A new year.

New projects.....

..........gradually coming together from a collection of half formed ideas. Each time I enroll in a course I learn new skills and from these come new ideas. Not necessarily to everyone's taste, but one thing I am sure of right now is that it is the process of creativity that matters most to me, and if someone else enjoys the outcome then that is a bonus.

In February I  spent three days learning how to make a Japanese scroll. 

This is a very niche skill. Not many people choose to give up three days of their life to learn how to glue pages of fine paper together and wrap them in cloth backed with fine kozo 
(mulberry) paper and then lined with decorative paper.

For me this was a burning ambition that is now happily fulfilled. I dream of creating long books that can be layed out or hung from the wall, full of images created with my camera or with sumi-ink.  

I learned to make a scroll under the kind and attentive eye of Lucy May Schofield. 

Lucy describes herself as

'an artist whose intuitive practice explores a somatic relationship to the earth within a palette of light and time. Charting the seasonal shifts through performative interplays with paper and expanded print; a meditation on materials and making as meditation.'

She makes much of her work using the technique of japanese wood cut ( Mokuhanga). The scroll is one of many ways that she presents her work. 

There were ten participants on the course. All had different underlying reasons for attending, and all were female. I don't know what that means.....

Day one had me quite worried. At the end of an exhausting day all that we had done was to choose a piece of fabric and glue a sheet of kozo paper to its reverse. This was to be the cover for the scroll. I could not see how we would finish the whole thing in the time remaining.

Oh me of little faith!

Day two was my birthday.

A birthday made in heaven...... doing something that I have been longing to do for a long time. 

On day two we did wood carving. This was somewhat alarming for one who has a fear of sharp knives. 

Carving a post to fit a hole using a chisel was a challenge mentally. But the sense of satisfaction was enormous, and we celebrated with cake. 

Day three was the bringing together of all the elements; glueing pages together, trimming and glueing the cover, attaching the scroll to the wooden end, and finally adding a decorative ribbon in a very fiddly process also involving a chisel. Much excitement filled the room as we laid out our works of art. 

The making of a traditional scroll is fiddly and labout intensive. But the resulting structure is a wonderful way to tell a story with images. The images are gradually revealed, and the linear layout is very different to viewing pages in a book. The whole thing can be viewed in its entirety, or small portions can be revealed and concealed. 

So do I really think I will have the patience to make another?

I am honestly not sure, but I really do wish to try. If not, I may well create something more contemporary. Like any new skill. once you understand the basic principles it is allowed to break the rules and go off-piste down your own personal rabbit hole. 

Here is some work by Cas Holmes  based on fabric rather than paper that embraces the  joining together of 'pages' in a vertical display. 

On a more photographic note here is some work that I saw recently by the Canadian artist Lotus Kang at MOMA in New York.

Enormous sheets of photographic film draped over bars.... another modern variation on a traditional theme. I enjoy the sculptural nature of the work. 

Something will come out of this...... of that I am certain..........

I just don't yet know what.

But I am taking Japanese paper and cyanotype chemicals with me on my next adventure, and that will be a start. 

Christmas 2025. 

A special treat; spending time with my children, their family and all of us living together in one house for two whole days. 

A Vancouver Christmas.
Via New York.

For what better way to get into the Christmas spirit than to walk the streets of that spectacular city, all decked out for Christmas. The last time we visited New York was at Christmas 30 years ago. So many changes; tall thin, unbelievably high sky scrapers dwarfing the Empire State Building. The museum at Ground Zero; a very moving tribute to the many who lost their lives in 9/11. The leafy highline walk giving vistas from a raised viewpoint. 

All of these we visited. After breakfast we set ourselves up for the day with a game of table tennis and table football in the lobby of our hotel . OH ( my other half) won every time. I didn't mind. I was just glad to play the games of my youth before stepping out into the bracing cold of the city. Full thermals required, 

I carried a tiny Olympus camera in my pocket. This was not a photography trip. But if I had stayed longer, and been alone, I would have focused on the justaposition of trees and high rise buildings. Nature in the city. 

Black and white or colour?

A difficult choice. 

I enjoy both.

Last time we visited with children in tow. This time we were free to wander and walk, eat bagels and visit art galleries. 

I really wanted to see the Guggenheim, having been blown away by the Guggenheim in Bilbao in 2023. 

Suffice to say that I didn't take any photos of the New York Guggenheim. It was so much smaller and less spectacular than its Spanish contemporary. The art on show was political and didn't resonate with my festive mood. 

It was completed in 1959, 38 years before the Spanish version, so it seems unfair to compare the two. But I have. I can only say that I was not uplifted in the way I anticipated.

I had no expectations for MOMA, the museum of Modern Art in New York, and it far exceeded my expectations. OH was also greatly impressed, a rare happening in an art gallery. So many famous artists and a spacious, attractive layout. We spent a whole afternoon there soaking in the wonders.

I enjoyed exploring how other photographers had captured the city. Going in close to create abstracts with windows, or using intentional camera movement to accentuate the lights at night.

I fell in love with Matthew Wong's oil painting 'Unknown pleasures" 2019. It reminds me of everything that I hold dear. Nature, mountains and flowing water, or is it an undulating road? 

I was highly amused to find an exhibit of the very same brown paper bags that I used to make cyanotypes on during my residency at Vashon Island. My cyanotypes were rejected for the Vashon alumni exhibition this year, and not surprising, as they were rough and ready, made as an experiment.

If only I had left them unaldulterated as simple functional bags I might have made it into MOMA!

And yes, there were works by Monet, VanGogh and Rothko. Ansel Adams and Irving Penn. But I was also really taken with an image of olive trees in African heat by JoAnn Verburg. It has the feel of pages in a book, with the trees framed and hung as a quadriptych, set in soft African light. Expansive and calming. 

And having seen some art we returned to Central Park, to enjoy the festive atmosphere. An endless stream of horse and carriages and bicycle rickshaws decked for the holiday streamed past us. Santa hats and cheesy music blaring out. 

I rode on the carousel with parents and children. I will never be too old to enjoy a carousel ride. 

I was happy as Larry.

And then we flew to Vancouver for the real purpose of our journey. To see our children and to play games. To walk in the forest and shout at the pantomime villain. 

Family traditions are made of moments like these. 
I felt very lucky.