Sub tropical storm Beryl has arrived !

It happens in the best moments just eating cheese on toast with my good friend Dean, watching the girl next door performing her nightly hoola hooping exercises when the wind started to blow warmly and Dean decided to leave. The house started  shaking and rumbling  to the wind  and the rain and I hoped it would translate on my silly camera, but no you can only imagine ! stair rods of rain  moving slightly sideways, warm air and winds,  sirens and possibilities of power cuts and advising to stay put.
I am rapidly approaching my last day of teaching and my first year  here! I have survived.......
A year of steep learning curves, new language and the best quote from one of my most intelligent funny students who sadly  left before finishing.
Question :  What is a brayer ? (English term a roller)
Answer: A person whose vocal volume exceeds their control over said volume !
I awarded extra points...................

Inspiring Ilustrations from Bull Street Book Sale

 Rain Drop Splash -  Leonard Weisgard 1946

 While Susie Sleeps -  Dagmar Wilson 1953

 While Susie Sleep -  Dagmar Wilson 1953

I was so happy to come home with a box of children's books from the local church book sale. They are updating their library and were selling off some true little gems. Many of the books were from the late 1930's and 1940's, illustrations which feel contemporary with much being seen from Illustrators today looking for a retro feel. What is extraordinary is the limited color palette that works so cleverly to move a story from night to morning using grey, yellow, black and white. I have been trying to get my students to use this limitation in a recent fanzine project and am very excited next week to see what they will deliver.

Farewell Doug we will miss you

 Jacqui Mair, Mohamed Danawi and Marcy Vargo

 Kurt Vargo and the fiddlers

Doug Chayka far right shares a joke with Ryan Sanchez 

A heartfelt round of applause and a standing ovation  went out when Doug Chayka our fabulous colleague entered the restaurant on friday evening  . Sadly he has decided to leave the gang at Morris Hall for another venture in New Jersey with his wife and  baby son. We will all miss his inspiration .  Ever the professional, he arrived just a little late after completing a commission for the New York Times with only ten hours notice. Laughter, cocktails, good food,  and music ........... we really should do this together more often.

Stand off at the Olde Pink House our favourite restaurant.

Stand off at the Olde Pink House our favourite restaurant.

Robot one and robot two at the  Olde Pink House

Imagine the surprise and the commotion  on Tuesday,  we are awoken by at least three phones ringing in sucession with a mechanised voice telling us to remain indoors as there was a gunman on the loose in the downtown area. We are truly in America! The School security alert system kept us updated every half hour until the incident was resolved. A father and his 11-year-old son were held overnight by two gunmen. This morning, one of them took the father in his Jaguar with the father driving. As they were heading east on Broughton, the victim noticed a police officer outside Starbucks. and  yelled at the officer then jumped out of the car. The man, believed to be armed with machine gun, barricaded himself at the Olde Pink House restaurant on Abercorn Street. The intent was money and after three hours of mobile support , robots and dogs,  life resumed its normal pace  with the hostages safe, the two gunmen captured behind bars,  so much more exciting than Morse.

Mike Cross is a clever man to capture this

Mike has bought an automatic  shutter release for his camera and has managed to capture some of the delightful little beauties we have been feeding on our back porch. I feel like my parents now, who suddenly after the age of fifty started gardening and staring  at bird life outside their kitchen window. This little fellow is a common garden finch , there are lots of them, they cost a fortune to feed but I am enchanted by them. We have bought binoculars and may have to look further afield, what has happened to us?! I am using the excuse that they are featuring in my sketchbook and new pieces of work. I have just read over my new resolutions for 2012 and realise I have broken  nearly all of them. One or two I have managed a bit late! walk more : I have taken up a two mile walk three times a week round my park. Be more efficient : hard but trying hard ! smile more: Emily said wear your frown upside down !  I am smiling ! Or am I frowning .............

Everything I notice is in red and white ..........................................

Curtesy of www.emilymaude.com bird in a matchbox

A frozen charlotte doll dug up in Savannah

My  cardboard suitcase from Sri- Lanka

Mike's auction ticket

My favourite shop in Savannah.

 

A grey and rainy Sunday much like Portsmouth I like it ! mooching around the house and not forced out to go and do. Radio Four has been my salvation catching up as I mark work and Mike rushes to the auction in the hope of acquiring a tin toy as a present , sadly we  were outbid. There is an air of end of term blowing in, students are ill and overcome with just the last assignments to make the best they can, I feel it too. I am staring at red and white and I wonder what a bedroom would be like,  just for five minutes.

Quote of the month : "Sorry Professor but photoshop ran out of black". 

Our faces tell all.

Collage in class one

Colllage in class two

I have been staring at these two small collages on my studio wall,  on a daily basis for some few weeks. I made them alongside  my students at the start of the Spring term and noticed how small things  said can affect work, color, cut, mood and facial expression! I realised just how perplexed I had felt in the second collage on a throw away comment, the eyes say it all, the quizzical left eye which does not quite understand, extraordinary how it all reveals itself. I know when I look at this I feel the frustration .

