Iowa City Sculpture

I was in Iowa City the last week of June for my husband's family reunion.  Downtown Iowa is a beautiful city, pedestrian friendly, and has a lot of public sculpture to enjoy. This bronze sculpture by Jane DeDecker suits its environs perfectly -- most often when I passed it there were children playing in its vicinity. 

Another bronze sculpture, Jazz, is by Gary Alsum. I think the vibrancy of jazz is well caught in this work.

There are quite a few abstract sculptures in the pedestrian zone too.

I particularly like this wiry tornado. (Oops forgot to record the accrediting plaques for these works.)

I was too busy looking at the map depicted and reading the pirate-like inscription to realise at first that this was a book.

A few steps had my understanding sorted out. I like the idea that you could be sitting on a bench reading under the silent stare of a giant book.

Outside the pedestrian zone, I came across this series of sculptures inlaid into the footpath. 

It's difficult to tell, but the grey arcs are sentences - letters depressed into the footpath.

 I am not sure if the author is a well-known Iowa poet, but by the language it is not a modern poem.

I like this bronze depiction of sheet music and that the artist is using an aural art form visually.

I was unable to find the credits, so I don't know if the bronze pieces are done by the same artist who did the arc lettering, or indeed if all the pieces are done by separate individuals in collaboration. In any case, they were all delightful to come across!

Most events for the reunion took place at the Grant Wood historic home, owned by my husband's uncle. In 2005 my husband, James Hayes was commissioned to create the bronze sculpture, entitled Ball, for the fountain in the upper garden.

Art Gallery of Ontario

I was in Toronto recently and took the opportunity to visit the Art Gallery of Ontario to see some work that was on my wish list. The exhibition From the Forest to the Sea: Emily Carr in British Columbia was first shown in London last year at the Dulwich Gallery, but as I knew I'd be in Toronto this summer I looked forward to seeing it in the Canadian setting. Carr's paintings were well complemented by artefacts from the First Nations which inspired much of her work and it was a joy to see them together.

I prefer Carr's looser work on paper, but the installation view gives an idea of the scale at which she was working.

I can't remember whether or not this is one of Carr's experimental gasoline paintings, several of which were in the show (paintings on paper where gasoline was used as a medium for the paint!), but it is a good example of her looser painting style.

While at the AGO, I was delighted to also see a special exhibit of a pair of paintings by Tom Thompson. The Jack Pine, according to the gallery didactic, was the painting found on Thompson's easel at the time of his mysterious death in 1917.

The West Wind, another iconic Thompson painting, is also dated 1917.

The Thompson exhibit also included the sketches/small paintings of these works. While I did "exit through the gift shop", I also found my way into a room full of another Canadian painter's work. I have always liked David Milne's dry brush drawing/paintings so it was lovely to see a whole room full of them.

I did not have time to do any further explorations that afternoon at the art gallery, but it was inspirational to see the work of these three great Canadian painters.

Summer sketching

There has recently been a spate of summery weather which has been facilitating lazy days of sketching. I don't always have to go somewhere else. Sitting out the back there was lots of flora to choose from. We have a large pot of azaleas and delicate flowers are appearing on the rosemary plant.

I recently re-located my flat drawing pencil -- like a carpenter's pencil except it has a 4B lead in it. I used it to do a quick sketch of our curry plant.

This sketch of my daughter reading in the front yard makes her look older than she is. I thought she was disturbed by something she read, but when I asked her later why she was frowning, she told me she overheard the neighbourhood children "playing" -- they were collecting bees in bottles to kill them.

I am happier with the pencil drawing of my daughter concentrating on her book in the sunshine.

Killruddery House & Gardens

Summer is most definitely here! Recently I have been meeting one of my sisters on a weekly basis at Killruddery House & Gardens, a 17th century big house estate on the outskirts of Bray (just down the road from where I live). Especially in the good weather we've been having, it's a lovely place to walk about and also to stop for a pleasant coffee. I was there yesterday, and the waterlilies were starting to flower in the long ponds.

