My parents used to use two comparisons, “Taking coals to Newcastle” and “Selling sand to the arabs” and the former can be applied to yesterday’s sale of a work to John Doubleday. John is a well reknowned sculptor with a local one in Witham of Dorothy L. Sayers and the Britnoth one on Maldon prom. He did the Beatles outside the museum at liverpool which I saw a glimpse of on Strictly come dancing last night and Charlie Chaplin in Leicester Square. He is now working on two commissions of the Queen, one for Southend and the other for Gibraltar. So he has bought a copy of my ‘Lorryhed’ which you can see at the back of the display behind my ‘Venus in the pink’.
I visited the show yesterday to check it out and it was good to see John had put the ‘LOGs Meeting’ out on the grass outside. i took a photo to post here and he said it is much better to see it when the sun shines on it casting shadows. Seems he has really gotten into the spirit of it.
And it is in fact where I feel my art is at, now and all ways. Apulspirit and Apulessence. It seems that folk who came to the preview where, despite the heckler, I read the 6 verses of my prosepoem and discussed some of the content and folk are digging it. One visitor, a friend called Alan, sent me these words on an email, “After a string of ‘coincidences’ about 15 years ago I took up the study of Nicherin Daishonin’s Buddism – first rule – there are no rules…well almost…! And our chant is Nam-myoho-renge-kyo…I’m sure that you know that.” Well I didn’t before but I shall look into it. The mantra thing cropped up when a man in the audience (?) asked the value of mantra which I was ill equipped to answer but instead of putting it back to the group i tried having to admit i only use one, some buddhist me. another participant, Maxine, shared, ” I enjoy watching ‘Inside the Actors Studio’ and recently James Lipton interviewed Goldie Hawn, who became interested in Buddhism not as a religion but as a path of goodness 20 years ago.” So I watched Goldie being interviewed and can see she’s much more than an interesting face. But what is coming over is that folk are being fired up by my little ‘talks’ and I shall start to do some more, more deliberately. By that i mean these past two, the one on August 3rd in Colchester and that on Friday at john’s studio, have not been either advertised as ‘public’ nor really primed up. I mean in both cases the ‘hosts’ were neither told the parameters nor the self-expectations I had. I realise now it was because I wanted to see IF anyone would be interested in what was in my content and also I have nearly always done some sort of ‘presentation’ when I have exhibited. I think of them as live art, some may say ‘performance pieces’. Whether or not it’s ‘art’I don’t care but i would certainly prefer to be placed in a bag with Ken Campbell than Gilbert and Georgie boys.
Alan has also given the pot and scrolls a new title which I love so much i think i will adopt it as the name for the pices, The North Sea Scrolls. brilliant.
apulhed tingling 