ARTISTS TALKING

# 102 [16 January 2010]

The Victorian Schoolhouse where I live and work is composed of years of remnants shoring up upon one another.  It has rising damp and 'Jews Ear' growing in it. It has four shaved corners to prevent children hurting themselves on the sharp red brick provides home for masonry bees. Under my sweet and chocolate wrapper wallpaper commemorating Christmas, Easter and birthdays, the sulphur yellow of the walls shows through from the 1960s, the Beryl blue of the 1950s beneath that. Darwin described the shadows of the glaciers he saw in Tierra del Fuego as Beryl Blue; a reference to Werner's Nomenclature of Colours a visual taxonomy of colours, which he had on board the Beagle. This colour was divided into animal, vegetable and mineral with a colour that corresponded to each of these categories: the same colour as the beauty spot on wing of Teal drake Celandine magaritaria as well of course as the mineral Beryl. (Photographer Arnaud Mags’ Nomenmclature)

The roots of the elder tree erupt through the concreted playground two collared doves live there. Where the boys played football there are the careful Andre brick sculptures of the builders yard. Different piles for different colours:  from the lowest temperature it takes to cook a brick to the highest: familiar cinnabar red, purple, peat brown and black.

A split door previously belonging to queen’s cousin David Ogilvie's, from his house in the Peter Pan holiday haven, with its islands and mere-house in the clouds water tower. Thorpeness rests upon a filigree ironwork bed frame, a defunct fridge houses the smaller tools: spanners, trowels, mortar boards. A rich man: a folly money could help philanthropic and hospitals-a folly. (Barbara Jones)

Inside the schoolhouse there is a hoarding of finds in islands-inlets. Out of this encyclopaedic collection of lost objects of jumbled chronological strata’s: a mythical map of the people and their stories. Out of the pile comes life-creative source material to- impose a narrative onto nonsensical and disjointed memories and emotions.


“The storytellers have not realised that the Sleeping Beauty would have awoken covered in a thick layer of dust; nor have they envisaged the sinister spiders’ webs that would have been torn apart at the first movement of her re tresses. Meanwhile dismal sheets of dust constantly invade earthly habitations and uniformly defile them: as if it were a matter of making ready attics and old rooms for the imminent occupation of the obsessions, phantoms, spectres that the decayed odour of old dust nourishes and intoxicates.” Bataille

# 101 [16 January 2010]

In October of 2003, the Spurlock Museum accepted a donation of a WWII silk map from Barbara Nelson. This map will fit very well into the Museum’s military collections as well as into the extensive map collection. Barbara received the map from her father who served in WWI. He in turn received the map from her Uncle who served and acquired the map during the Battle of the Bulge in WWII.

This map is made of silk and is printed on both sides. One side is of France, Germany and Switzerland. The other side is of Belgium and Germany. The map shows elevation, roads, railways, bodies of water and towns.

Silk maps were originally created by Christopher Clayton Hutton who worked for the British Military Intelligence. These new silk maps could be hidden and stood up very well to the elements in the field. The United States began to produce its own silk maps after November of 1942 after a meeting with the British Intelligence. The maps were a great asset in assisting POWs escape.

# 100 [7 January 2010]

Roger Cardinal, Art Historian and the man who coined the phrase 'Outsider Artist' sent me a new year email today in it he told me "I read the other day that Alberto Giacometti used to keep a vixen in his Paris studio, but that it ran away on the very day he got back from Switzerland after the war."

# 99 [27 December 2009]

Last night I had my single layered anxiety dream: I was on the train and I missed my stop because I had spread all of my stuff all over the train carriage (This time books, often it's clothes and my cat, and zebra finches). I am near Paris but because I take so long to collect all of my stuff i end up somewhere like Kings Lynn or Great Yarmouth.

A young girl sitting around the table asked how I could possibly work without my work being classsified and put into sections. I panicked and responded defensively: "Actually I'm doing a PhD and it's a bit different from 'A' Levels (little lady).

