Last week was awash with celebrations - a birthday, an anniversary, a day out, a tie-dye party and BBQ and a good friend staying for the weekend. Between all that and the inevitable exhaustion, I had no time or energy for blogging but I’ve been itching to tell you about the day out.

Last Tuesday, for my partner’s birthday, we visited the gorgeous Virtuous Well over in Trellech.

Kirsty Hall: The Virtuous Well, August 2008

Once one of the major towns in medieval Wales, Trellech is now a small but archaelogically fascinating village about a 45 minute drive from us. We’d discovered the well quite by accident the previous week after a visit to Tintern Abbey and we decided to go back with a picnic because we’d fallen in love with the place and we wanted to find the standing stones that had eluded us the week before.

The Virtuous Well or St Anne’s Well is a Christianised well almost certainly built over a Celtic sacred spring. It’s a lovely place; it’s in a field just off a country road but it feels about a million miles from anywhere. You can walk down into the well and sit on little stone seats while you soak up the atmosphere. There are little alcoves where you can leave offerings - on the first visit I picked buttercups from the field, this time we brought sweet peas from our garden.

The water contains iron, which may be responsible for its reputed medicinal qualities. The water was thought to be especially good for ‘complaints particular to women’, which would make sense if the woman in question was anaemic from endless pregnancies and breastfeeding.

Above the well, people have festooned a tree with fabric offerings.

Kirsty Hall: Offerings at The Virtuous Well, August 2008

This is a very old British custom: tying pieces of cloth called clooties or clouties onto trees beside sacred wells is believed to have Celtic origins.

Originally people would leave pieces of clothing that had been soaked in the well water in the belief that their ailment would pass from them as the cloth rotted. These days, a more eclectic variety of (mostly) fabric offerings are left. I noted a plethora of ribbons and strips of torn cloth interspersed with more unusual items including scarves; a pair of underpants; socks; a martial arts belt; a ceramic medallion; hollow blown eggs; a hand-crocheted flower; numerous hair decorations; strings of beads; shoelaces; knotted plastic bags; the remnants of a balloon; bright yellow fruit netting; a Tibetan prayer flag and even a cuddly toy. They were all knotted and tied together in what I felt was a genuine outpouring of decorative and sacred expression.

Kirsty Hall: Offerings at The Virtuous Well, August 2008

Kirsty Hall: Offerings at The Virtuous Well, August 2008

Kirsty Hall: Offerings at The Virtuous Well, August 2008

Kirsty Hall: Offerings at The Virtuous Well, August 2008

Kirsty Hall: Offerings at The Virtuous Well, August 2008

I read one review of the well that decried the modern cloutie rags because some of the fabric is man-made. But I loved them all. There’s a raw honesty to this sort of spontaneous folk installation that I find very appealing.

While it might be better if people thought ahead and brought biodegradable offerings, I love that people aren’t constrained by what might be thought as proper but instead offer the item that they are moved to leave. While many of the offerings have obviously been deliberately chosen, I suspect that many people find the well by accident and leave what they have on them in an instinctive response to the existing offerings. It certainly explains the hair ties and beads.

And really, who cares if it isn’t ‘authentic’? It’s far more important to me that this place is still in ceremonial use. And who gets to define authenticity anyway? Perhaps the person leaving a sock was genuinely trying to heal their foot? Perhaps the grimy, slowly rotting underpants were originally part of a fertility ritual! There was no graffiti on or near the well and there was no rubbish lying around. Everything that had been left had been done so neatly, carefully and reverently. Sure, some of the offerings could be seen as irreverent but the way they were placed suggested that they weren’t. Surely authenticity isn’t something that’s set in stone but is, instead, a reflection of what people actually do.

Should I have gone and removed all the artificial objects from the tree in a futile longing for some sort of sacred or environmental purity? I don’t have that right. And I simply don’t want to. If folk customs such as leaving rags at wells are not to fade into obscurity then I think we need to accept that they will change and that some people will leave cotton Tibetan prayer flags while others will leave neatly tied plastic bags. And taking the long view, perhaps one day future archaeologists will unearth ‘inauthentic’ plastic beads and fragments of polyester ribbon that have fallen from the tree and been buried in the earth and they will know that this was once a sacred well. For all its wonderful qualities, cloth made from natural fibres is in pretty short supply in archaeology, especially in somewhere as damp as Britain.

The well, in all its splendidly inauthentic authenticity, is a very special place and one we plan to return to regularly. On our first visit - when we couldn’t find the very large, extremely phallic and quite hard to miss Harold’s Stones - it really felt as though we were meant to find the well instead. If we’d visited the stones as we’d planned, we wouldn’t have had time to visit the well and might never have returned to discover this little gem.

Oh, and one last funny thing - when I was checking on Flickr to see if there were any other photos of the well, the first image to appear on my screen happened to be this photograph of my friend Ally, taken by another friend, Camilla. Having found the well by sheer coincidence in the first place, I laughed and laughed…

I had so many lovely shots from Rosslyn Chapel that I felt the need to do another post about it.

ON THE GROUND

I like this shot because it clearly shows the three different colours of sandstone - grey, pink and yellow - that Rosslyn Chapel is made from. This piebald effect occurred because the stone used to build the church came from three different local quarries.

Kirsty Hall: Rosslyn Chapel, July 2008

One of Rosslyn’s famous ‘Green Man’ carvings nestling in the archway above some eroded greenery. The Green Man is a traditional symbol thought to represent fertility, so it’s a bit of a mystery why so many of them ended up being carved into medieval Christian churches - Rosslyn has more than a hundred of them.

Kirsty Hall: Rosslyn Chapel, July 2008

It’s impossible to tell if this carving was originally a monkey or a human figure that has slipped down the evolutionary tree in the rain!

Kirsty Hall: Rosslyn Chapel, July 2008

FROM THE ROOF

As far as I could tell, each spire on the roof was slightly different. Imagine the artistic passion involved in designing so many different spires even though they’d hardly ever be seen up close.

Of course, at the moment visitors can climb up and see them but the original builders wouldn’t have expected that. I found myself wondering if the spires were carved by one very driven man or by a group who were competing to see who could come up with the most unusual design?

Kirsty Hall: Rosslyn Chapel, July 2008

Sadly the rain has eroded the soft sandstone on the outside of the chapel but much of the original detail can still be seen.

Kirsty Hall: Rosslyn Chapel, July 2008

Kirsty Hall: Rosslyn Chapel, July 2008

Despite the signs asking them not to, people still seemed compelled to throw money into the gargoyles.

