My new obsession - decomposing leaves

                               

                                           

                                 

                         

                              

                               

                              

                         

                           

   

                                      

Red Arrows in Scarborough

                                        

 

                                          

                                             

       

        

       

       

                                             

                                       

                                                    

      

      

A beautiful day

Saturday 29th June 2013

A shift in the world of Helen Birmingham

I had such a good day yesterday I want to write down how I felt . . . 

(In case the depression tries to steal the memory!)

                               

The Red Arrows display for Armed Forces Day in Scarborough was really inspiring - I realised that I could be part of the world, but on my terms. I didn't need to be in the rush and push of all the people in town, but neither did I have to miss out! That sounds really obvious when its written down, but it was a bit of a revelation.  

I found a secluded spot on the South Cliff, fairly near to the Italian Gardens and settled in for the show! Just stopping and sitting and waiting is something I'm not very good at. To begin with I fidgeted and fussed and was a bit grumpy - even decided that it was stupid to be just sitting there when there were other things to do, and did I really want to see the Red Arrows anyway - I've seen them before. I decided to go home - that's just what I do - but then I thought, well what are you going to do at home? Fidget and fuss and be really grumpy? 

I made a conscious effort to sit still and breathe - then I started to cry - without feeling embarrassed or guilty, without even really feeling sad. Just feeling safe and actually ok. Ok to look around and stop. Stop worrying about being self conscious- and the world just sort of opened up. 

 

And that was before the Red Arrows even got here!!

 

A very good day.  

Saturday 29th June 2013.

New work

Well I've actually been working at last - and it feels good. I have to be honest and say that I had no idea that I hadn't been working - probably for a year or so.  I've been doing stuff and filling my time but not actually engaging with anything. It's been a pretty tough time, and being on my own has been quite hard to get used to, but I'm getting there now. 

 

 I'm working on a new project, which is giving me some focus and direction, and actually seems to be drawing together lots of different strands of my work, which can only be good. It's surprising how things which I hadn't made links between, after a bit of a break, seem obviously to part of the same thought process.

Before my 'non move' to London, I was working on ideas related to what it is to be 'female', the role that needlework and quilting play in female history, together with my own reactions towards 'empty nest syndrome' and menopause. I had intended to apply for  place on the MA at The Royal College of Art in the Textile Department. For some reason, when I decided not to go to London, I also seemed to stop working, and to a large extent stop thinking! Just sort of vegetated for a while. (And no funny comments about not noticing the difference!). Vegetating, yet constantly doing stuff, keeping busy, but really destructively so. Now I realise that there is no reason why i cant carry on with the work I hoped to be doing on an MA, just without being at college! If it sells it sells. If not, I haven't compromised AGAIN. This time it's just me, why should I compromise!

Now I feel I've turned a corner in my life. 51 - post menopausal - empty nest - and single?

Bring on the phase of the crone. I'm ready for you!

Quilting on silk

Sketchbooks or Notebooks or Diaries

 Written 2^nd May 2013

I began keeping notebooks on 10/6/2012 – not really very long ago. I’ve always had a problem about keeping a sketchbook. I tend to resort to destroying  anything which I do not consider (at any given time) to be’ right’. And that given time or state of rightness is never a measured response.  Rather than face what I might perceive as negative criticism, or indeed self-criticism,  I would rather destroy any evidence of the thing,  if I consider it to be anything less than a valid conclusion.

This destructive behaviour is mirrored by periods of intense production. Sadly without sketchbooks I don’t then have any means of recalling any of the ideas and thoughts produced in the productive periods.   So one of the challenges I set myself back in June last year, at Carmen Mills’s suggestion,  was to keep a notebook/diary of ideas during a productive period. That seemed to be more manageable than something with the label “sketchbook” attached. I do realise that this may just be semantics, but I thought I’d give it a go – and if it worked, great, if not, well it was just semantics and why did I think it would be any different anyway!.  A sketchbook seemed too intense, too easy to spoil. A notebook is just that – a place for notes (sometimes sketches too), but something I felt I could use without pressure.

I love the format of the small square book. To me it’s not intimidating, somehow it’s friendly and the spiral in the middle means even if you want to be neat, you can’t be. It actually won’t let you write neatly on the left page. But, I wasn’t at all sure to begin with. I thought it might just be a gimmick (like the relationship I‘ve formed with this blog may be going!)  and what would I write anyway! Well I very quickly filled 4+ books and then found that I had started three new pieces of work!

 My work and energy tend to follow in cycles and the 4 notebooks were made during a high of activity. I call it ebb and flow like the tide, but its not quite so regular or predictable.  When the low began, I sadly destroyed one piece of work  “Quilt or Bed,  Art or Craft” but managed to shove the notebooks and 2 other half finished  pieces out of sight and into a corner.  (I may try to rebuild "Quilt or Bed, Art or Craft.")

 This week I’ve got the notebooks out again. Mainly because I need to work on something for North Yorkshire Open Studios 2013 , but also for a critique I have agreed to later this week, and the fear of opening myself up to the world. Without the notebooks though I would have lost the ideas in the maelstrom of the mania, or the ideas would have been victims of the depression. So I’m really glad to have them now and to have benefitted from something which not only gave me a real sense of achievement and pleasure at the time, but they can now go on to inform the work I had started, and maybe even hopefully finish this time.