Last week in the woods I was surprised to see trillium. I thought they only grew in Canada, and are the provincial flower of my native province, Ontario. Last time I saw trillium was as forest floor cover in Aurora (near Toronto) while visiting in 1998 or 1999. I was a bit taken aback by seeing these trillium, which seemed larger than I remember, but with distinctive colouring, petals and foliage.

After walking through the woods, we found ourselves at the top of the large rockery with a gorgeous view of Killruddery House. 

Anticipation!

It took a bit of figuring out - I re-sewed the hanging loops to make them a bit shorter and gave a bit of direction to my personal slave (I mean husband) - Fractured City was taken down from the studio wall to make some space for some new work that I want to start. Of course, putting this painting up (above my husband's workspace in the bedroom) meant that at least 6 other paintings had to be manoeuvred about the house!

So yesterday morning once again I required some assistance to get the kraft paper onto the wall in my studio.

I have planned another triptych and now it is ready for me to start!

More Shinrinyoku!

We are getting lots of gorgeous days, plenty of time for shinrinyoku (Japanese for "a walk in the woods for relaxation"). A few weeks ago we had passed a road sign for Knocksink Woods and had never been there, so Saturday we decided to explore - it was less than 10 mins by car from our house! The woods were fabulous, with all kinds of gnarly trees and exposed roots continuous up the side of the mountain.

 The Glencullen River passes through these woods, and there are lots of little waterfalls, and what I would describe as a creek. Of course I brought my sketchbook and trusty watercolour pencils. I found a rock to sit on beneath a bridge and opened my sketchbook...

We crossed the bridge to walk back on the other side of the river and were stunned that areas of wild garlic were as far as the eye could see, providing ground cover in the woods.

Of course I had to pick some and made two more batches of pesto (using walnuts this time) dividing in meal-size portions for the recently defrosted freezer. Yum!

Writing

I make New Year resolutions each year, which I know that with some work, are possible to do and therefore I don't feel weighed down by failure when the impossible becomes obvious!

The past few years I have included in my list of resolutions to work more on my writing, which has been set aside (unfairly?) in favour of my preference for painting. The art magazine, CIRCA, to which I contributed art reviews for a number of years seems to have folded, so my writing has generally taken the form of FaceBook and blog posts, which I have tried to do regularly.

My other writing outlet has been poetry. My first published poem was "Portrait" in the New Irish Writing section of The Sunday Tribune (now defunct) in the spring of 1989. Following this a number of my poems were published in literary journals and magazines in Ireland and Canada, then I abruptly stopped writing and submitting poems in the mid-1990s.

Poetry has begun to re-emerge in my notebooks in the past few years and I have gotten the gumption to submit a few poems to literary publications in Ireland. So it was with great pleasure that I received a positive reply from Cyphers, a Dublin journal, that two of my Haiku poems would be appearing in the spring issue. An even greater pleasure was to receive my contributor's copy in the post recently.

Sketching!

I have been enjoying sketching again lately and using the opportunity of receiving flowers to have a subject which I have always loved, tulips. I thought I would post a few of these sketches. The sketch below is done using a 3B or 4B pencil.

I am also having fun with watercolour pencils. A friend recently mentioned "water pen" to me, something I have not yet come across -- must investigate!

Tulips are sometimes exhibitionists!

Another soft pencil sketch.

As I am reusing some old sketchbooks with blank pages, I am also coming across older sketches. This is an avocado pencil sketch from 2001.

This sketch is from the last Umha Aois; Experimental Bronze Casting symposium I attended (Ventry, Co. Kerry, Aug-Sept 2001). It is a drawing of my husband's pit furnace and handmade bellows.

Of course sketches may contain kernels for new paintings. My recent trip to Rome obviously inspired this as a counterpoint to my recent painting "Fractured City".