Kirsty Hall: Rosslyn Chapel, July 2008

Looking down from the chapel roof onto the ruined Roslin castle. This area had been visited by artists and writers since the 1700’s and it was particularly popular with Romantic artists (even Turner painted here); looking at this misty shot, it’s easy to see why.

Kirsty Hall: Rosslyn Chapel, July 2008

If it had been earlier in the day and a bit drier, I would have taken a walk through the beautiful and historic Roslin Glen. Perhaps next time…

Well, I’ve come back from a rather rainy Scotland to a rather rainy Bristol - are we going to get any sort of summer this year, I wonder? I’ve just been out in the garden between showers to re-stake my tomatoes, which were so battered by the recent winds that one of the bamboo canes had snapped completely. There’s still plenty of fruit on my ramshackle three plants although they can’t hold a candle to my dad’s very impressive crop but then he does have two greenhouses full of them!

Scotland was good fun, despite the rain, and I managed to squeeze in some art stuff between all the family commitments. Unfortunately, despite taking my password with me I couldn’t log in to my blog for some reason and had to content myself with taking lots of photos and notes instead.

So here’s the edited version of my week:

Last Wednesday, I met Kate from the Needled blog for a delicious lunch at the Fruitmarket gallery. Meeting her was definitely one of the highlights of my trip; she’s a fascinating and intelligent woman and two and half hours fairly flew by as we discussed everything under the sun.

On Thursday I visited Rosslyn Chapel (warning: link has music). It’s only about 20 miles from my parents’ house but I’d never been before.

Kirsty Hall: Entrance to Rosslyn Chapel, Aug 2008

It’s a stunning medieval church that has been popular for years because of its unusual architecture and disputed Knights Templar associations but interest sky-rocketed after it featured in The Da Vinci Code. Apparently the church used to get about 10,000 visitors a year but got 70,000 visitors in the year the book was published and numbers have remained high since. The Trust that runs the church was initially quite overwhelmed but all the extra visitors mean they can now fund an ambitious conservation programme for this unique and very special building.

Personally I was far more interested in the incredible quality of the ornate carvings than the possibility of the Holy Grail being buried in its crypts! A guide pointed out a lovely little fact to me: the botanical carvings on the outside show the front of leaves, while the carvings on the inside show the backs of leaves - how fantastic is that! Unfortunately you aren’t allowed to take photos inside but the outside is almost as highly decorated as the inside and the protective metal structure that keeps rain off the building means that you can climb up to get a closer look at the wonderful flying buttresses, carved spires and large windows.

Kirsty Hall: Large stained glass window, Rosslyn Chapel, Aug 2008

Kirsty Hall: Flying buttresses, Rosslyn Chapel, Aug 2008

Kirsty Hall: Carvings on spires on Rosslyn Chapel, Aug 2008

The thing that struck me most about the church was the sheer confidence of it. To build such an ornate structure in the war-torn and brutish Scotland of the Middle Ages spoke to me of great power, wealth and artistic vision. I don’t suppose that quality stone workers have ever come cheap and the building took 40 years to build and is absolutely covered with carvings, both inside and out. It really is a remarkable achievement and if you get the chance to visit, you should.

…….

Sadly most of the galleries in Edinburgh were in a changeover week so I didn’t do my usual round of exhibitions but I did manage to see the Tracey Emin retrospective at the Gallery of Modern Art on the Sunday. I’ll do a separate review for that because I have a lot to say about it.

Oh, and my son and I saw The Dark Knight, which we both thought was astounding. All the performances are amazing and although it’s a fast paced action movie, it also raises a lot of questions about loyalty and the meaning of morality. On reflection, it doesn’t completely hold together on certain plot points but it’s well worth seeing.

In fact, all my days are messy.

Kirsty Hall: Messy Altar, July 2008

This is our altar area on the middle floor landing. Spiritual, ain’t it!

It can be a beautiful space but it hasn’t been for months because we were decorating and moving stuff around and somehow this space became a dumping ground. See the lanterns behind the mattress - that’s the remains of the Christmas altar? What month is it again? Oh yes, July…

I suppose I could just leave it there for another 5 months but most years we make a spectacular Halloween altar like this…

Kirsty Hall: My favourite Halloween altar, October 2003

Or this…

Kirsty Hall: A witchy Halloween altar, October 2005

Having stuff piled up in front of this gorgeous window always depresses me a little. Come to think of it, it’s little wonder that my head feels chaotic right now when I literally have An Altar To Mess in my life. I need a pretty summer altar filled with flowers instead.

The bedframe is mine. It was in the room that is now my studio, then it was in another room for a while and now it’s sitting on the landing in bits. I thought about getting rid of it, it seemed the sensible thing to do but I realised last week that I just don’t want to. I want to sleep on it again. It’s MY bed: I have perfect grey flannel sheets for it, a beautiful pale blue duvet cover that I love and although it needs a new mattress, I adore the drama of the bed itself. When it comes right down to it, I’m a Victorian cast-iron kind of girl and why shouldn’t I have the bed I want in my room? So I’ve decided that I’m going to dismantle and get rid of the bed I’m currently sleeping on and reassemble mine instead.

I think maybe I’m not quite getting the point of Messy Tuesdays. At the weekend I cleaned the pile that I showed on my last Messy Tuesday post and I want this mess gone by next week. In fact, I’d like to clear it up right now, but since it’s the middle of the night, that probably wouldn’t make me very popular.

It’s hard for me to accept the fact that I have so much mess in my life. I fight against it. When I see pictures of it, I feel guilty and anxious and want to clear it up instantly even when I know it’s not possible to do so. Unfortunately I’m a perfectionist and a procrastinator; it’s a bad combination! Still, there are plenty more messes to document and I can’t imagine there will ever be a time when my house and life are completely tidy.

Sometimes I come across an artist who’s ploughing very similar ground to me and occasionally I find someone who’s working with the same materials as me. However, I think that Bird Ross and I may actually be sharing a single brain!

I was looking through old copies of Fiberarts Magazine to see if there was anything I needed to photocopy for my sketchbook, when I spotted a small photograph of a ball of knotted string by Ross.

Bird Ross: 6000 Knots

Anxious that I might have accidentally copied her string work when I came up with the idea for 3 Score & 10, I checked the front of the magazine, but it dated from 2005 and a quick search through my sketchbooks revealed that I was already making 3 Score in Jan 2003.

