Smart Post

Well, back at the Hill, in fact back in the Boars Head. Which seems to have settled as an eatery , has local people and tonight local management.
Nice to have a wi-fi connection - the idea of coming here one early evening a week is relatively appealing.
And, I seem to be back on the blog connection.

Goblins Hot Ding Time

Certainly fitting into the " possible worst worst job in my life" category.

 

On leaving art college in 1974, I felt that I ought to get a taste of real life, after spending the summer as a postman, then a fair period hitching around the south of France with Barbara Young. I decided to take on the real world.

 

Bob Meecham and I worked in a vacuum cleaner factory, working in the aluminium foundry. Smelting. I was alright for the first three hours each day. I could think about things - take my mind off the immenent dangers, unfortunately abject empty boredom took over.

 

There was a tannoy system that went off bong bong bong in a crescending scale of notes. Bob and I decided to take it in 15 minute shifts to note down each and every message, it kept us in touch with another world. Our foreman who should have been called Tommy, came over to me one day and quietly said "I don't know what you are up to but for Christs sake don't get caught".

 

I bumped into Richard Butler in the canteen a couple of days after he had been there. Another finished at art college enforced labourer. " When I came in for the interview, they asked me what I wanted to do. < something menial > I replied. (might as well make it easy for myself) Little did I know what I was setting myself up for".

 

 

Phil Gray worked there as well, in a much more advanced capacity - actually sticking the machines together. Him and his mates used to call the "hoovers" - well, you have to annoy the management, don't you?

Songs for Aydin

Songs for Aydin.

These paintings were produced as kind of illustration to music that my son was making, often as a cover for each piece.

Strings Section

All the strings

Electric

Four acoustic guitars

four wild acoustic guitars

string quartet

another string quartet

An Italian section

Town centre

Bahia

Castle

Pillars

All the above images were mainly painted in ink onto photographic paper.
As soon as a mark was made, that's where it stayed, touches of slight improvement weren't part of the deal!

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Why do I make Stars?

Why do I make Stars?



A blog on why I should write blogs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h7WZtZgszc
Caravan, who do you think you are?

 What's the point?
(what's the point of anything?-nothing matters)
When you boil it down there is no point to anything!
I suppose my answer to this is simply "DO IT AND DIG IT"
Along the lines of
If all paths lead nowhere - choose a path with a heart.
Maybe for me it's a kind of work process, maybe a kind of therapy.

It's a good chance to stop "that" life from slipping away.
You don't have to spend all your time in the present, the past can colour it.

"you don't have to spend all your time in the present, the past can colour it."

It's amazing how" sod bustin can focus the mind on not sod bustin ".
I suppose it's kind of anti Buddhist in a Buddhist kind of way. Along the lines of - -
Don't get hung up about being or doing in the present moment which in itself is a distraction.
I fear total immersion in the present could be too much of an escape from the past and all it holds, not just the good bits. Embracing it could be informative in terms of how you deal with situations emergent.
You are what you are and your past as well_ constant rebirth is difficult.
Although I do believe I am a pretty on the spot kind of guy.

For instance, I have just built a garden for my son. It is nearly finished and I realise that I haven't logged it from its own very messy beginnings, I didn't take the before and after snaps. A year down the line and I may find it difficult to believe just how bad it was!

How I superficially run my blogs :
Posterity / Legacy & the smaller angle.
A catalogue of events.

I suppose I do it for myself, but it's nice to share it with others.
Of course you write / compose / paint it initially for yourself - but even thinking selfishly, it does clarify it to express it in readable terms for others, and brings out other un~thought of aspects.
"it's easy to please your self, but harder to please others "- from a foundation lecturer.
Hardly cemented philosophy, but there again aren't there always five sides to every coin?

Putting stuff into a blog sandwich can detach you and in a sense give you :
Hindsight,
Lateral vision,
The eyes of a friend. (because you are portraying it for someone else)

Dealing with long stays in India and Turkey, I have used blogs to mix words, drawings and photos to put together a rounded anecdotal summary of my times there. Following the problems involved, what with correlating the mass of information, making it chronological and readable. I'd love to take an opportunity to work with a short project putting it together in a complete format. Catalogue it to the best of my present ability. Especially involving the restrictions of a blog. Thinking along the lines of Sgt Peppers in that four track discipline, whereas if there had been more technology available, maybe it could have become a little over mashed!

