Walthamstow and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

We will be open again this weekend: Saturday and Sunday, 11am - 5pm.

Yaarit is just adding the finishing touches to her vases.




I’ve used a clip in the Hollow Ships audio of the American writer Henry Miller talking about France:

“Wherever the eye falls there is colour, irregularity, whimsy, individuality, together with all the evidences of age and use, the patina of life lived..”

This links really nicely to the vases but the most important thing for me, was to find a way to shoehorn Henry in. 

Whenever the going gets tough, or even when the going is pretty downhill, I often come back to Miller’s ‘Big Sur’ period for a boost or recharge or something like that. I particularly like ‘Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch’  because here is the domestic Henry, a million miles from his banned books, worrying about childcare and wondering about the world. And painting - really terrible water colours - but painting with joy and enthusiasm. 

I have a book of photographs of ‘Henry and friends’ in Big Sur. Here are some of my favourites:




Henry and his son Tony 



More about Henry Miler at: The Henry Miller Library


Tomorrow: Robert Lowell

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hollow Ships and Other Vessels

'Hollow Ships and Other Vessels' is a collaboration between Product Designer, Yaarit Mechany and her husband Tom Baker (me!) for the e17 Art Trail 2021 (Venue number 40). Yaarit has made 5 new, unique vases from old objects.  Playing on this year’s theme of ‘possible futures’, the objects have been brought together to create new, exciting forms, continuing and expanding their journey into the future. They're beautiful. You should come see them! I have created a sound installation which hopefully works alongside them as a kind of commentary on the vases and the idea of objects 'becoming' or moving towards 'possible futures'. As Anais Nin says, "The flow, always the flow." ..But there is also baseball and skateboarding woven in there too..  You can listen to the audio by clicking here: The Sound of the Hollow Ships You can visit us at: 20 Sybourn Street, E17 8HA I'll try to come back here soon to talk more about the project and our experience of
Read more

An Old Diary

Image
Another happy hectic day today at the hollow ships. I was going to write something here about Anais Nin but I'm too tired and I can't concentrate! Instead, I'm just going to paste a sort of old diary note that I just found. I wrote it on the 5th of July 2010 when I was living in New York. I had recently quit my advertising job and was spending a lot of time wandering around a la Henry Miller and muttering 'I no longer think I'm an artist, I am an artist' (Tropic of Cancer).  It's (nice?) (Terrifying?) to see that I'm still the same pretentious wally that I was at 28!  It's also interesting to read the note back and remember that I spent a lot of 2009-2010 reading Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet and, apparently, trying to sound as pompous and 'interesting' as he can.. (Durrell was a close friend of Henry Miller - see it all come's back to Miller eventually..) Also nice to remember the Carmine street pool - I miss going there for
Read more

Greetings from the Hollow Ships!

Image
Thanks so much to everyone who came to visit us today! It was great to hear about so many other people taking part. I really hope we can get out for a bit next week to visit some other venues. And who knew that combing ceramics, white curtains and excited toddlers could be, well, a little bit nerve racking? They don’t seem to mention this anywhere in the parenting books. It has been a VERY h ectic few - weeks? Months? Preparing for this but it has been great fun so far. We’re closed tomorrow for Adam’s 5th birthday party (go away rain) but will be opening the ships again next Saturday. I'll write more about the project in the week. I'll probably also use this as an excuse to write about other things that I feel are connected to it. Right, I have a dinosaur birthday cake to make... e17arttrail.co.uk  |  yaaritmechany.com  |  Hollow Ships Audio
Read more