A new drawing on my blackboard. This one's based on some photos I took of a snowy Hebden Bridge last year. Snow... beautiful but it makes everything so slippery in our damp little valley.
GOODBYE chalkboard drawing its time for a change
Surprised at how painless it was to wipe away my chalk drawing even though I felt it was quite a successful rendering of moorland and clouds.
MY STUDIO SPACE (unusually tidy)
In my tiny little studio space I do drawing, printmaking, painting and paper engineering with all the associated tools and materials. Sometimes I can hardly turn round there's so much stuff to be stored. So it takes a huge effort to make it suitably tidy and safe to allow people in for open studios. For a couple of days the space is lovely and calm and then it all unravels again...
FESTIVE OPEN STUDIOS WEEKEND DECEMBER 6 & 7
Its time for the seasonal celebrations at my base in Brooklyn Studios in Hebden Bridge and we are once again holding our annual Festive Open Weekend this coming Saturday and Sunday, 6 & 7 December, 11 am to 5 pm.
FESTIVE OPEN STUDIOS WEEKEND 6 & 7 DECEMBER 11.00 - 5.00
BROOKLYN STUDIOS, HEBDEN BRIDGE HX7 7DD
It will be lovely to see old friends and new. As usual I'll be making my famous Brooklyn Mulled Cider to keep the cold at bay but this year there will also be alcohol-free hot apple punch as an alternative for drivers and those being sensible!
I will be showing a wide variety of my work including new large charcoal drawings as well as some old favourites and a range of highly affordable small prints.
EPHEMERAL DRAWINGS 2
A set of slate writing tablets with chalk drawings of clouds. Thinking about contrasts; clouds so nebulous and soft seeming; slate so tangible and fixed.
The initial idea was about simply making pale clouds on a dark ground but the ones I like best are the dark clouds.
These were on show in the Sunday Schoolroom at Wainsgate Chapel during September.
SOLO EXHIBITION AT THE BINGLEY GALLERY
Excited because tonight is the preview of my solo show at the Bingley Gallery - Wednesday 8th October 7 - 9 pm.
The exhibition is titled All The World Is Smoke And Shadow and is open from 9th October to 2nd November. The text on the invite reads:
"A new series of drawings, painting and prints by Calderdale artist Angie Rogers, responding to the experience of the transient and the intangible within the South Pennine landscape.
Celebrating the mutability of all aspects of landscape whether man-made or wild, with an acute observation and deep knowledge derived from decades of walking in the South Pennines, Angie finds freedom in the constant dissolving and remixing of light, atmosphere and matter, allowing each day to spring new surprises in a familiar yet never fully knowable environment."
The main feature is the series of fairly large charcoal drawings I've been working on up at Wainsgate Chapel all year. I'm looking forward to seeing how they look in a gallery setting with their custom-mixed, grey painted wood frames.
The gallery is at 29 Park Road, Bingley BD16 4BQ and is owned and run by lovely Jane Fielder, well known for her beautiful watercolour paintings.
EPHEMERAL DRAWINGS 1
It all started in the summer when I went out to buy just a carton of milk but returned home with a lovely vintage easel, having taken a 'short cut' through the market. O the perils of a sunny day and a persuasive woman.
The easel still had 2 of the original pegs and attaching chains and seemed to be crying out for a blackboard so I made this one out of a new frame and a piece of plywood painted with home made chalkboard paint in a faux slate colour. Obviously the new, blond wood frame had to be stained and treated harshly to sit comfortably with the aged easel.
Blackboard equals thoughts of school and the memory of a feeling of imprisonment, looking out the window at the clouds and freedom. The schools I went to were strict with an over abundance of nuns and I don't remember ever getting the chance to draw on any of the innumerable boards there. So initially a slight sense of transgression and then something joyful in the freeing process of making a drawing that will disappear at the slightest touch.
Here's the easel in the stairwell leading into Wainsgate Chapel Sunday Schoolroom where I've had a temporary painting studio for the past 18 months until tomorrow when I move out.
HOLLINGWORTH LAKE EXHIBITION
I've put together an exhibition of work concentrating on reservoirs, including a series of new oil paintings of Widdop reservoir and domestic scale, framed reproduction prints of my huge reservoir tower drawings. The Visitor Centre is open most days including August Bank Holiday but is shut on Thursdays.
