Away BACK To Lamorna

A beautiful aquatint of Lamorna Cove by Geoffrey Sneyd Garnier (Penlee Museum & Gallery, Penzance)

We've just come back from a week in Cornwall and there's a little bit of a story to why we stayed where we did. It only seems like a couple of years since we were last there, but I see from my blogpost about it that it was April 2012! That first time, we stayed in the second house from the left in the terrace (above), but we saw that the next-door house was much nicer than the one we were in. Through the large bay windows we couldn't help but notice beautiful paintings on the walls, stacks of lovely china in the alcoves and attractive furniture. In fact we even found ourselves at an auction on the same day as next-door's tenants (at David Lay in Penzance -- very good) and later we saw all their beautiful purchases laid out in their window (this made a strong impression on me as success at an auction is something I value highly). It turned out to be possible to rent that next-door house for holidays and so this time it was us in the beautiful house, which we now know is called Cove House.

Cove House (on the left with two bay windows and extension)

In the comments book, someone had described the house as 'Kettles Yard by the sea' and it certainly has that flavour. There's enough modern stuff to enable life to be lived more or less as normal (hot water, big cooker, small TV and so on) but otherwise one feels one has passed through a membrane into the past.

I liked the old flags used as curtains in the bathroom and the stacks of chunky Portmerion mugs with Bewick prints on them in the kitchen.

There was a wonderful lamp with prints clipped to the shade -- too frail to use but splendid to look at:

Dora makes a determined stand for modernity

My favourite object in the house was this strange little figure:

There was a brand name on the back, or perhaps it was even a marketing slogan, but I forgot to make a note of it. If anyone knows anything about her mysterious ballbearing anatomy, please leave me a comment about it.
     The best thing about Cove House is really its location, right down by the sea in front of the little harbour (and, necessary evil, the car park) at Lamorna Cove. You can have your feet in the sea in half a minute, or you can be sitting in the little enclosed garden in even less time. The sea performed a full repertoire for us, from emerald calm to silvery seething to foamy waves -- always mesmerising.

The whole of the Cove is privately owned and changed hands recently, causing some anxiety. Parking is very strictly overseen, although a parking place comes with the house booking (plus another one in the tiny garage, if you should happen to drive a miniature car). I have very fond memories of having the crab and fish soup at the cafe decades ago when I spent two Christmases in St Ives with my mum -- they still serve the soup but the bowl of it that I had this week wasn't the splendid rich concoction of memory (and some reviewers on TripAdvisor seem to agree with me). But times change. As do I -- against my better judgment, here are a couple of photos of me from the first time I went to Cornwall, in the mid-Eighties. Note the legwarmers...

On one of the front windows of Cove House is a little notice, part of the advertising of it as a holiday rental:

This intrigued me greatly. I adore Arnold Bennett's Potteries novels and it was exciting to think that we were staying in a house he once stayed in -- although having tried to psych myself up to a pitch of 'resonance' with AB, I decided in the end that it's impossible to get a real sense of a person's presence from being in a place they once were. Still, he probably slept in the same bedroom and looked out at the very same view. I decided, as soon as I got home, to try to research his visit (or perhaps visits) in more detail. Stop here if you don't want to wade into a long episode of sleuthing...
     In the postcard on the window (above), which is dated 1908, Cove House is not actually there. To begin with there were only three houses in the terrace -- Cove House was built later. You can see that the building materials are a little different in the earlier photo of the house exterior. And the little extension was built later still. This is borne out by comparing this map, from the decade of 1900-1910...

The three houses in the terrace are just to the left of the footbridge. Although there's hard-standing for another house, there isn't actually a building there

...with this one from the 1960s:

Cove House has now been built and is named on the map

Alas, I haven't found a map for the decades in between so can't pinpoint exactly when the house was built. It was probably between about 1910 and 1920, I think.
     Here's an old photo of Cove House before the garage extension was built:

Now here's a postcard from the Sixties, with the garage now added:

The whole cove had been developed by this stage, with a car park, sea wall and slipway. The cafe has been created on the left as well. But I think that Cove House was perhaps also run as a tea room in the 1930s.
     In her biography of Arnold Bennett of 1974, Margaret Drabble says that Bennett came down to Cornwall for a six-week stay in July and August 1930, right at the end of his life (he would die of typhoid from drinking tap water in Paris the following March). He came with his partner, the actress Dorothy Cheston -- they don't seem to have brought their four-year-old daughter Virginia with them. He had just finished his last (full) novel, Imperial Palace, an epic contemporary story built around the running of the Savoy Hotel. Bennett was a celebrity and there was interest in where he had chosen to spend his holiday:

Birmingham Daily Gazette, 18 August 1930

Shortly after Bennett's death, this letter appeared in the Staffordshire Sentinel (27 April 1931):

