My rucksack

                                                                                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                                                                           

The window I will 'write': 

1. It will show some of the remains or imprint of past geological times thinking of Darwin and his contemporaries' finds .
2. It will contribute to the discovery of Marga's life and artwork. It will keep the imprint of my anecdotal visual memories of a life in Shrewsbury as an artist
3. It will present fossilisation of items of our late C20th and early C21st life (choice made later with participants to activities run in the museum at the time of the exhibition)                            

After a few visits of Shrewsbury Museum, I now have a rucksack of adequate pieces of its collections to build my artwork. 

Glass slides of fossils:

The Shrewsbury Museum has in its collection a box of microscope slides of the time of Darwin and his contemporaries. It is not only interesting for the glass slides but also for the patterns of the cardboards holding the glass slides as well as the hand writing, the colours scheme.

In 2012,  Dr Falcon-Lang found more "Inside the drawer where hundreds of beautiful glass slides made by polishing fossil plants into thin translucent sheets". "The fossils became "lost" because J. D. Hooker (1817-1911) failed to number them in the formal specimen register before setting out on an expedition to the Himalayas". British Geological Survey website
I wish to use the patterns of some of the glass slides fossils Dr Falcon-Lang found and some of the Museum's glass slides of the box on display.

Shrophire rocks/layers:
The agate gemstones cuts of nodules I chose earlier may be shaped with water jet technique to match the pattern of the landscape as drawn in the print chosen for display on the wall of the Hall of Rocks and Minerals.

agate gemstones cuts

the print on the walls of the Hall of Rocks and Minerals

            



Christian culture in Shrewsbury:
For the spiritual/medieval life of Shrewsbury, lessons and prayers would have been read during, otherwise silent, mealtimes from the pulpit when it formed part of the Abbey refectory.The pulpit close to the Abbey is also close to my stained glass studio and I always find it very neglected or lost in its surrounding of modern car parking. It was separated since 1836 from the Abbey Church by the London to Holyhead road.
The painting (Unknown painter, 1800-1860, SHYMS:FA/1991/193) in the Museum Collection has a mystery figure in the background who seems to be of black origins. Who was that person?

St Alkmund and St Julian churches are painted in two paintings of the collection of Shrewsbury Museum.
I had loved both at the time of my first visit of the Rowley's House Museum in 1999.
Those two churches are in the view I mention in the next piece in my rucksack.

Pnorama of Shrewsbury 1630 1658 oil on canvas SHRMS2009_00001

detail of the couple holding each other's hand

A Formal Garden in Dogpole,
attributed to John Bowen, oil on canvas C18th 

My view also has a wall and I wish to play with the display of sculptures and pots in the Dogpole painting, choosing the display of items along the old brick wall I view each day. Those items can be defined in a workshop with teenagers or adults thinking of a colour scheme that would work with the colours taken out of the rocks/minerals of Shropshire.

The Medieval Times as reference to the Arts & Crafts:
Thinking of the Medieval Gallery/stained glass medieval art collections of the Museum, a period of reference to the Arts & Crafts movement of which Marga's artwork belongs, the Medieval Gallery shows a collection of painted roundels on the theme of seasons.

The theme of seasons is important as humans for our relation to the Earth. Seasonal changes is the ingredient of many photos of a view of Shrewsbury from my home. I took photos and photos of this same view through seasons for a few years. St Alkmund and St Julian's churches are on the line of the horizon of that view. There, all most common birds have made their observatory from a birch tree and found a rest corner of an other tree closer to my home (left of the photo bellow)
Birds are in Marga's windows of  Shrewsbury Cathedral. Birds are part of many anecdotal memories to me and to all people.

one of the photos I took of the same view, winter 2016 on the day of storm Imogen, a strong bird at the top of the birch tree

Darwin, Fire/Earth Crust mobility/Volcanoes&Corals:

So, Mt Erebus, a volcano named after the ship used by J.D. Hooker.
"In Greek mythology, Erebus was the son of the god Chaos, and his mother was Gaia, or Earth. Erebus was made of darkness and shadow, and he filled the corners of the world with his darkness."
A little bit more brain work for me to read again a few pages about the interaction volcanoes/corals.
It is in my rucksack as a Note...

brain coral

Marga, Water/Creation:

Shropshire underwater and forest fossils sculpted on glass or kiln formed on glass or with water jet abrasion?

Fossil_Shrewsbury Museum

Fossil_Shrewsbury Museum

Marga and monastic life:

As Marga chose to enter monastic life, I add in my rucksack the Effigy of Christ (Untraced Accession SHCMS: H.06498, Medieval Gallery)

It also recalls the artwork by Joseph Beuys whose work also had medieval references. In 1992 I had studied his social sculpture as part of my Fine Arts degree research titled Oeil Critique.

my research work on Joseph Beuys Crosses or Christ effigies

Shrewsbury Museum effigy of Christ

My effigy_  Earth on border line to crucifixion 1992

I will keep this 1992 artwork as an essential ingredient in writing of the window

Slept on it

 

                                                                                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                                                                           

One full day at Swansea University of Wales Trinity Saint David site, Alexandra Road, Friday 11th March, 20 years after I had left it all behind. I had been a student in the well established and famous 'Glass Department', at the very edge of a time presented as 'the middle years' ( see photos below).
I was privileged of a last chance to meet Tim Lewis as a teacher in 1995-1996.

