid a visit!

We are also looking at woodstoves for the studio and are interested in the Relax range of workshop stoves. I guess it all started with looking at Deom Turbos mentioned on a French blog...I think the Deom is from the Netherlands. I would love to hear from anyone who has used one.

Layers

The first two layers of the apple's core are now fixed to the brass mainshaft of the weathervane. There is still quite a lot of work to be done, like filling the large gap which can be seen down the left side. Once closed however, the copper parts should assemble quite quickly...all in time for Art in Action in 10 days time? So much to do! 
The weekend was a frenzy of activity, moving the office into it's new space. Went to hear Finn Mackay at the Globe in Hay-on-Wye, and then visited painter James Ursell at his new studio/home in the Golden Valley with it's sweeping views over the Black Mountains.

We are still working hard planning our metalsmithing courses for the fall. In anticipation we are finishing insulating the studio &  rendering walls. Bits of of plaster and dust keep showering down on me today as "Gordon & son" get cracking on the upstairs. This evening we have a big packing job, as the Montagu's Harrier Hawk is back from the museum and off to it's new home. The Trotting Horse will follow on Thursday. 

Working on the Core

The apple weathervane is chugging along! The "body" is now primarily smoothed, although it is never easy to know when to stop and just be happy. The two halves of the large three-dimensional leaf are brazed together with a "rough" edging, giving the leaf a ragged, chunky outline. The leaf has been designed to be smooth and rounded on one side (the side depicting the core of the apple) and deeply veined on the side with the whole apple, creating a striking contrast between the two sides.
 All our attention is now geared toward the apple's core, and trying to get the chisel detail of each layer to emanate it's own character. The first layer is being developed with a ball-pean "ding" pattern which should shimmer in the light. This seemed to be a nice reference to the inside of the apple being white. The ball-peaning stretches the copper, causing it to curl (which can be seen in the picture). This will be flattened out once the texturing is complete.

We have never made an fruit-themed weathervane before, so it was very strange today to receive an enquiry for the (possible) commission of an apple and pear! As I sat hammering I started to imagine making a giant strawberry, which led of course to thinking of one of my very favourite children's books James and the Giant Peach...Roald Dahl is brilliant!

An Apple

The studio is currently working on two new weathervanes, with a big push last week to get both sketches enlarged & finalized as full scale drawings. Great for the current apprentice to see the whole process from concept-to-copper.

The extra-large apple weathervane should be fun, as the idea is to have one side of the vane showing a "whole" apple, and the other side showing a "half" apple. We have been looking at retro apple patterns to come up with a "punchy", layered design for the apple's core. It's amazing how much character the inside of an apple can have! Because the design is large, the focus on achieving robust volume from the "whole" apple has meant some very aggressive, prolonged blows with a ball-pean hammer (I have the blisters to prove it).The result is a rounded & deeply dimpled shape. Creating this shape required two full annealings (and two spot annealings) to soften the copper and coax it into shape. The surface will now be smoothed over the course of the next few days using synthetic mallets. Creating the layers on the opposite side will be interesting, as each layer will need to be braced to the mainshaft and reinforced for strength. Hopefully the two little seeds will appear like gems suspended within these layers. It all proves some of the simplest ideas can be the most challenging!

A Surprise in the Field

Considering that none of the sheep were supposed to be pregnant, it was with great delight that we looked out the window to see this. Although miraculous to see new life, sometimes the countryside can make me feel like I am suffocating. We went to an art opening last night hoping to see some youth and vibrancy...instead it was all very dogmatic and lacked any form of poetry or poignancy. Am I cynical or just too naive?

I came home (thanks to Google Chrome) to muse over pictures of Boris Lovet-Lorski's Venus, and visit the Hirshhorn to see the sculpture Garden, and track down the goat sign we saw at the inn in Bedgellert. Then sat down to re-read the Little Prince. Thinking about bronzes and plaster casting and texture and money and mortality...

Golden Hawk in Stormy Weather

The fully gilt Montagu's Harrier Hawk weathervane was photographed in the moments between torrential rain. The sun even made a rare appearance to dazzle us. Yes, it's a bit wet here in Herefordshire. With every break in the rainfall, the animals all get quite frisky, bucking and gambolling and tearing about the place. The birds, the sheep, the pigs, the cows. It's like the picture from  the book "Tim Mouse Visits the Farm". Speaking of books...Hay Festival is starting soon. It's always a great line-up, and well worth a visit. If you need accommodation, we have four large, beautiful rooms available and always cook up a lovely breakfast.

But now it's raining, so it's hard to think about festivals. When it comes to bad weather, it is Tweksbury in Gloucestershire that usually catches the national eye, after the memorable floods of 2007. But on Tuesday, it was our corner of the map that made the BBC evening news after a little drama on the school bus. On it's trip over Stockley Hill into the Golden Valley, the school bus got stuck in waist-deep flood water from the River Dore. Trapped fast in the rushing water, the mini bus had no option but to wait for rescue. An hour and a half later, the fire department did manage to tow them out...and the school declared a "rain day"....almost as exciting as snow!

Today, climbing up Merbach Hill  to Neal's Yard Creamery we got some stunning views of the swollen River Wye. The Wye can be quite an ominous river, even when it's not high, although still considered quite "user friendly" (voted England's best river & getting a few mentions in the book and tv programme Wild Swimming).

Anyway the trip up Merbach was for the creamery's whey. The pigs just love whey...whey and slops and new hay ...happy pigs. It all makes me wish we could get some Nubian goats....