It's this letter that makes me think that Cove House functioned as a tea room -- the 'unpretentious little cottage, one of a row, facing the water'. As a publisher myself, it's exciting to imagine Bennett sitting in our holiday cottage correcting his proofs!
     Although Imperial Palace was Bennett's last completed novel, when he returned to London in September (following a short cruise on a friend's yacht), he began another novel, Dream of Destiny, which he would not finish. In this, he has a character declare:

And in a letter from Cornwall to his nephew Richard, Bennett wrote, 'On the whole, this is certainly the best English holiday I have ever had, and one of the very cheapest.' He went on:

Later in the holiday, at the end of July 1930, the couple moved up to Trewoofe (pronounced 'Trove'), a comfortable house at the top of the lane that leads down to Lamorna Cove, owned by the Shaws. Their daughter was the excellent painter Dod Procter.
     Bennett's final verdict on his Cornwall staycation (which, as far as I know, was his only visit to the county) comes in a further letter to his nephew:

And I agree with every word of that.

'Green Sea, Lamorna Cove' by Dame Laura Knight -- the sea was even greener than this during our stay

The green sea, and Porthmeor Beach, seen through the window of one of the studios in the St Ives School of Painting, last week

If you'd like to stay in Cove House yourself, you'll find all the details here: http://www.lamornacovehouse.com/ (btw, none of the above is intended to 'advertise' the house, it's just written out of my interest in a lovely place!)

Postcard secrets pinned down

I've been working away on my print series and a few other things for months now, hence the fall off in blogposts. For the last two weekends, I've been framing, framing, framing. Today I decided to photograph everything to get a feel for how the images look all together.

The main series consists of 'secrets' gleaned from old postcards. By 'secrets' I mean details that are not what the eye sees when it takes in the postcard image in the normal way. In some cases the images are barely visible to the naked eye in the original. I've taken these details and reconstituted them as postcards in their own right, complete with the original captions. I feel this link back to the source of the image is important. The images are strange and unexplained, perhaps rendered even more so when presented as picture postcards. I really like the slightly surreal feeling of some of them: strange, fleeting figures or lonely people isolated in a busy scene. I hope other people will like them -- I'm intending to have them for sale at my open studio days in September. They won't be expensive.

This is probably my favourite print.

I like this one too as I was thrilled to find a naked lady caught unawares through a chalet window. She is tiny in the original. (Both the above pics come from the same original postcard, a wonderful find.)

I like this one too. Well, obviously I like them all, as I created them. It's been very satisfying to make them. Here are some more:

That's probably enough images for now. I'll save the other series for another post. I'd love to know if you like them. The photos aren't perfect but that's slightly deliberate to discourage copying.

Craig's Postcard Collection

Because of my renewed interest in art derived from postcards, I've been buying more postcards lately, quite often from international sellers. When the cards come in the post, it seems to be standard practice to slot the bought card in between two giveaway cards, used as stiffeners. Such is my interest in all things postcard that I always hope these extra postcards will have something to recommend them to me as well -- who doesn't love a freebie? But the most recent ones have been rather dull.

Except.... (now, I may be more or less the last person in Western Europe not to be aware of this story, in which case, please smile understandingly and pass on your way...) I noticed that a couple of these postcards were addressed to the same person. One card was from France, one from Hungary. Then I found a third among my collection, from Switzerland. All addressed to the same person, called Craig Shergold.

My mind was racing, thinking, 'What on earth are the chances of that?' I thought I might be able to do one of my research projects on this person, but as soon as I googled his name, I discovered his story. As this is readily findable online, I won't go into too much detail, but when Craig was nine, back in 1989, he became very unwell. Perhaps as a way of cheering him up, his friends and relatives started up a campaign to have so many people send him get-well messages that he would get into the Guinness Book of Records. The campaign was a great success and cards began to pour in from all over the globe. By May 1990 Craig had received over 16 million cards and this was duly recorded as a record in the 1991 Record Book. But the inrush of cards had taken on a life of its own and by May 1991 over 33 million cards had been delivered to that address in Carshalton. Wonderfully, Craig had surgery in America that saved his life and he got on with living it, but the cards just wouldn't stop. By 1998 over 250 million cards had been sent to Craig and the Post Office had had to give his house its own postcode. His family asked the Post Office to stop delivering the cards and they moved house. The request to send Craig a get-well message was like Chinese whispers and got corrupted as it went round and round the planet -- so even the three cards I've pictured have variations in the spelling of Craig's name and address.
     The cards had become a kind of curse, though no doubt everyone who sent them meant well. He wants nothing more than for the deluge of cards to stop -- the total may be as many as 350 million cards by now.
     So it's not such a coincidence that I should own just three out of the 350 million postcards sent to Craig. Cards that arrive for Craig now go straight to recycling. People, it's got to stop!