JOLLY GOOD JOLLY GOOD ...................lets escape to the country

I had orders from my lovely husband to take time  away from work, so we decided to  do some research and take off  to the country.We found ourselves at the door of an old rice plantation some 60 miles south of Savannah. There is something magical about the low country,  genteel society  and the ability to drive up to a house and park the transport, not that we did, but we imagined what it must have been like, back in the day. The Hofwyl- Broadfield Plantation near Brunswick  has been there since the 1800's and survived to the last heir Ophelia Dent, who saved it through hard work farming  diary until 1973 when she died at 87 and left it to the nation.  It seemed modest yet majestic, it held everythingvery English and we could have been walking round a National Trust abode in Surrey. The first photo  

Miss Ophelia's Magnolia tree

is the room where Ophelia died in the chair, I feel there is an orb present ! but is that just because I have been listening to too many ghost stories in Savannah?

The kitchen circa 1973  very now ...........

Two months in two minutes.......where has it gone ?

Memories of two months past

Memories of two months past

Memories of two months past I wake every morning with the dreaded feeling that I have yet again forgotten the blog, I feel so sorry that weeks have gone by, in fact months now have gone by, our Paris visit in five minutes, the vernissage has come and gone in Lacoste, I have been to Glasgow as external examiner and now we are ensconsed back in Savannah realising we are half way through the term and where have those days,weeks and months gone? Friends have sadly died, babies have been born and somehow the world moves on taking us all on its merry go round of time. I am trying to relish moments more carefully, I sit and watch it as an onlooker from a distance, it immediately becomes a memory yet how do I hold on to it ?  We wait so long for these experiences , we build them up, we have such excitement in the contemplation ,  what we will do?  how we will celebrate  ? the expectation is everything. When it arrives it's gone in a blink of an eye. Is this why we love films so much, we can just re run them and hold on to that precious fix of time. Its why I love my sketch books , my visual reminders which transcend the camera.

french delights

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French delights around Provence to share with you.............

Snow snow and more blooming snow ........

February 5th 2012
I realize I have turned the page on my calendar and I have been here a month! And I realize we are nearly half way through in a blink of an eye!

The time has shot past important British artists, Paul Cox and Chris Brown have visited imparting knowledge and time to all the students, we have traveled ten hours in a bus to Angouleme for the 39th festival of comic novels, 250,000 people from the age of 4 to 84 all enjoying Spiegleman and Maus. Telling us the story of the holocaust, it spans the life of two generations, a piece of brilliant pictorial story telling. I am listening to him, speaking about the story telling on Radio 4 today on book club with James Naughtie.

What an extraordinary experience for all of us it is difficult to describe the pleasure of the cobblestones, the delights of the cafeteria, the pleasure of the locals and the bar and the need every once in a while to escape down the mountain to find the real world. My French has improved somewhat; the accent fits in with the South!
We have had snow for the past week, it was a romantic morning last week, blanketed in white and is slowly disappearing, luckily no bones broken for any of us just many people suffering from la Grippe or excessive sneezing.

We have had to improvise for our travel portfolio classes, which in fact produced some exquisite results; they became small theatrical backdrops for plays written in our heads around Angouleme, I was so excited at the scenes students managed to create.
Chris Brown went beyond the call of duty in his week with us; he instigated a great lino project Twelve Snow Scenes in Lacoste. My print class has produced an editioned set of twelve abstract snow scenes in black and white, Chris is printing the cover and sending us each a signed print. Both Chris and Paul have been fabulous to be around, I have felt like a student myself sucking up so much knowledge! Students have appreciated their feedback enthusiasm and intelligence.
Thoughts for the month:
We are in a dream and we will wake up back in Portsmouth
The Queen will have been on the throne for sixty years tomorrow
We have great students with great ideas.
I let the stray cat into my book class he fell asleep on the life model’s bed.
I love Aix en Provence more in winter.
There is not enough time to do anything for me.
I am still looking for more depot ventes!

Epiphany in Lacoste

Our next adventure has commenced we are off for eight weeks to Provence to teach at SCAD Lacoste France for the Illustration department. I have three classes and am excited as to how the the term will unravel. We have trips around the countryside sketching, travelling to Paris and Angouleme and having an ideal opportunity to speak French and be in love with just being here. Epiphany the celebration of the three kings was acknowledged with arriving at Lacoste, in the Luberon valley, previous abode of the Marquis de Sade. We eventually made it in spite of cancelled ferry crossings, high winds and Mike’s fear that he would not get to Megeve for his skiing trip on Saturday morning! Eleanor Twiford the Director of SCAD Lacoste and her husband greeted us into Apartment no 2 a simple apartment with a farrow and ball touch. We love it !

After unloading and putting the little objects brought from St Ursula it starts to feel like home. Why can’t I stop myself buying toys? A little BP delivery van probably made in China, there were twenty different lorries all painted in green BP colours which needed a home, twenty would be fabulous but one was enough for Mike to raise an eyebrow over! It sits proudly on the mantelpiece with a handmade house by Victor Stuart Graham commencing its journey along with mine. We toasted the achievement of actually getting here and for the next stage of this incredibly exciting adventure!
It is bright cold and breathtaking, the view from our window can only be described as a child's perfect rendition of what should be in the landscape: a house, trees, a bonfire, animals, mountains and a horizon that goes on beyond the for ever. It cannot be captured photographically as a geometric framework, we all see it differently and our associations give each aspect a personal importance and size. I wave Mike goodbye and wander around the village and realise there are very few people here, where is anyone ? is it because its winter or has Pierre Cardin after buying the chateau pushed them all out? SCAD must help boost the numbers.
The church bell rings every half hour next to my house it is my dream come true