PHOTOS FROM LAST SATURDAY AT CBNR
I've shared these photos from Bruce's post on the reserve's blog as I didn't have my camera on the day. The print which is propped up by the big river pebble is my latest woodcut featuring a Sandpiper flying over Widdop Reservoir. This was its first public showing, unlike the Pennine Twite that gets everywhere. Glad to be able to show some of Alan's beautiful butterflies.
AN EXCELLENT DAY AT CROMWELL BOTTOM
Annoyingly, I forgot to take my camera to the open day at Cromwell Bottom Nature Reserve today so am making do with this photo of the cards I had made recently from my reed pen drawings of the reed beds and river during the late winter.
Lovely weather and lots of interesting people to chat to. Highlights were being able to look at Alan's large display of (ethically collected) UK native butterflies and moths - so beautiful and intricate, plus handling some very exotic creatures from Madagascar - Hissing cockroach and Bearded Dragon Lizard! not at all scary or slimy, very friendly and clean looking. The Dragon Lizard did seem to fancy having a chomp on the cockroach though. Another highlight - the home made ginger cake, far more tasty than cockroach I would imagine.
I think people enjoyed viewing the reed pens I made from reeds growing in the reserve and the resulting drawings. The reeds have to be controlled and its very hard, cold work clearing them in the winter; so pleasing to see them being put to a positive use. They just need an army of reed pen loving artists down there.
If you are local to Calderdale and haven't been to the reserve I can heartily recommend it as a good place to visit for a day out. Easy to get to and free parking.
Many thanks to the volunteers who work so hard to make things happen there.
SWEET LITTLE BIRDS GO TO THE NATURE RESERVE
In less than a week, on June 21st I'll be going to the Open Day at Cromwell Bottom Nature Reserve with some of my work for sale and of course the reed pens I used to make drawings. In the meantime I've revamped my naive style cards from original woodcuts - The Sweet Little Birds. I'm hoping Print Bureau in Hebden Bridge will get them printed for me in time...
GROUSE V CROWS
Here's a Red Grouse nest for comparison with the other moorland nurseries I've photographed. I don't know why there's only one egg in it when there should be many but in the spring you see lots of Crows and even Gulls going over the moor searching for nests to predate. In May we watched Curlews and Lapwings flying around madly trying to fend them off.
THE LAST OF THE BLUEBELLS IN HARDCASTLE CRAGS
In complete contrast to the exposed high moor of the previous post, the following day we went to see the bluebells in the lush green woodland of the Hardcastle Crags valley before it was too late. Wonderful, uplifting sights, sounds and scents. I feel so lucky to be able to experience such varied landscapes and habitats so close to home.
ON HIGH BROWN KNOLL
On Saturday we were walking up on High Brown Knoll in the sunshine, listening to Curlews, Golden Plovers, Lapwings and Skylarks.
A wider viewpoint on the return journey looks over the semi-cultivated fields of Crimsworth Dean, below the benign little clouds running up the valley, towards Widdop and Gorple reservoirs.
We spotted a Curlew's nest, with four pale greenish, lightly speckled, pointed eggs and also a Golden Plover's with three paler, more rounded eggs and heavy dark speckling.
In both cases the nests are very simple shallow grass bowls. We were walking on a very rarely used path that disappears into the moor and we know what to look out for. The parent birds returned to the nests soon after we moved on and were not disturbed for long.
The moor here is a flat plateau and the many temporary pools that form over the winter are brim full and still, reflecting and magnifying the deep blue of the sky.
Where the water has retreated you can see the delicate footprints of numerous birds in the dark peat.
Between the pale rushes and moor grass are blankets of moss and bilberry making a subtly colourful patchwork in sharp green and russet.
A wider viewpoint on the return journey looks over the semi-cultivated fields of Crimsworth Dean, below the benign little clouds running up the valley, towards Widdop and Gorple reservoirs.
PINK PINE CONES
If there was ever a time to not sleep at all, it would be spring when as I've mentioned before, you feel that suddenly everything is going too fast and if you even blink something wonderful will be missed. Every spring brings new marvels, not noticed before and this year its some pink pine cones I saw last week at Marfield Wetlands near Masham.
Such a beautiful deep pink/purple and an elegant shape. Presumably this is the immature stage and they will ripen to a more expected shade of brown.
HOLLOW STEMS (and my 200th Post)
A selection of hollow stems collected at Cromwell Bottom for making new reed pens. Not sure what the really fat stem is from, possibly Hogweed? it may be too weak to be much use but worth a try. The same goes for the skinniest stems. Sometimes imperfect tools make exciting marks and appropriate ones are just humdrum. All will be revealed in time.
This is my 200th post here on Tumbling Hills.
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