Saying it with a postcard

I've signed up for Hertfordshire Open Studios for the first time this year. It will take place throughout September 2014 and I feel both excited and apprehensive -- I will be expected to do artist-like things for any visitors (the website where you sign up strongly recommends that you offer demonstrations while your studio is open). That would be quite challenging.
     For now, I'm trying to prepare in good time and part of the preparation is to make some work that people might like to buy without spending a lot of money. I'm working on a series of limited edition digital prints which I'll frame. More on these in a moment.
     Because I'd signed up for the Open Studios, earlier this month I was invited to meet up with other artists whose studios are nearby. We met at a pub. I was, as usual, rather excitable at this prospect. I got to the pub quite early and had to do that thing of walking around, trying to guess which person or group of people was the bare bones of the get-together. It felt a bit like going on a blind date. Nerve-wracking, but when I got to the far end of the large pub and saw a big table with two women sitting quite far apart I guessed that this must be it -- or they had just had a row. I got the right table! Soon there were ten or eleven of us and although there was the usual awkwardness of meeting a group of people for the first time, it was enjoyable. At a certain point someone made a move to hand out their cards and suddenly everyone did the same, there were a few minutes of happy card-swapping and the ice was definitely broken.
     So the get-togethers are going to continue fairly regularly and hopefully friendships will grow out of it (actually some people already knew each other but I didn't know anyone). And the next meeting is coming up already. Last time we discussed something we could do the next time we met and we decided to each bring a postcard of something that has a bearing on our art -- an image of a favourite artwork, whatever we want. This will be a treat for me but it's hard to choose which one to bring: I'm obsessed with postcards. I have about 100 old postcards that I've carefully 'curated' for special qualities I see in them (potential for the sort of art I want to do in relation to them) and I frequently sort through them, again rather obsessively, looking for things I may have missed in them the last time I looked. I was telling my Dad about this activity and he described it as 'forensic', which I think is a very good word for what I'm doing.
     So my postcard for the meet-up is going to have to be a Richard Hamilton. A fortnight ago I went to see the Hamilton retrospective at Tate Modern. I've long counted Richard Hamilton among my top ten favourite artists (along with Richter, Rauschenberg, Peter Blake, David Hockney, Warhol, Marlene Dumas, Eric Fischl, David Salle, Wilhelm Sasnal). I've followed him through quite a few different phases of his art, some I've liked more than others, but the work that I do like, I love. I agree with this art critic that he has been lumbered with the title of 'The Father of Pop Art', almost entirely as a result of the collage he made in 1956, 'Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?' and that consequently his work as a whole has perhaps been over-valued, in the sense of taken to be more significant than it is, so made to carry a heavier burden of importance than it needed to. But it was very good to be able to see his work brought together and set out chronologically. It was exciting to see, in moving from one room to another, elements of pop culture almost literally breaking in to Hamilton's rather ascetic, pale, barely there academic paintings about perspective and movement. Suddenly, there were spacemen, baseball heroes and JFK, patched in to a new set of pale academic paintings. Popular culture can be seen shouldering its way in to his art in the early sixties.
     The best part of the show, for me, were the paintings and prints based on postcards. It was wonderful to see them in the flesh when, previously, I think I've only seen them in reproductions. These have been a true inspiration to me. They were done in an era when enlargements had to be done using cumbersome equipment -- no scanners then -- and when Hamilton took a postcard of Whitley Bay, a little seaside town on the North East coast (quite close to where he had a teaching post at the time) and blew up a detail of it by stages, it was an experiment to see how far he could push the process before the 'real life' image broke down into abstraction. He made this foldout work, using a roughly A5-sized reproduction of the postcard, which shows the steps:

I've got the same postcard that Hamilton used:

The area he honed in on is about two thirds of the way down and two thirds of the way across:

This is Hamilton's print based on his close-up:

Bathers, Richard Hamilton, 1968

Over the past few years I've done quite a number of large mixed-media pieces based on old postcards, for instance:

All the above four pictures are about 3' x 4'.The idea was to isolate a 'drama' that was not so apparent in the original postcard, by masking out other figures and objects. I left a ghostly hint of what was once there underneath the pigment. In the third picture down, 'Hyde Centre', most of the right hand side of the original image was taken up by a large tree. I masked it out and recreated the building behind it.
     But currently I'm working on a series of digital prints, as mentioned above. In these I hunt for hidden details and make them into a new 'postcard'. So, for instance, below is a print I've made from the same postcard of Seaton Carew as the first of the above four pictures:

I've found a little girl who looks as though she might be running away. I don't want to upload too detailed a photo of any of my prints because they're digital, and so the image is the artwork -- hence the photo of this one framed, to protect it a little from being reproduced willy nilly. I'm working on lots of different images, but you might have to come along to one of my open studio days to see them properly. I like the quality you get when you go deep into the original image to mine its secrets. Anyway, I hope people will like them. And this is what I'll be talking about at the pub next week, clutching two postcards, one of Whitley Bay and one of a Richard Hamilton blow-up taken from it.