Kirsty Hall: 3 Score & 10

Rather oddly, Ross’ 6000 Project using knotted string was about 9/11, which of course, I’ve also done a series about. Here’s what Ross wrote about her project:

From the four airplanes (266), the confirmed dead (201), the 5422 people still missing and those that died at the Pentagon (188). It equals a little over 6000. As of today 6077. I wanted to know what 6000 looked like. How can anyone possibly imagine what 6000 of anything looks like, let alone people. What would 6000 names struck from the pages of a phonebook look like? What would it look like in terms of their handprints, their footprints, in terms of the number of people that miss them? It’s like nothing we can imagine. This was my attempt to imagine.
18 September 2001

And here’s what I wrote about my 3,533 (Requiem) piece:

I sat in the space and burnt 3,533 matches over the space of four days. This number is the current estimated number of victims of the terrorist attacks. The matches were then laid out so that both the scale of the numbers and the individuality of each match could be seen. The thing that I really couldn’t grasp about the attacks was the sheer scale. I needed to make work that encompassed those numbers and I thought if I could see objects laid out then I might begin to understand the loss involved.

Of course, I’ve never imagined that I was the only artist who took this approach, I’ve seen other 9/11 counting projects; it’s a pretty natural response for visual people trying to get their heads around the scale of something like this. Still, when I went onto Ross’ website and found that as part of her ‘counting the dead’ project she’d also used burnt matches, I was slightly spooked.

Bird Ross: 6000 Matches

Kirsty Hall: 3,533 (Requiem) in progress

Then I spotted her time clock piece and just started laughing because several days ago I wrote in my notebook, “I should get one of those old fashioned work clocks so that I can punch in and out when I’m pinning”.

Oh, and I’ve also had ideas about using layers of sellotape - guess what, so has Ross!

Bird Ross: Wounded

How crazy is this! Bird Ross and I have never met, I wasn’t aware of her work before this and I don’t imagine for one minute that she was aware of mine but we’re clearly tuned into the same art wavelength! I’m sitting here just giggling because it’s so weird.

My favourite piece of hers is this beautiful little folded paper piece called It All Adds Up. It’s clearly a till receipt and since it’s part of the 6000 series, I’m guessing that it’s folded 6000 times.

Bird Ross: It All Adds Up

Isn’t that lovely. I like the way it’s encased in the narrow glass or perspex vitrine, it sets off the piece so well.

Right, I’m just off to check one more time that there are no pins on Ross’ website!

A traditional Devon cream tea…

Kirsty Hall: Cream tea with sweetpeas, July 2008

Kirsty Hall: Scones with clotted cream and jam, July 2008

…on a traditional British summer’s day!

Kirsty Hall: Rainy day, July 2008

Kirsty Hall: Wet chair, July 2008

I’ve been seeing references to Messy Tuesdays for a couple of months now. I thought, ‘hmm, sounds right up my street’ but didn’t follow it up. And then, whilst following a link from the excellent needled blog yesterday, I found the fascinating Felix and discovered that, along with Lara, she was one of the originators of the Messy Tuesdays idea.

Here’s Lara’s post introducing the idea of Messy Tuesday and Felix’s original post, complete with manifesto…

Messy Tuesdays Manifesto:

You are not your flawless surfaces. You are not your orderly laundry-pile. You are not the seamlessness of your Finished Objects. You are not your risen cakes. You are not your sewn-in ends.

Messy Tuesdays seems to have struck a cord with many bloggers. Felix’s post, Mess Is Beautiful has inspired me to order some Toni Morrison from the library. The F-Word addresses the feminist aspects of domestic mess but Penny points out that someone has to clear up. I loved the story behind this box of tangled threads on Practical Polly’s blog. The needled blog celebrates mess while mootthings experience with breeding plant pots will doubtless be familiar to every gardener.

Here’s my contribution to the conversation:

Mess is a vital part of art. Without mess there can be no art. That doesn’t mean that all artists are inherently messy - although many are - just that the creative process itself is not a tidy one. There are wrong turns, false starts, abandoned pieces, 3am ideas scrawled frantically in sketchbooks, creative messes left lying on desks and in corners. Even if you are a tidy artist who puts things away when you’re done, in the midst of creating it’s likely that paint is smeared all over your palette, your pencils are in disarray, fabric pieces are scattered randomly around your sewing machine or you have clay, paint or plaster lodged under your fingernails.

And more than the purely physical mess of creating, there is that singular moment in many art pieces when chaos descends and you can no longer see what it is you are doing. The original purpose gets lost and suddenly there is only messy paint on canvas, confused lines on paper or a hideous lump of clay beneath your hands. This is the point where many people give up, not realising that this moment of sheer chaos is the fertile ground where new art grows. Not all your creative seeds will grow into something wonderful and worthwhile - some just stay messes - but without the courage to step into the messy, uncomfortable, annoying part of the creative process, nothing new will arrive.

I can’t write about Messy Tuesday without spotlighting a mess of my own. Here’s the current state of my bed.

Kirsty Hall: Messy Bed, July 2008

Yes, my bed; the place that all the magazine articles and decluttering books tell you should be a romantic, restful haven. Notice how mine is covered with work instead! Here we have piles of books and magazines that I’m in the midst of reading, a journal, pens, a roll of pencils, several pads of cartridge paper, a pile of finished drawings, a pile of unfinished drawings, drawing board (what, you don’t have a drawing board on your bed?) and lots of lists.

Why don’t I put it all on the floor next to the bed? Er, well, there isn’t room…

Kirsty Hall: Messy Bedroom Floor, July 2008

I will be tidying this soon as it’s getting to the ‘too much on the bed’ stage. That doesn’t mean the bed will be empty when I’m done, just that I’d like to change the sheets before starting a new, fresher pile of work!

On Saturday I was in the mood to take photos so I wandered along a couple of Clifton roads that I haven’t been down in years because although they’re just around the corner, they’re not particularly on the way to anything. Noticing new things in familiar places is one of my favourite things to do.

Late afternoon light and these ornate old windows made for an unusual abstract shot.

Kirsty Hall: Broken Reflection, June 2008

This shot is typical of the things I love to photograph - fragile, battered, ephemeral objects that are still beautiful.

Kirsty Hall: Fallen Flower, June 2008

At first I thought this patchy grey lichen was blobs of chewing gum!

Kirsty Hall: Mottled Wall, June 2008

There’s something pleasingly primal about this silver graffiti.

Kirsty Hall: Silver Man, June 2008

This was my most intriguing discovery.