Keep the diary, but this makes it a journal /scrapbook /sketchpad.

Why do I make stars?
~ A picture about "God" getting bored of creating universes. Which I suppose you would do if you had been doing it for ever (what ever that is) ~

How immortal are blogs? when will they fade away?

Emergent Work Early Spring 16

Emergent Work Early Spring 16

Mostly on the Achilles Shield Theme

some more finished than others

A promise in May

The first City.

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A Fallow Field

The next one from Achilles Shield.

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On that shield Hephaestus next set a soft and fallow field, which had been ploughed three times. Many labourers were wheeling ploughs across it, moving back and forth.
As they reached the fields edge, they turned, and a man came up to offer them a cup of wine as sweet as honey. Then they'd turn back, down the furrow, eager to move through that deep soil and reach the field's edge once again. The land behind them was black, looking as though it had just been ploughed, though it was made of gold - an amazing piece of work!

Treeness

Heart of the forest. Full to the brim with bluebells!
Alan Morris

 

Apple Blossom



Audrey Barnes



followed by lilac





Ty Canol woods (not far from where I live now), I absolutely love bluebells. I think my love of the bluebell wood goes back to my childhood when I was lucky that we had bluebell woods just behind our house in Machen, and I was lucky enough to play there when I was a child and fantastic walks later on. When I go I leave the location Machen, Ty Canol or Dinas Head to practicalities but put me with the bluebells .
Susan Thomas

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Trees from Kerala from Ruth Parke

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mist at Shipping Hill

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Derek Jones In Llwyncelyn wood, not far from the YMCA in Porth.

 

 



From Jan Carlyon



 



Pair of old abundant cooking Apple trees, covered in blossom this evening in Birchfield!
from Rob Hewitt



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 a beautiful beech wood near Cranham in Gloucestershire.

thanks, Andrea Harry.

 



Srinagar 1983



 

 

 

 

"The trees are our friends"...(please be assured no children were hurt during the taking of this photo)...This is my son in 1973...luvb

Thanks Bridgette Robeson

 

 

Not the best reproduction, but an old favourite of mine is this Green Man by Hans Schleger (Zero), an unpublished poster for London Transport.

From Phil Gray.

 

 

 

 Three photos from Jan Carleon

 

 

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from - Royal Geographical Society Illustrated Annual.

 

 

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Phil Gray

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl3i1GMuyeU

 

 

Shelter from the storm, a changeable colony of the homeless, central Birmingham.

 

 

Four Willows from Peter Flack

 

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I suppose you know what you are looking for when you know and love a place.
Brookvale Lake
Thanks Peter Flack.

 



This is one of my favourite tree photos I have from the lake.....I love the silhouettes. 

Alice calls it my stock Microsoft background picture.

Peter Flack



Christmas at Brookvale lake
I used one of these to work on as an image for a card (cant remember which!)

 

 

Whomping Willow
Harry Potter

 

 

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moist and earthy March 75.

Now in the possession of Barbara Young.

(just a bit below the chestnuts)

Crack Willows

Stephan Davis

In waiting for Godot by Becket the action takes place under a tree. I have always imagined the tree to be l

Thanks Stephan Davis

Stephen Davis

Could really be nice to be here. Reminds me of some of my walks without another soul around in Thy. 

from Robbin Milne

 

Millie Cox

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Millie Cox

~ Adrienne Rich

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows 

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted 

who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here, our country moving closer to its own truth and dread, 

its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods 

meeting the unmarked strip of light— 

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise: 

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear. 

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you 

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these 

to have you listen at all, it's necessary 

to talk about trees.

 Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.
~ Cree Indian Prophecy ~

From Robbin Milne

People as tree profiles



Robbin Milne

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This oak is about 1000 years older than we are. Came across it at Croft in Herefordshire.

