Friday, February 10, 2012

Lost in Brimingham






Peter Pan is now over and of course was brilliant - such a great bunch of people all coming together but sadly no party because of snow.  Was on the whole pleased with the costumes especially the fabulous mermaids !!

Wendy and I made it to Birmingham for Lost in Lace and managed to get lost driving in ever decreasing circles but found a car park eventually.  I enjoyed the exhibition in many ways.  Great to see a serious textile exhibition in such a large space.  There were a number of highlights.  These two artists I particularly liked.


Chiharu Shiota Japan After the Dream 2011
Ai Matsumoto Japan No Reverse - Lace 2011

Visited Sylvia afterwards where we swapped junk as usual. I traveled home with three mannequins and a large coffee table - it has been worse!  Wendy met the skeleton.

Kerry suggested a poem to me mentioning the spine by Mandelstam - have found it:
The Age by Osip Mandelstam
My age, my beast, is there anyone
Who can peer into your eyes
And with his own blood fuse
Two centuries' worth of vertebrae?
The creating blood gushes
From the throat of earthly things,
And the parasite just trembles
On the threshold of new days.

While the creature still has life,
The spine must be delivered,
While with the unseen backbone
A wave distracts itself.
Again they've brought the peak of life
Like a sacrificial lamb,
Like a child's supple cartilage—
The age of infant earth.

To free the age from its confinement,
To instigate a brand new world,
The discordant, tangled days
Must be linked, as with a flute.
It's the age that rocks the swells
With humanity's despair,
And in the undergrowth a serpent breathes
The golden measure of the age.

Still the shoots will swell
And the green buds sprout
But your spinal cord is crushed,
My fantastic, wretched age!
And in lunatic beatitude
You look back, cruel and weak,
Like a beast that once was agile,
At the tracks left by your feet.

The creating blood gushes
From the throat of earthly things,
The lukewarm cartilage of oceans
Splashes like a seething fish ashore.
And from the bird net spread on high
From the humid azure stones,
Streams a flood of helpless apathy
On your single, fatal wound. 

I think it will take a long time to unpick this but so far the middle verse seems to resonate.
Good Crypt meeting on Friday at Chris' home.  I think it is going to be very exciting.


Now to spend some time on CEC audience  research.......

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