Kirsty Hall: Commemorative Plaque, June 2008

Ellen Sharples was a miniature and portrait painter working in pastels. Born in Cheshire, she later emigrated to the United States with her artist husband, James Sharples, where she became one of America’s first professional female artists before returning to live in Bristol after her husband’s death.

I’d never heard of the Sharples before but they were apparently quite influential in early American portraiture with James Sharples drawing a famous portrait of Washington in the last year of his presidency. This portrait and others of notable Americans really paid the bills, with both James, Ellen and their children making copies. Although her career involved making copies of her husband’s work on commission, Ellen was obviously quite financially successful because she left £2,000 in her will to help set up the Royal West of England Academy and also donated her private art collection to the new gallery. You can see some of her art here.

Encouraged by her mother, who had advanced views on education for women, Rolinda painted in oils in a variety of genres, including portraiture, Bristol cityscapes and images of contemporary Regency life. She was one of the first British female artists to tackle large crowd scenes, most notably in her paintings of the races on Durdham Downs and the Clifton Assembly Rooms.

So there you go, a little bit of feminist art history right around the corner from me but unnoticed for years.

Because of health issues and poor weather, I haven’t done as much gardening in the last couple of weeks as I’d planned. However, I did manage to finish the bed I was working on.

BEFORE

Kirsty Hall, May 2008

AFTER

Kirsty Hall, June 2008

Isn’t it great how weeks of hard work can be made to look miraculously simple through the wonders of technology!

In fact, it was so magical that I want to do it again…

BEFORE

Kirsty Hall, May 2008

AFTER

Kirsty Hall, June 2008

Big improvement, huh.

As I’ve said before, gardens are a constant work in progress so it’s not exactly ‘finished’. I’m watching it to see what does well this year before moving stuff and tweaking the planting; I’ve already decided I need some taller plants in the middle of the bed and some stuff needs to be closer together. There are also a few annuals that I won’t bother with next year because the slugs liked them too much.

We also harvested the first of our strawberries.

Kirsty Hall: First Homegrown Strawberries, June 2008

The six plants didn’t produce much because they were only planted this year but the dozen berries we got were so delicious that we shared them out gleefully like tiny red treasures.

I was surprised to discover that this tiny geranium cutting had flowered.

Kirsty Hall: Trying Hard, June 2008

I pinched out the buds on the other pots because I want them to be making roots and leaves not flowers but these had already opened and I didn’t have the heart to remove them. I always say that I practise ‘Darwinist Gardening’ because it’s the survival of the fittest around here. I can’t be bothered with plants that need endless fussing and coddling but I do have a sentimental side, especially if something is clearly trying hard.

This would have been posted yesterday but I stupidly spilt tea on my keyboard last night and promptly killed it. Oops. One trip to PC World later and I now have a gorgeous flat aluminium keyboard that’s quieter and easier on my hands and most importantly, not full of tea!

…………….

I’ve started drawing again. Since the start of the year it’s been an on/off kind of thing but I’ve drawn so much in the last three days that I ran out of my preferred heavy duty cartridge paper and had to switch to a lighter weight pad. I went to the art shop but they’d run out too, so I had to order it online. I didn’t come away empty-handed though; I was delighted to discover that Derwent has expanded its range of my beloved Inktense pencils so I bought five new ones to try out and two pads of other paper because being low on paper makes me feel antsy. Of course, I have a drawer full of paper but that was all the wrong size or type. Ha, never underestimate the ability of artists to justify spending money on materials…

I’m still in a bad place with my health so I haven’t managed to work in my studio but I have been lying in bed drawing and sitting at the computer listening to podcasts while I work on the embroidery piece. Like many artists, I have an almost mystical attachment to the idea of ‘the studio’ and I have to keep reminding myself that it doesn’t matter where I make art as long as I get it done.

This is why I don’t have a studio outside my home. I feel bad that I don’t spend enough time in my studio when it’s just up the stairs, imagine how guilty I’d feel if I was paying for the privilege of never getting to the studio. Some artists need the routine of getting out of the house and going to a special place to make art. I understand and respect that but for me, art needs to be rooted in my domestic surroundings or it’s just never going to happen.

Hey, if making art in bed was good enough for Frida Kahlo, it’s good enough for me!

And on days when I can’t make art at all, I can still take photos.

Kirsty Hall: Forget-Me-Nots, June 2008

Kirsty Hall: Clematis Seedhead, June 2008

Kirsty Hall: Garden Visitor, June 2008

I’ve always noticed cast iron. Even as a kid I was fascinated by the different shapes of gates and railings. Maybe it’s because there’s a history of blacksmithing on my mum’s side: if I’d been born a boy in an earlier generation, I might have spent my days banging bits of metal into ornate curves. So it’s no surprise that I like to take pictures of railings, especially when they’re deliciously rusty.

This railing is really unusual. I’ve not seen another one like it and I can’t work out what era it’s from.

Kirsty Hall: Rusty Railings, May 2008

Kirsty Hall: Rusty Railings, June 2008

Kirsty Hall: Rusty Railings, June 2008

These railing are just round the corner from me and the design is clearly based on oak leaves.

Kirsty Hall: Ornate Railings, June 2008

I like it when you can tell what the original design is meant to be; sometimes they’re so over-painted that it’s just a vague organic blob. This decorative cast iron rose is still recognisable but it’s becoming softer and less distinct with every layer of paint.

Kirsty Hall: Cast Iron Rose, June 2008

Two of our ceilings have been painted so often that none of us can decipher the original pattern of the plaster mouldings. One day I decided it was ‘baby feet and broccoli’ and that has stuck.

See what I mean…

Kirsty Hall: Cream Plaster Mouldings, June 2008

The white baby feet in the kitchen aren’t quite as obscured but I’ve still no idea what it’s meant to be.

Kirsty Hall: White Plaster Mouldings, June 2008

Maybe one day I’ll get up a very tall ladder and strip all the layers of paint off, but somehow I doubt it: I think we’re stuck with baby feet and broccoli.

Unfortunately I’ve been unwell for the last few days but I hope to get some proper writing done in the next day or two. In the meantime, in celebration of having my broadband back, here are some new photos from my garden. When I’m ill, my life often focuses down to very small things; a reflection in a bucket, the wind in the grass, pollen laden stamens, bats hunting across a twilight sky, the cat on my lap.

