seventh day

There has been a wonderful response to 40 DAYS & 40 NIGHTS with brilliant ideas and many of you asking how we might proceed.

At the centre of my idea is the desire that we might keep in touch as Lent goes by,
in order to encourage each others' undertakings, whatever they are, and to report progress, setbacks etc. I have in mind that we could use the part of my website - www.elspethowen.net -called Daily Rounds, which is a blog, for this purpose:
either A you can post words and pictures there for all of us to see or B you can send words/images to me and I can put them on the blog. For A to happen I need you to email me requesting access to the blog; for B I need you to email giving me explicit permission to post your material on the website. (Once you give me permission I shall assume it covers everything you may send, so you must specify if you change your mind.) Obviously this form of communication only works if you WANT to use it. Otherwise the opportunities for interaction are ones between you and me individually via email, post or telephone.

Some of you have launched into your own schemes just as I was hoping. I myself am giving up SCRATCHING (I have developed a maddening scalp itch and urgently need to stop myself harming the skin by going at it with my fingers - such exquisite pleasure). Actually I am only giving up scratching my HEAD and I'm going to devote myself to scratching as many other SURFACES as possible. My plan is to make a collection of these scratchings as we go along through the wilderness.

Because this project embraces real and virtual ways and the real is always that much more to me, I would like to propose an actual get- together on Saturday 11 April at The Pavilion in Grantchester. This could be the occasion to mark the end of Lent and usher in SpringTime and to share our wilderness experiences.

But this is all a long way off (though less than 40 days!)
file:///Users/elspethowen/Library/Mail/IMAP-elspethowen@gmail.com@imap.gmail.com/INBOX.imapmbox/2nd_40_DAYS___40_NIG.mimeattach/scratch%201.psd

ASH WEDNESDAY

A multitude of responses so the ball is rolling.

"Today is also Losar, so Tashi Dalek...It is the year of the Female Earth Ox."
"I gave up sugar in my tea when I was at school and have never looked back."
". . . lenten lily may be a kind of hellebore"
"I need to start lent AFTER the pancake mini- Mardi Gras." . . .
"Lent is more about doing something positive than giving something up"
"I am a creature of habit, but I have raged against this in many ways over the years, but it is still with me . . . . . . . There are swathes of yellow crocuses here and there and the snowdrops are flowering. The air has a new softness, too."
"It chimes with the idea of Lent as a meditation in preparation for a significant event."

If you want to post something on this site as opposed to just commenting let me have yr email address and I can smooth the way.
I am a novice blogger so please be patient with any delays in yr thoughts appearing here!

FORTY DAYS and FORTY NIGHTS

AN ENQUIRY into LENT

TODAY 25 FEBRUARY is ASH WEDNESDAY which marks the beginning of the Christian liturgical season of fasting and prayer called LENT. Lent lasts for 40 days and 40 nights, the time Christ spent wandering in the wilderness resisting the temptations of the Devil. It ends on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter. Traditionally it is marked by acts of abstinence and self sacrifice which last for the whole period of forty days
In contemporary life is this idea still alive? Will you be giving anything up for Lent? Have you even heard of Lent? Do you know of similar seasons in other religions? Are you intrigued to look into the part played by HABIT in your life?

I wonder if you might be interested in joining me to create a record of this year’s Lent as it may be observed, rejected, faltered over by us from now till Easter. This record could take many forms - sacriligious, musical, pictorial, verbal, electronic, - and range as widely as we like into related ideas such as carnival, discipline, charity, poverty, puritanism, other spiritual traditions; and so on.

please let me know if you would like to join in:

by post 79 broadway grantchester cambridge CB3 9 NQ

online via the daily rounds blog section of www.elspethowen.net

I hope very much that you will be in touch and that we can support each other into the Spring

with love from elspeth

forthcoming shows

elspeth owen exhibitions 2008


13 june - 5 july cup
contemporary applied arts
2 percy street london w1
0207 436 2344 for opening hours


12/13 + 19/20 july cambridge open studios
the pavilion grantchester
saturdays + sundays 11am - 6pm

26 july - 6 sept celebration of ceramics
oriel myrddin gallery
church lane carmarthen
01267 222775 for opening hours

11 sept - 2 oct speaking volumes
hart gallery 113 upper st
islington london n1
0207 704 1131 for opening hours

17 nov - 5 dec ancestry
zoology museum
downing st cambridge
01223 336650 for opening hours

If on a winter's night

reading Calvino I came across this on page 109 -seems to fit the site!