Thanks Audrey Barnes 





Down by the packhorse bridge
Shipping Hill 1972
The nearest tree is sadly no more - cut down to make forestry land more accessible.

from Achilles Shield
"Some distance off, under an oak tree,heralds were setting up a feast, dressing a huge ox, which they'd just killed. Women were sprinkling white barley on the meat in large amounts for the worker's meal.
 



From Eleanor Avery

Tree at Cannon Hill, Brisbane.

28 May 2015

 

Residential Creatures Section.

From Ruth Parke in Kerala

 

Koala in our garden, 1 March 2012
Brisbane.  Thanks Eleanor

tawny frogmouth and chicks.
Eleanor Avery



Ive got my eye on you.
Tree with parakeet.
Thanks Wendy Richard.

 

 





Yggdrasil (/ˈɪɡdrəsɪl/ or /ˈɪɡdrəzɪl/; from Old Norse Yggdrasill, pronounced [ˈyɡːˌdrasilː]) is an immense mythical tree that connects the nine worlds in Norse cosmology.
Yggdrasil is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. In both sources, Yggdrasil is an immense ash tree that is central and considered very holy. The gods go to Yggdrasil daily to assemble at their things. The branches of Yggdrasil extend far into the heavens, and the tree is supported by three roots that extend far away into other locations; one to the well Urðarbrunnr in the heavens, one to the spring Hvergelmir, and another to the well Mímisbrunnr. Creatures live within Yggdrasil, including the wyrm (dragon) Níðhöggr, an unnamed eagle, and the stags Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Duraþrór.
Conflicting scholarly theories have been proposed about the etymology of the name Yggdrasill, the possibility that the tree is of another species than ash, the relation to tree lore and to Eurasian shamanic lore, the possible relation to the trees Mímameiðr and Læraðr, Hoddmímis holt, the sacred tree at Uppsala, and the fate of Yggdrasil during the events of Ragnarök.

Microcosm, where a whole world exists within the tree.

Tree of life.



Yenton Infant School 1999.

Jaffray, 1995

 

celtic tree of life

 



Add caption

 



Flag_of_Chuvashia

 

in palace of shaki Khans Azerbaijan

 

Mayan Cross and the world tree

 

mum and dad Aztec

 

Sumeria x the Inca civilisation

 

 

 

 

 

 

First blog heading.







I started building a matchstick house back in 77.
I think the idea had its origins in "the Wizard" comic from the late 50's, early 60's.
It was an "all words" comic but my mum used tobut
 read it & some of the stories filtered through.. The story that must have soaked into me was of a tribe of jungle dweller type people who lived in a huge tree.
- a whole clan of them -
I cant remember what they got up to ( maybe I preferred looking at pictures)
But the concept amazed me.
I carried on building it for thirty years, it still isn't finished and probably wont ever be.
But I did however show it at the festival of extreme building.
It struck me, what with the scale of the thing that it would have to be at least 300ft high, which struck me as pretty extreme.



Supernatural



Link from Susan Thomas.

Conkers, October 13. Shipping Hill.



Arthur Rackham. Dryads. the tree at Hogwarts, Tom Bombadil and old man willow
A dryad (/ˈdraɪ.æd/; Greek: Δρυάδες, sing.: Δρυάς) is a tree nymph, or tree spirit, in Greek mythology. In Greek drys signifies "oak." Thus, dryads are specifically the nymphs of oak trees, though the term has come to be used for all tree nymphs in general.^[1] "Such deities are very much overshadowed by the divine figures defined through poetry and cult," Walter Burkert remarked of Greek nature deities.^[2] They were normally considered to be very shy creatures, except around the goddess Artemis, who was known to be a friend to most nymphs.



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‎Here's what the trees look like on my side of the planet just outside the door... B

Thanks Bridgette Robeson

 



Where the Fairies Live Magical Ty Canol Woods
from My Pembrokeshire



Arthur Rackham
The Hawthorn Tree 1922




 

 

A Superb Selection from Alan Morris!

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