Kirsty Hall: Red Lily, June 2008

Kirsty Hall: Blue Convolus, June 2008

Kirsty Hall: Reflection, June 2008

Kirsty Hall: Grass Seeds, June 2008

Hmm, apparently I did something weird this morning and this post vanished into the ether even though I’m sure I published it. Even more annoying, it didn’t save most of it, so I’ve had to rewrite it. Fortunately most of it is based on an old piece of writing from way back in 2001, so it wasn’t too much work. I’ve even managed to put in a couple of pictures - if I’m very patient, I can link to photos that are already on Flickr, I just can’t upload any new ones. Using dial-up is like wading through treacle and I can’t wait to get back to the 21st century and a fast broadband connection although I am enjoying hearing the old modem sound again, it’s quite the nostalgia trip.

Anyway, it’s time to raid the vaults… this has been edited slightly to tighten up the language and grammar but is more or less unchanged from the original.

Still Life
1/7/01

I have come to realise that much of what I make is actually Still Life. My photographs, in particular, have a Still Life sensibility. I am looking at small things - like hot raspberries on the beach or the reflection in a bowl of water - and saying that they are small yet important. It seems to me that that is what most Still Lives do: they take everyday things and set them apart so we can truly see them.

Kirsty Hall: Blue Bowl Reflection, circa 1999

Still Life demands that we really look at the flagon of wine and the apple; the bowl of cherries; the lifeless carcasses. It ponders the flowers, the glass and the tablecloth. It shows us the texture of everyday life and forces the realisation that actually these things are amazing: the bread we eat, the soft cheese, the pile of fruit, the luscious cakes, the humble or grand spread. This is what keeps us alive after all. This is what nourishes us. Of course we also need vast epic pictures of the imagination and portraits that force us to look at our frail human bodies. We need art to consider many things but it seems odd that Still Life should so often have been considered the least important subject matter in art, when it deals so intimately with life and death.

Kirsty Hall: Grape Stem, May 2003

Mortality is a vital component of many Still Lives. Those flowers will soon be dead: they are just caught for a moment in time. Caught at the point of perfection? Or perhaps already weeping their petals onto the rough-hewn table or perfect lace. That food will spoil or be devoured by a hoard of hungry mouths. Even that fine glass goblet will eventually be broken or lost. The table itself will be consumed by history. Who knows what happened to the musical instruments, the sheet music or the pile of books? They are lost to us except for this captured image.

It is that quality of stillness that I love most about Still Lives. More and more my work has been edging towards stillness and quiet, not actual silence but definitely quietness. I think I am looking for contemplation and the mysterious void. Stillness is a quality that I associate strongly with the colour white, which is why I think my work has contained so much white in the last two years. I am searching for that perfect moment perhaps, that moment of clarity and stillness?

Sigh, I’m not sure where this week went. Do you have weeks like that? One minute it’s Monday, the next it’s Sunday and you’re not sure what happened to the in-between bit. I seem to be having more and more of them - maybe it’s true that time speeds up as you get older.

I have been working fairly consistently on my embroidery piece this week and I hope to get it finished later today or tomorrow. I’ve decided to set myself an informal target of finishing a piece of art a week because I need a bit of a push.

Kirsty Hall: Red Thread Drawing In Progress, June 2008

It’s been very interesting watching this evolve because I’ve been doing it freehand, so it’s been at least a hundred different temporary drawings so far. It’s impossible to keep things in place, the loose thread spills across the surface and moves with every stitch I make. I find it a very meditative way to work; accepting that perfect arrangements of thread will come and go each time I pick up the canvas.

I once read a quote from a writer who said that as soon as you’d written the first line, your novel was committed to a certain path but before that first sentence, anything was possible. That’s not the case with this work. Certainly as I sew the loose thread into place, the number of ways the remaining thread can fall on the canvas become less and less. Yet until the last few stitches are in place, the possibility of change is still there.

I enjoy knowing that I could do a million of these and they would never be the same. I wish I’d photographed every single variation as I went along - hmm, that might make an intriguing little artists’ book.

Kirsty Hall: Red Thread Drawing In Progress, June 2008

We had tons of rain this week, so I didn’t get as much done in the garden as I’d hoped.

Kirsty Hall: Rain on dill, May 2008

But I managed to get more of the left hand bed planted up and it’s nearing completion, although I need to go back to the gardening centre for yet more plants and some sand to dig into the annoying patch of clay.

Kirsty Hall: Rain on dill, May 2008

I’m learning to accept that gardening - like art - is a process and there will probably never be a time when my garden is ‘finished’. I certainly won’t get everything done this year but that’s OK; any improvement is better than none. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Kirsty Hall: Rain on coriander, May 2008

I guess that’s where my week went - lost in creativity, both indoors and out. Ah well, there are far worse ways to spend your time. I hope you all managed to carve out some creative time this week.

I have a problem with categories. Basically, I’m just not very good at them. I find it difficult to choose tags for blog posts. I have too many sets on my Flickr account. I have too many email folders. I struggle with organising my filing cabinet. I desperately need to go through and rationalise all these things but it doesn’t come easily to me.

In terms of organisation, this is obviously A Very Bad Thing. I constantly lose things and I sometimes avoid tidying up because I simply can’t decide where stuff should go. And then I end up with this sort of thing!

Kirsty Hall: Messy Study, May 2008

[I've tidied my desk since this was taken because the photo appalled me so much. If you have problems keeping your desk clear, check out Inspired Home Office for resources that may give you the push you need. Since tidying up this disaster zone, I've been noticeably more motivated and I'm feeling more on top of things.]

I do have systems but things still stump me. I’ve got a box that’s been sitting in my study unsorted and neglected for 6 months because it’s full of the sort of random objects that I find almost impossible to categorise. The pile of papers to be sorted into my filing cabinet is so large that it’s developed geographical layers and may actually have started to fossilise down at the bottom.

Since I’m so visual, I sometimes wonder if I should simply file things by colour - but I know that I’d just end up spending ages trying to decide if objects were blue or green instead because having trouble with categories is a global failure in my brain.

TIME TO LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE…

However, while it’s a problem in terms of organisation, being bad at categories can be a distinct advantage for an artist because you can see across boundaries to make associative leaps than non-artists often don’t. Leaps of logic that make perfect sense in KirstyLand often seem innovative and original to others.

For example, this piece called Lost was made for an exhibition in a church. To make the piece, I carefully broke an unglazed bowl, then mended it with glue, leaving deliberate holes. For the exhibition, the bowl was placed on linen and filled with salt water, which gradually evaporated through the porous clay.