We went past a waiting room full of meatballs resting on the bench. I just managed to stuff my books into my wicker bag, a bulbous moses basket with biros, eyeliners, and in the past knitting needles sticking out of its inflated puffa fish belly.

I got out of the train and saw an island on the river populated with about 20 black labradors (sealpups?) which I knew was the winning piece from the Saatchi show. Oh lord I have to get a taxi to the studio now.

# 98 [25 December 2009]

Today I am sitting pissed by the fire after failing to log in to my account.

Auerbach and Freud are off to Brighton, the one day of the year where they don't crack the ice on the loo bowl. How do they avoid bumping into one another? If they see each other on the pier do they have to scarper-like the horrible scene from Brighton Rock.

# 97 [21 December 2009]

My mother, like myself is very clumsy. Last year she fell over onto the 220 Christmas decorations her husband had saved from his childhood in the 1930s.

# 96 [21 December 2009]

Town hit by lost Christmas tree

A police investigation has begun after unidentified workmen cut down and chipped an Oxfordshire town's Christmas tree.

Witnesses said the men arrived on Saturday at 1430 BST at Vale Avenue, Grove with a truck and chipping machine and disposed of the tree on the site.

Planted in 2006, it has been used each year since and was surrounded by a 1.2m(4ft) fence.

At first it was thought the tree had been stolen.

A parish councillor reported the theft to the police on Saturday evening after noticing the tree was missing.

Graham Munday from Grove Parish Council, said: "I couldn't believe it.

"I thought, why would anybody cut down a tree so soon before Christmas?

"You would wait until a few weeks before Christmas if you want to sell it on."

Subsequent enquiries revealed the tree had in fact been chipped by the men, who arrived at the site in an unmarked van.

"Police think they were possibly bona-fide tree surgeons who have taken the wrong tree down," said Mr Munday.

"But how could they have mistaken it?"

Thames Valley Police appealed for more witnesses to come forward to try and identify the men behind the incident.

A local developer said he would replace the tree in time for Christmas.

# 95 [21 December 2009]

Lessons learned from the latest lost Christmas tree hunters

Dad, kids rescued after getting lost on Christmas tree hunt
Family missing for three days used twigs to write 'Help' in snow
Associated Press
Published on: 12/19/07

Paradise, Calif. — A father and three children who vanished on a Christmas tree-cutting trip in the Northern California mountains were found alive Wednesday after huddling in a culvert for warmth during three days of heavy snow.

A California Highway Patrol helicopter crew spotted Frederick Dominguez waving his arms atop a small bridge and landed nearby, sinking into 2 feet of snow, flight officer David White said. White said the crew found the family on their last pass over the area as snow from another storm, even bigger than the first, started to fall heavily.

Hours later, after he had been checked at a hospital, Dominguez described three harrowing nights in the wild as he tried to keep his children from panicking and succumbing to the numbing cold.

"You just want your kids to be safe and you're just praying, 'God, keep my kids alive,'" he told reporters gathered at Feather River Hospital in Paradise.

The rescue came as their family and friends were starting to lose hope, with another storm moving in and beginning to dump yet more snow in the foothill region about 100 miles north of Sacramento.

# 94 [21 December 2009]

Police in Poland have recovered a sign stolen from Auschwitz and arrested five men.

The metal sign which reads "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work makes you free"), was stolen from the entrance to the former Nazi death camp last week, sparking a nationwide hunt.

Polish authorities made the recovery of the sign a priority and the museum, police and anonymous donors offered a reward of nearly £25,000 for information leading to its return.

Over 1 million people, mostly Jews, perished in the Nazi death camp located in southern Poland during World War Two.

Prisoners arriving at the camp used to enter thought an iron gate topped by the German-language motto.

It is understood the thieves had cut the sign into three pieces, but the motive for the theft remains unclear.

# 93 [20 December 2009]

The Flame of Liberty in Paris has commemorated many things. Franco-American relations, the fallen French Resistance workers and now Diana Princess of Wales, who happened to have been in an accident under the Pont d'Alma tunnel.

The flame is the gold leaved burning ember of Liberty's torch.