I completed Year 1 of an MA in Canterbury  before moving to Scarborough, and one criticism which was made of me at that was that I shouldn’t need to prepare a speech, I should just let the work talk. But when the thing I am talking about is so important to me, I want to get it right. I’m very happy to answer questions, but I really need the structure and security of being able to say my bit first. So why do I need prepare. Why do I need to present. Why can’t I just talk or why can’t the work speak for itself?  Well I think the answer to that is that if I was showing one of the very rare finished  pieces of my work – I believe and hope that it would be able to stand on its own.  I’ve got hardly any  finished pieces in 50 years, and I still don’t know if either of the pieces I’m working on from these noteboooks are ever going to fall into that category.

 I think that when a piece is finished  I somehow take a mental step back from it.  Detach myself emotionally from the rawness and responsibility of its making.  I consider  finished pieces to be like my children. They have a life of their own.  One quote I really like but don’t know where it comes from is that “A mother’s role is to provide a child with roots for stability and wings for flight.” I like to replace the word mother for artist and the word child for idea. So “An artist’s role is to provide an idea with roots for stability and wings for flight.”  I hope I can give my ideas roots using  research and intellectual debate, and wings by using the processes and materials for making visual art. One of the hardest things for me is to control the ideas for long enough to manage them and attach the wings!

That is where these notebooks have been so valuable, and I hope that I may now, on revisiting them, be able to control  the ideas held within them without feeling the need to destroy the outcome.

 Helen Birmingham

The Edward Bawden Map Restoration Appeal

Edward Bawden CBE, RA

Edward Bawden was a prolific painter and graphic artist who studied under Paul Nash at the Royal College of Art. He was a skilful printmaker and perhaps

most famous for his prints, book covers and posters. He was awarded a CBE in 1946, became Royal Designer for Industry in 1949, Trustee of the Tate Gallery 1951-58 and was elected as a Royal Academician in 1956. His commercial work included illustrations and poster designs for London Transport, Twinings, Fortnum & Mason and also Barrows Stores in Birmingham.

The History of the Map

The map was originally commissioned in 1931 by local hotelier Tom Laughton for The Pavilion Hotel in Scarborough. Tom Laughton went on to present the map to Scarborough Public Library in 1961 when the hotel was sold. The map is a fabulous, original, hand-painted and collaged work by the Royal Academician, Edward Bawden and is based on an earlier ordnance survey map of Scarborough. Once displayed prominently in the entrance to the children’s section of the Library, many of today’s parents and grandparents have fond childhood memories of its detail and intricacy, but sadly, when the entrance to the children’s library fell into disuse, the map became a hidden treasure, nestling on a wall behind stacks of boxes.  The map is now deteriorating badly, and needs restoration and professional reframing to ensure its survival. The Friends of Scarborough Library have launched an appeal for funding to restore the map, and to ensure that it’s future safety and care is secured.   We are trying to raise sufficient funds to restore the map, reframe it and relocate it on the first floor crush suite. The total cost will be in the region of £1,800.

The importance of keeping the map on public display in Scarborough

Tom Laughton, who also owned and ran the Royal Hotel in Scarborough, sold the Pavilion Hotel in 1961 after the death of his mother and the ill-health of one of his brothers, Frank. He gifted the Bawden map to the Library at this time. He had a keen interest in art and amassed a collection of paintings over more than 50 years. His art collection, which he later donated to the town, is still on view, and enriches a visit to Scarborough Art Gallery and Museum. This part of Tom Laughton’s legacy is safe and well looked after.  When Tom Laughton sold The Pavilion Hotel it had been in his family ownership for more than 50 years, and by selling it he hoped that it would continue to be run in the Laughton tradition. In his autobiography Laughton remembers that in early 1960 he refused a bid of £30,000 – more than he actually sold it for – because the bidders were intending to knock down the hotel to redevelop the site. Eventually he sold the property to a company who gave an undertaking that the Pavilion would be run as a hotel for at least 10 years and that all the staff would be retained. With hindsight, his desires when he made his deal with John Guthries’ Broadland Properies were highly optimistic. The hotel was closed in 1971 and demolished in 1973. On a recent television programme where people were invited to name and shame Britain's worst buildings, nominees described Pavilion House, which took the place of The Pavilion Hotel, as "resembling a concrete fortress" and "a symbol of Scarborough's decline". Another said the demolition of the old Pavilion Hotel "destroyed the Victorian vista of central Scarborough".

In 2008 a bottle of wine with a soiled, scuffed and slightly torn label, which had been stored in the cellars of the Laughton family hotel, the Pavilion in Scarborough, until its demolition in 1973 turned up at auction. The bottle, being sold with its accompanying Pavilion Hotel label, was estimated at £15,000 – more than £2,500 a glass! Less than the price of one glass of wine will ensure that a priceless treasure by an internationally renowned artist is not allowed to fall into oblivion along with the hotel it was originally commissioned for.

On behalf of the Friends of Scarborough Library, I hope that you may look favourably on this request for a donation to help restore and reframe The Scarborough Map. If you require additional or more detailed information regarding the conservation and framing costs or about our planned series of events centred around the map, please contact Colin Langford at The Friends of Scarborough Library.  An article about the map will be published in the Winter edition of our Newsletter - Reflections Magazine – together with an update on our fund-raising efforts. Any cheques should be made payable to “Friends of Scarborough Library” and can be handed in or posted to either:

Attn:  Colin Langford                                                       Attn: Friends of Scarborough Library

Friends of Scarborough Library                                      c/o The Studio Gallery

Vernon Road                                                                    5 Belle Vue Parade

Scarborough                                                                    Scarborough

YO11 2NN                                                                        YO11 1SU