With many visitors for a very special Friday for a glass conference as well as the Glass Beacon Opening, the Alex Design Exchange got me convinced 'the shining years' have for sure started.

I had not forgotten the Mumbles too. I have chosen on my arrival day to go for a walk along the beach all sadly reminded of C21st plastic pollution of oceans and seas.

Among the great speakers of the conference, were Rodney Bender and Dr Tyra Oseng-Rees who both presented their research on glass studio waste or glass bottles recycling, the application to art or industry.

Rodney Bender
the artwork_ a volcano 

Dr Tyra Oseng-Rees
Research

Back to my own fine art work via the visit of this site where all creative ambitions had landed 20 years ago, I am on that Friday all ready for the Marga & Collections window to be the second landing for achievements I wish to celebrate. M&Cs is a turning point in my career or life?

Why did I title it M&Cs?

• Marga is the environment artist with the continuous journey from fine arts to Arts & Crafts, to a monastic life. ( her cousin also a stained glass artist, also named Margaret, got the short name Tor. My Margaret got the short name of Marga)
• The word Collections stands for Science/Darwin's fossils or collections, Museums/Culture of collective memories.

For the time of the conference, I held in mind the ideas I wished not to neglect for my M&Cs:

1. The Earth as our planet = a survival ahead
2. One Market/One World
3. C21st spiritual challenges
4. New vital scientific studies of Nature or Humanities.

Marga and her fellow artists of the Arts & Crafts movement also called for Nature no longer to be forgotten by a vast human ambition of 'progress' applied to the world.
Marga's Baptestry Window at the Shrewsbury Cathedral was the very first window I viewed of her work the year I moved to Shrewsbury.

I loved beyond measure the rhythm of it all, the circular pattern of the water flow, the heat of red flames with dragons all ready to demonstrate their power their eyes on us, the feast of the earth elements or animal world ( the Running Stag ), a vibrant unity all celebrating life with and on Earth for a memorial window.

In 2016, a loud survival clock ticks each single day, like a countdown and a warning.
The symbol I chose following the invitation by Swansea School of Glass to a modest contribution to the Glass Beacon Project, is a symbol I had drawn in the late 90s. A symbol for Action & Unity.

The Glass Beacon project included in the design the symbols sent by past students.
I had sent this symbol as my glass conceptual/spiritual journey, the eyes of a journey through light , mysteries, pain, joy, time all holding itself as one call.

one eye has been chosen, on blue glass, in the middle window
lower section, first row, 6th piece from left

What I sent as my symbol

part of their cartoon for the three sections above

all in the tower!

One essential piece of technology used for the making of the Glass Beacon project, is the water jet glass cutting.
I will use the technology as a research for applying new skills to the design for Marga & Collections as a contemporary glass artwork.
Dr Shelley Doolan talked about her use of water jet cutting for her art as "a synthesis of ancient and modern processes to explore themes and concepts through the medium of glass".

M&Cs, as an artwork, is a synthesis of ancient and modern in Nature, via Science, for Memories. Glass is the most adequate material to present this Synthesis because of its multiplicity of uses through human history, its intrinsic presence in the environment, its non-stop 'modernity' for past, contemporary and future cultures.

The speakers Martin Crampin and Alun Adams were also reminding us on this Friday, how stained glass windows are pieces of our history or culture to the same level as paintings on canvases or sculptures wherever the windows are.

Alun Adams

To close the day, Dr Nicola Gordon Bowe gave us the privilege of a talk live by Skype on a large screen before us all. She could not travel due to illness. Her passionate talk about Wilhemina Geddes stained glass art with a dynamic tempo of a sharp "next!"...."next!"..."next!"...."next!" after each image, stamped my brain like the logo of unquestionable 'joy with' or 'love for' stained glass art beyond all circumstances: mental or physical illness, wars, poverty, solitude and many more...

So, I travelled back home all shaken, recharged or infused, eye lashes nearly turning to brushes, my brain all recovering of the travelling through time, a circular journey from Swansea to Swansea via Shrewsbury back to Shrewsbury!

Advised by sleeping tight with it all, I woke up all accomplished this Saturday with all conceptual/spiritual choices made for the M&Cs artwork!

A poem

Since announced in September 2015, the site of the window has been chosen. It is the set of the main and the upper window by the entrance of the Medieval Gallery. The drawing below shows the window as it had been first built.

I today start this post as the first page of Journal II for this new project at a stage of research for the design proposal.

It all starts with a poem I wrote this week. My first intention was to publish a post for updates. It all imposed itself on me as a poem as soon as I wrote the first words.

In the process of research for this artwork since September 2015, it has become obvious this artwork also is writing, like Medieval stained glass windows  called for readers, this is a call for readers too.

On ISSUU

Our Modern Magna Carta _  JOURNAL I

Please find Journal I, all about artwork Our Modern Magna Carta students and I created for the 800th Anniversary of the Magna Carta.

It gives all details about the project and the views of the stained glass artwork as a book on ISSUU.

My delight that it also has a quote chosen by students of Malala as a human right campaigner

KAE also filmed me in the process of making.