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.