Kirsty Hall: Lost, 2003

Lot’s Wife was the inspiration for the piece and I combined her familiar story with the Japanese tradition of mending broken bowl with gold to make them more valuable than when they were whole. I’d read about this several years before and had been utterly captivated by the idea of regarding a mended object as beautiful and powerful instead of flawed and damaged. Somehow in my head, this linked with my sympathy for Lot’s Wife, who was forced to leave not only her home but two of her adult children. In that situation, what mother wouldn’t turn back to see what had happened? Isn’t it interesting that she’s usually held up as an example of female disobedience but if you turn it around, her story can just as easily be interpreted as being about the power of maternal love.

Kirsty Hall: Lost, 2003

As artists, we need to turn things around. We have to learn to look at our problems and disadvantages to see if they also contain power and wisdom for us. It’s time to recognise that the things that make us bad at fitting into the ‘real world’ are sometimes the exact same things that keep us making our art.

I sometimes think I was dreadfully scarred by growing up in the 70’s. I look at the things I make and I can see the legacy of string pictures and macramé.

3 Score & 10 vs crazy 70’s macramé birdcage.

Kirsty Hall: 3 Score & 10, Jan 2006

Random Macrame found on internet but unfortunately I’ve lost the link

I rest my case!

Well, what can I say? Apart from reproduction prints of paintings or images in books, string pictures and macramé were the primary examples of art that I saw as a child. My parents aren’t big art people plus I had three noisy younger brothers so although I’m sure I must have seen paintings in museums, I don’t remember visiting an actual art gallery until I was in my teens. By the time I was 15, I had started taking myself off to galleries at every opportunity and had broadened my art horizons a little but before then, pins and string had featured highly in my formative visual experiences.

Ha, you should think yourselves lucky that I don’t feel an overwhelming urge to make all my art in shades of orange and brown!

I started a new piece on Wednesday and to my eyes it’s got a distinctly 70’s look, probably because it’s on brown linen. It’s another thread drawing but from a brand new series. I’ve been contemplating this particular series for a while now; it’s all to do with pithy phrases, emotional tension, domesticity and lots and lots of red thread. For ages I’ve been collecting strange trite sayings that people use - things like “well, I suppose it could be worse” or “but apart from that, how are you”. I’m fascinated by the emotional gaps in language, the way we use clichés and meaningless phrases, especially in Britain, to cover a vastness of things unsaid. For some reason, this is connected in my mind with endless images of red thread.

Kirsty Hall: Red Drawing, May 2008

I had an image in my head of a red thread drawing on raw linen that I wanted to test out. I found a natural framed linen canvas that may work although I’m not entirely sure about it because it’s sized with clear primer and I think it might be too glossy and stiff. For some reason, I’m a lot more comfortable sewing on framed canvases meant for painting than on loose fabric and when I was in the craft shop, I got scared by the proper linen embroidery fabric and coped out and bought a sized canvas instead. This one is my test piece to see if I can live with the sized surface or if I need to make that intellectual leap and do ‘proper embroidery’ on ‘real fabric’.

It’s odd: intellectually I know that what I’m doing is probably embroidery but I don’t think of it as sewing. Instead, I always think of it as a very slow and laborious way of drawing.

With little bits of thread.

On fabric.

I mean, obviously I know it is sewing. Except that in my head, it isn’t. I cannot explain this.

Kirsty Hall: Red Drawing, May 2008

I don’t know why I feel this way about using cloth. A couple of years ago, I started doing sewn drawings on felt and that didn’t bother me so it’s clearly something to do with the fabric. When I was about 7 or 8, I had a scary primary school teacher who endlessly criticising the sloppiness of my stitches and I suspect this has a lot to do with my fear of using ‘real fabric’ and doing ‘real sewing’. I did like threading shoelaces through pictures with holes in them though (did anyone else do that, what was it supposed to teach us?) and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I now pierce holes in my canvases before threading my needle through. Actually, you have to when using sized canvas because if you make a mistake, the hole doesn’t close up again but I also think it takes me to a safer, happier place than the word ‘embroidery’ does.

I’m in a photo mood this week. Here’s some luscious British flora that I took earlier today - not as shockingly vibrant as the Australian photos from yesterday but the colours are still very lovely. And maybe these will seem as beautifully exotic to my Australian readers as their flowers do to me.

Herb Robert grows freely around here. There’s loads in my garden and it’s so pretty that I always feel guilty pulling it up but if I don’t, it takes over.

Kirsty Hall: Herb Robert, May 2008

No idea what this is but the shape of the stems and buds are just gorgeous.

Kirsty Hall: White Buds, May 2008

Red blushed leaves on a shrub at Clifton Cathedral.

Kirsty Hall: Red Leaves, May 2008

Beautiful pinky-red flower buds on the same shrub.

Kirsty Hall: Red Buds, May 2008

Check out the luminous red stems.

Kirsty Hall: Red Buds, Close Up, May 2008

I woke this morning thinking of Australia and was inspired to put together another photo essay (you poor people are going to be seeing my holiday photos for months to come!) It’s been a little grey in Bristol over the last few days, so some hot tropical colour is just the thing to keep me dreaming of our own summer flowers still to come.

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Edited to add: Erin left the following comment with a few names. “I recognize a few of these from florida and thought you might want to know names. The first is a bottle brush, the fifth looks like perhaps bird of paradise and the last is a canna lily.”

Because it’s a posh area, there’s not much graffiti in Clifton but there is some and it’s often more quirky than the brightly-coloured tagging popular in other parts of Bristol.

It’s a bit hard to decipher but the text reads “the way is in the heart” - yay, Zen graffiti!

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti Heart, April 2008

Someone having fun juxtaposing a house shape with this very appropriate sign. Or perhaps it’s a warning, with the cross through the house indicating that they’re a bad agency to use?

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti House, May 2008

These next two bits of graffiti have been ineffectively painted out, I love the resulting subtleness.

This one reminds me of Jean Dubuffet’s art…

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti Covered With White Paint, May 2008

…while this one’s like faded Arabic writing.

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti Covered With White Paint, May 2008

Very Jean Miro.

Kirsty Hall: Abstract Graffiti, May 2008

My favourite shot, I can imagine this as a huge oil painting in a gallery.

Kirsty Hall: Abstract Graffiti Close Up, May 2008

It’s not really graffiti if the council does it!

Kirsty Hall: Practical Mark, April 2008

Happy Beltane, I hope you’ve all had or are having a lovely Mayday. I celebrated by taking blossom pictures, it seemed appropriate. There will be more serious posts in the next couple of days but for now, it’s time to soak up some spring eye candy!

