Lights at Night, an Odd-looking Moon, and a Group exhibition at Koru Gallery, Dunedin
"Shut your eyes and come outside!" Laura took me by the arm, and led me down the hall. There was a rattle and creak, and the tingle of cold night air as she opened the back door. I gingerly inched my way down the back steps.
I opened my eyes on her command, and it transpired that Laura had found a good use for some "useless" yarn bowls that had distorted in a recent firing. How lovely it was to see a line of flickering tea lights merrily illuminating the edge of the path near the kiln shed!
It must be said that good stuff happens high in the sky too. Sometimes it is worth looking up! Our moon blinked a few nights ago, or was devoured, or was reborn, or something!
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I have had lots of firings of the kiln since I posted last, but hardly any time to sit at the computer and do a blog post! Beginning Thursday 16 October, we will be having an exhibition with our good friends, Rhonda and Mark, at Koru Gallery in Dunedin. Mark makes clocks, Rhonda works with fabric, Laura paints, and I have my pots, so it will be interesting to see it all come together.
I will try to post some images of work that is at the exhibition, once we are up and running there, but.... here is a little sample..
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| A clock by Mark. |
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| Jacket by Rhonda. |
I am firing another group of crystalline glazed pots as I write this, and hope to also squeeze in a firing of porcelain domestic ware before the exhibition.
Every day has needed work done in the studio, so I haven't seen much of the wider world for a while. Spring has almost passed without me participating in it, but we did have the eclipse to marvel at a few evenings ago, and a clear sky to see it by! My camera hates taking photos at night, it gets grumpy and won't focus ... we fight... but, happily, some of the photos that I took turned out well enough to give an impression of the moon being devoured by the earth's shadow.
Whilst I wrestled with the camera, Laura tried to encourage the telescope to see the moon. Really, telescopes are most frustrating inventions. There is the moon as clear, as clear can be when seen with the naked eye, but the same silver disk becomes slippery and cunning when a telescope is trained upon it. It took a change of lens, and about 20 minutes of intense concentration to actually find the moon! The frustration was worth it, as the moon was very beautiful indeed seen through the telescope. The eclipse and the telescope lens transformed the usual cool white into hauntingly pale and pretty colours, rather reminiscent of the face of Ophelia in the painting by John Everett Millais.
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| John Everett Millais - Ophelia - Google Art Project |
It has to be said that our eyes, the telescope, and the camera gave quite different versions of events. What we saw through our eyes was probably the most beautiful of all, but it would have been good to have seen it bigger. "Blood Moon" is what all the newspapers called it, with all the associated baggage of doom-laden superstition, but that was not what I saw either!
I must go now and fiddle with the kiln where crystals are busily growing!
If you are in the Dunedin area, do visit the exhibition at Koru Gallery. You are most welcome to come to the opening, let me know if you have read about it on the blog!
Comments
I was unfamiliar with the painting Ophelia rather hauntingly appealing.
It is funny how some of us are organised and others work in a chaos! Isn't it nice that people are all different! I seem to be worse than ever at deadlines these days, and I remember packing pots that were still warm to the touch to one exhibition! Probably we have the right personality to be on stage, with all the drama of opening night!
Hi Linda,
Good to hear from you. I see that your little self portrait photo has changed, and looks really nice too! The Orphelia painting is amazing really, quite manically obsessive in detail. I read somewhere that the poor young lady who modelled for the painting unfortunately became ill as a result of having to spend many hours in a bath tub of cold water! The flowers in the painting are rather lovely. I imagine that many trips to market were made to buy fresh flowers for the artist when he was painting this!
Toes crossed for an excellent show. It's a little far for a day trip, unfortunately! I would love to see a few more photos!
Best of luck with the sale! Keep grown those beautiful crystals :)
Wishing you all a wonderful exhibition.
We missed the blood moon due to an over cast sky. And I got up early to see it.
Sure wish I were in that area for your exhibition. I know you will do wonderfully.
Shame you missed seeing the moon. I wasn't sure if what we were seeing down here was being seen in other countries or not. I guess it is all to do with where the moon is in relation to the earth's shadow, and all that starts to become complicated when trying to visualise in 3 dimensions! Hopefully more photos of work in the exhibition will be taken soon. A pity that we aren't in range of a day trip, it would be lovely to see you and the other blogger friends from around the world!
Hi Sandy,
Your mention of walking around the yard at 4am on a frosty morning where the moon was so strong that you had a shadow, reminded me of a time when we lived in a fairly remote forestry village where there were hardly any lights at night and almost no light pollution. We used to go for walks on clear winter nights, just by the light of the moon and stars. A lovely thing to do.
Hi Michèle,
Sorry that you have warped sponge holders, I certainly share similar frustrations with my yarn bowls!
Laura's transformation of my warped pots was genius, and made me feel so much better about them!!
Hi Patti,
A shame about the overcast sky in your part of the world when the moon was entertaining us down here! It was quite a good show too! Quite a strange feeling when the moon goes red and loses most of its light. I did notice that the stars appeared somewhat brighter when the moon went dim, which was rather a nice effect.
It would be so much fun if you were able to come to the exhibition. It is a pity about distance.. we need some sort of teleporting device like they had on Star Trek many years ago,..."Beam me up Scotty"! Maybe the kind boffins at Google will think of a blog teleporting button for us?