Walks and Sketching

 I am getting back into the habit of taking a sketchbook with me everywhere I go. I used to do this when I was younger, having sketchbooks of a ridiculous number of sizes and for every possible occasion! A few months ago when I was specifically looking for early "cityscape" sketches for the painting I was working on, I came across quite a few sketchbooks that were half empty. I decided it was an awful waste of paper if I just left them, so decided I would simply turn the sketchbooks upside down and start from the now "first" page -- and make sure I put in current dates so that any new sketches would not be confused in my artistic timeline!

As I have mentioned before, I went on a little jaunt to the Waterford area after Easter. On the way there I stopped in Carlow to visit the art centre there and have lunch. Prior to that, however, I was on a mission to find the Browne's Hill Dolmen which I had looked for unsuccessfully about 20 years ago. Now it is well signposted, no trouble at all finding. I took my sketchbook with me to see what I think is the most amazing and best example of a dolmen that I have seen.

As the weather has become less and less wintry, I have had the inclination to go on more regular walks and enjoy "shinrinyoku". This is a Japanese word I learned last year which literally means "forest bathing" but translates as "a walk in the woods for enjoyment". Though not the woods, the avenue leading to Powerscourt Estate, a big house and gardens not far from us, is very scenic and lined with stately trees. We went on a family sketching day there in April.

For some actual shinrinyoku, there are the easily accessible, and very close to us, woods on the side of Bray Head. This is an April 19th sketch of a very knotty and ivy covered tree that I liked. I enjoy doing sketches using watercolour pencils, bringing along a small plastic container of water with me, just dipping the pencils in water as I wish.

On the bank holiday Monday just past, the bluebells were out in full force in these woods.

Again, a sketch using watercolour pencils on a very pleasant day.

Castles!

After Easter I went for a few days down to Waterford area. As discussed in a previous post, I stopped in Carlow town for lunch and afterwards paid a visit to the beautiful Carlow Castle. Believe it or not, this is very close to the centre of the town! I am happy to re-post this picture of the castle.

 After a morning in Waterford the following day, we took a drive in search of some dolmens, named in my monuments book (Guide to National & Historic Monuments of Ireland by Peter Harbison). It was yet another gorgeous day and while stretching our legs at a walk by a series of man-made ponds near Dunhill, Co. Waterford, we thought we could see a casle silhouette in the distance. My husband asked in the local pub if there was a castle nearby, and we got directions to Dún Aoill.

The three storey castle was at the top of a low hill but very accessible. There were a few families picnic-ing at its base and lots of children enjoying the ruin,

The view from the castle was lovely too.

Though not as large as my favourite castle what I loved about Dún Aoill was that you could climb up several floors, and be within the ruins, not just look at it from the outside. Ballycarbery Castle is definitely my favourite castle in Ireland. It is near Cahirciveen, Co. Kerry near to where I lived for three years in the mid-1990s, so I visited it regularly. I never really think of it as being so huge, until I see pictures of it, but the remains are only of one corner so the castle in its day must have really been gigantic. This castle is on a farmer's field and is only accessible from the road at low tide,

Ecclesiastic ruins

The days are still gorgeous here at home, but I am so glad they were amazing while on Easter break, and especially for the little sojourn down to Waterford and surrounding area. On the leisurely way back home, the first stop was Jerpoint Abbey, County Kilkenny. This was a ruin I had seen pictures of and was meaning to visit for a long time, but never found the opportunity. It was originally founded for the Benedictine order in 1158 AD but became a Cistercian abbey by 1180 AD.

It is a well-kept OPW site with information displays in the small visitor centre and an additional museum style room containing items that were found on site and further didactics.

The colonnaded cloister area was beautifully decorated with carvings on all window columns.

One of the didactics claimed that it was against their order for the Cistercian monks to live in highly decorated surrounds. As there were carvings everywhere and evidential remnants of frescoes on the walls, the monks here must have been a rebellious lot!

Continuing along the road home, we were going through the town of Gowran (also in Kilkenny) and happened upon this ecclesiastic ruin, so stopped to take a look at St. Mary's Church, originally built around 1275 AD.

My monuments book talks about how the decoration here contrasts to Cistercian building, but as I said above, Jerpoint Abbey was quite decorated, and certainly would have been anything but austere in its heyday!