White on white, one of my favourite colour combinations…

Kirsty Hall: Apple Blossom, April 2008

It’s always struck me as odd that magnolia is often decried as a really boring paint colour, when magnolia petals themselves are such an exquisitely subtle combination of pinks and creams.

Kirsty Hall: Magnolia Petal, April 2008

The shapes of the magnolia blossoms delight me every year…

Kirsty Hall: Magnolia Blossom, April 2008

Although we don’t have one in our garden, there are lots of magnolia trees in Bristol. This is the last blossom left on my neighbour’s tree.

Kirsty Hall: Magnolia Blossom, May 2008

It’s not just white blossom, there’s plenty of pink around too…

The apple trees are in full bloom…

Kirsty Hall: Apple Blossom, May 2008

…but the cherry blossom is starting to fall.

Kirsty Hall: Drifts of Cherry Blossom, May 2008

Sorry, didn’t mean to disappear like that, I was hit by a virus and today is the first day I’ve felt like myself in more than a week.

So, what’s been happening? Well, I bought a new camera with the last of my holiday money and I’m absolutely loving it. It’s a Sony Cybershot DSC-H3 and it’s so much better than my little Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01. When I was in Australia I completely hit the limitations of the Panasonic and was finding it frustrating that I often couldn’t get the shots I wanted because I didn’t have enough zoom.

I’ve also realised that I take a lot of indoor shots and close-ups and while the Panasonic is OK on macro, it sucks in poor light. That’s not to say that the Panasonic is a bad camera: if you want to photograph groups of people outdoors then it’s a great choice. It’s light and small enough to easily carry in a pocket and has a proper wide angle lens, which is unusual in a compact digital of that size and you can even use it underwater if you have a special case for it. I think it’s a nifty little compact; it’s just not a good fit for the kind of photography that I do.

The Sony has 10x zoom compared to the 3.6x of the Panasonic and a noticeably better macro setting. The lens feels like a higher quality to me and I can see the difference in the photos I’m taking. It’s larger and heavier than the Panasonic but still light enough to carry around with me, which is hugely important. I looked at a couple of larger cameras with even better zooms but realised that I would end up leaving them at home half the time. There’s an old photography saying that ‘the best camera is the one you have with you’ and it’s so true.

I don’t have a card for the new camera yet so I’m relying on the internal memory and it can only take 14 images before it’s full. Usually I take as many photos as I want and then decide which ones I like once they’re on my computer screen. I generally only junk images directly from the camera if they’re obviously blurry or bad. But when I went out for a walk today I had to delete quite a few decent photos so that I could take better ones. In a way it was quite freeing because I was having to look at each image and make a conscious positive decision to keep it. When you can only take 14 images, each image has to really work to earn its keep! I can see how this could be an interestingly disciplined way to take photos but I’m still looking forward to my memory card arriving.

OK, that’s enough yakking about the new camera, let’s see what it can actually do…

Kirsty Hall: Sunlit Puddle, Bristol, April 2008

Kirsty Hall: A Watery Window, Bristol, April 2008

Kirsty Hall: Manhole cover, Bristol, April 2008

Sorry for the week of radio silence: I got back last Friday but have been busy picking up the reins of my life and getting over jetlag and a cold.

Although Australia was fantastic and I had an amazing time, I’m glad to be home. I missed my family and while I loved the sunshine and sea, I do quite like this damp little island that I call home.

Kirsty Hall: Happy Face Graffiti, Bristol, Feb 2008

Getting off the plane I was struck both by the cold (it was snowing when I got back) and the gorgeous softness of the light we have here. Australia was so bright that I needed my sunglasses most of the time and the glaring light created strong shadows that gave everything a stark quality.

Kirsty Hall: Australian Bush, The Blue Mountains, March 2008

I found myself very aware of the relentless fierceness of the heat: there’s no doubt that Australia is a harsh environment and many of the objects that I saw were weathered and bleached by the sun.

Kirsty Hall: Worn fence posts, Australia, March 2008

The light in Britain can occasionally be that strong but usually there’s a subtle quality to the light and colour here that I very much enjoy. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t enjoy a bit more warmth and sunshine but I like our rain-washed colour spectrum. I find that living with grey skies and muted colours so much of the year gives me a heightened appreciation of splashes of bright colour when I finally do see them.

Kirsty Hall: Purple Sunset, Bristol, Jan 2008

Kirsty Hall: New Leaves Unfurling, Bristol, Feb 2008

Yesterday’s colour was green. Not only was it St Patrick’s Day – apparently celebrated with great joie de vivre in Sydney – but I spent a delightful afternoon exploring the Royal Botanic Gardens with local artist, Wendy Shortland. Wendy kindly showed me around this beautiful green space and we had a grand old time admiring the plants and wildlife.

There was much to see and I took plenty of reference photos of natural forms. Yet the thing that struck me most was the strangeness of the living bamboo covered with graffiti. I don’t always like graffiti; often it can seem intrusive and destructive and I’m particularly ambivalent about graffiti on trees and rocks. Up in the Blue Mountains, seeing graffiti on trees in the rainforest threw me into a rage at the stupidity of people. However, in this case, it had resulted in powerful totemic sculptures that reminded me of the Aboriginal funeral poles I’d seen a couple of days earlier in the Museum of Contemporary Art. The harsh scratched writing had been softened, stretched and transformed by the living plants to form a beautiful monument to the basic human urge towards mark-making. I am still ambivalent about this need to mark other living things as our territory, yet it was impossible to deny the compelling accidental beauty of the end result.

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti on bamboo, Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti on bamboo, Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti on bamboo, Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney

I’ve always been captivated by this sort of communal art form where aesthetics are not always the driving force. In the early 90’s, I spent a lot of time looking at African sacred objects that had been worn smooth by thousands of respectful hands or covered with nails to the point of bristling. I also studied Western traditions of sacred objects – medieval relics, votary offerings, rosary beads, museum displays and the like. I longed to make something with that same sort of presence but realised that it wasn’t possible for me to simply copy an existing form or process and ‘fake’ a sacred object. Years later, it’s something I’m still struggling with and much of my work using repetitive processes hinges on that concept of how to imbue an object with power and meaning.

Back in the gardens, I was also very enamoured with the enormous fruit bats that hung from the trees like giant cocoons.

Kirsty Hall: Fruit Bats, Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney

En masse, they are incredibly noisy – a plane overhead will set of a cacophony of squawking. Indeed, Australian wildlife as a whole seems quite loud to me, many of the birds can raise a real racket – the evening roosting of the parrots has to be heard to be believed. Perhaps they need to state their presence so loudly to combat the daunting distances of this vast land.

Today, I too am feeling daunted – only two and a half days left and still so much to see. Part of me wants to rush over to Sydney again and spend another afternoon looking around, while a greater part of me is arguing for a day spent on the beach in Manly! There has been so much rushing around lately and I feel overfull of textures, shapes, sounds and experiences; I know it will take me months to digest what I’ve seen here.

Well, I’ve just got back from a fantastic and very luxurious wedding weekend at Peppers Manor House in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Being an artist, I’m not used to 4 1/2 star hotels but damn, I could get used to that style of living very easily…

The wedding went well and I’m thrilled to have a delightful new sister-in-law. The two of us get on really well and my brother is clearly head over heels in love with her, which is very sweet to see. I have a fund of stories from the wedding but most of them aren’t repeatable on this blog. Suffice it to say that the combination of Australians and Scots at a wedding is quite a party - there probably aren’t many weddings where Waltzing Matilda gets played on the bagpipes!

………..

Mardi Gras

Despite my sunburn, I managed to make it to Mardi Gras on the Saturday before last. I don’t have any good pictures because my camera isn’t good at night but there are plenty here. It was great fun but a little odd because I was at the start of the parade and mostly surrounded by apparently straight people who didn’t seem to quite ‘get it’. Fortunately I met a lovely man called Andrew and his group of friends, who took me under their wing and made the experience much more enjoyable for me. We were whooping, clapping and cheering while most of the people around us just stood silently and watched while taking photos. Personally, I think that if someone has gone to a huge effort to design and make costumes, put on elaborate make-up, learn complicated dance routines and generally put a lot of work into something, the least you can do is give them a clap and a wave.

………..

Kiama

Kirsty Hall: Kiama Sunrise

The week in Kiama was also a blast - although I could have done without the flea and cockroach infested house that I was staying in! The other three houses our group had booked were gorgeous, while the one I was in quickly earned the titles The Roach Motel and The Flea Pit. I was bitten all over by the end of the 5 days, which did not make me happy. My dad left a very pointed note, I left the flea spray I’d bought in a prominent position and strong words will be had with the letting agent when my brother and sister-in-law return from honeymoon - I hope they get some money back because honestly, the house was far too dilapidated to be let out.

But apart from that, it was fab - lots of barbies, swimming in the sea and great company. There were between 20 - 25 of us at various points in the week, so it was quite a party atmosphere and I enjoyed meeting my sister-in-law’s family for the first time.

………..

Minnamurra Rainforest

During the week at Kiama, a bunch of us visited the stunning Rainforest Centre at Minnamurra. It was a gorgeous place that I’m sure will inspire many drawings, I just loved the way the forest grew around and through itself - all the vines and ferns were very seductive to me.

Kirsty Hall: The Rainforest at Minnamurra

Kirsty Hall: Fern at Minnamurra Rainforest

Kirsty Hall: Vines at Minnamurra Rainforest

Although we could hear loads of them, it was hard to spot birds in the dense forest canopy. However, we did see lyrebirds, parrots and a huge water dragon sunning himself on the rocks by the river.

Unfortunately I didn’t quite make it up to the waterfall because it was very steep in places and I strained my dodgy hip trying. I should have known better than to attempt it but I can be too stubborn for my own good at times. Other than that though, I’ve been doing well at pacing and resting and I’m not struggling too much. I was exhausted yesterday though, so today I’m having a quiet day of recovery back in Manly at my brother and his wife’s house. They left for honeymoon this morning and the rest of my remaining group also headed off this morning, so now I’m all by myself for the rest of my holiday. Fortunately, I enjoy my own company and although I’ve enjoyed being part of a big and vibrant group, I’m looking forward to having some quiet introspective time where I can get more drawing and thinking done.

I’m about to go off and do some internet research to decide what to do next - there’s so much to do here that I feel a little overwhelmed with possibilities but I’ll see what feels right. If I can find a cheap flight, I may jet off to somewhere else in Australia for a couple of days but I won’t be sad if I end up staying here, because Sydney is just amazing and apart from my evening at the Mardi Gras, I haven’t had a chance to explore it yet. Basically, I’m just going with the flow.

So apparently getting a lower wisdom tooth out is a really good way to lose an entire week. I had an upper wisdom tooth removed in December and while it was sore for a few days it wasn’t too bad, so I was expecting the lower one to be similar.

Wrong, very, very wrong!

I was well and truly knocked for six by this one. The tooth was only partly erupted so it was a much more difficult extraction, which resulted in stitches and a great deal of bruising and swelling. Then the next day, I had a bad reaction to codeine - it turns out that opiate-based drugs are not my friend because they make me panic, pace relentlessly and cry uncontrollably. I didn’t need to go to hospital or anything but I could definitely have done without it.

Unfortunately, it’s been over a week since I had the tooth out and I’m still in quite a bit of pain - it’s extremely likely that I’ve had a condition called Dry Socket where the jaw gets inflamed, I’ve certainly had all the symptoms. I think it is getting better because the pain is definitely a lot more bearable than a couple of days ago but if it’s not right by Monday, I’ll go and get it checked at the clinic. In retrospect, I should have gone back to the Dental Hospital in the middle of the week and I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t: I think I was just on so many painkillers that my mind was foggy and doing anything at all felt almost impossible.

Still, in between heroic doses of non-opiate painkillers, I managed to finish updating The Diary Project. Yep, all 365 envelopes have finally been scanned, uploaded and blogged - now I just have to work out why the set over on Flickr is mysteriously missing 6 envelopes. Oh and there’s also the small matter of organising an exhibition for the project but I’m not even starting on that until I get back from Australia.

Speaking of Australia, here’s my schedule:

Evening of 28th February - Arrive in Sydney
28th - 2nd March - Staying in Manley and exploring Sydney
2nd - 7th March - Kiama
8th/9th March - wedding
10th - 20th - in Sydney, Manley and Blue Mountain area, possibly fitting in a quick visit to Melbourne if I have the energy
Evening of 20th March - fly home

If you’re a reader who lives in any of those areas and you want to meet up for tea, cake and art chat, email or comment and we’ll arrange something.

I have other stuff to blog about but right now I need to go and take more painkillers and sleep. In the meantime, here’s a photograph that I took on my one of my very few trips out of the house this week…

Kirsty Hall: Trees reflected in a bus stop during a clear winter sunset