I'm producing too many stories at once because
what I want is for you to feel, around the story,
a saturation of other stories that I could tell and
maybe will tell or who knows may already have
told on some other occasion, a space full of
stories that perhaps is simply my lifetime, where
you can move in all directions, as in space, always finding stories that cannot be told until other stories are told first, and so, setting out from any moment or place, you encounter always the same density of material to be told.

corner in madrid

8 february

the website is 'launched' - does that mean it is now in orbit?

In the Oxfam bookshop I chanced on a book of julian schnabel
drawings fr the 70's/80's and one of them was called
"what to do with a corner in madrid" when I got home I found
my copy of 'the diving bell and the butterfly' which schnabel
has just made into a film. I didnt like schnabel's plate paintings
at all but the drawings are much "softer" and make me want
to see the film.

here as an extensive response and first reactions to the website
from my old friend H.H.
"First impression shock - Elspeth has gone for the hi tech and aluminium look.
Second impression relief - her home page is crumpled paper and pencil. But then reverb and trendy voice overs. Starting to worry but need not have.

Into ceramics and still love the delicacy of the work. No 8 reminds me of the one I have but different colours. Find a word missing. There is a conguence between the delicay of the work and the tentativeness of balance of my pot that becomes a metaphor for existance. The word that is missing I find in Shelter it is ' precariousness' and it gives energy and vitality to what you do.

Taxi - would love to see it parked on my drive, and it seemed to relate to Loose Link as an expression of your joyous approach to travelling through life. Start to worry this might just be an uncritical trip through all your work, but , thankfully I am wrong.

Material Woman is uncomfortable. It seems intense and honestly portrayed but I am unhappy with the word amazing to describe the gift of pieces of cloth in the Left hand sequence (my left hand) - it seems hyperbole and sits uncomfortably in my ear. However, the Right hand sequance is far more satisfying almost like watching you discover your new environment. I particularly liked the turning off light (I hope that does not sound negative) followed by the medium shot of the exterior. Again I got the sense of fun which is perhaps why amazing with all the suggestions of manipulation it carries seemed so wrong.

Global Local was witty and weird and again I just loved the joy of it all. Unfortunately Orbit, which seemed amazingly interesting as a concept (do I mean amazing?) was not available as it would not play. Happily Joyce-ticks continued in the playful mode and was wonderful to look at. How do women walk was even more stunning - the colours were vibrant and rich and the amorphous figures, both frightening and reassuring, (a bit like mothers perhaps).

And now I started to be disturbed. Between You (sic) and Your Sister apparently random images but many with the theme of 'woman's' work. Nudity, I assumed yours, a random thought that you have a nice bottom. In the rocking sequences the image of the navel that seems to become an eye? Women's hands at work. The sisters cute and full of potential. And the most disturbing image of all - a beautiful young woman in a still with another woman beating herself beneath/behind it. Should I try to give meaning to this. Does it depend on which sister it is in the still and which doing the beating are they the same or are they not. Is it a statement of sexual tension, of jeaousy, of anger, or regret. This is a rich image with boundless potential for disturbing a mere male. It is made more disturbing by the noises from outside reminding us that time goes by, life goes on no matter what our preoccupations.

I am trying to keep these responses short and sharp because I am sure you will have many more.

Open End strangley left me relativley unmoved even though it had such a powerful context. I wondered if Elspeth being in the shots prevented me from empathising almost as if she was putting her grief up for display and demanding sympathy. Dry Tears was more satisfying. The person of Elspeth was not there and there was an objectivity to the memorialisation that gave the space to react.

Coming Round Again annoyed me. Do I want the book? No. Why? It is not expensive. Is it because I believe that all art is a lie or leads to lies, and the sale of books defining art is the sale of the greatest lies of all. Better to involve with the art and create your own truths (which are also lies) than buy (in the financial and the hegemonic and the valuative senses) other peoples lies. Interesting response as I imagine part of the reason for your web site is to sell your work or your time.

Not Worth Keeping was worth keeping it seems and I agree. Still Alive made me long to see larger images (a possible limitation with all the site) - I was far more affected by these images than by the work following your mother's death. Wondered if it was because I am male. Reminded me that I was far more affected by my father's death than my mother's. Art may be a lie but it makes us face truths.

I loved the images of Weeping Woman the objects were fabulous (even better than amazing) - the figures seems reminiscent of those in How do Women Walk .

I hated the start of your commentry on Give Me a Call. Could really understand why the students might be resistant to your overintellectualising the project - I know I was! But then I loved the critique of university hierachies and power and market domination and longed for TAD 292 to become mainstream. Not sure it went anywhere though, and sensed some regret in your own investigation focussed on your father. The overarching theory became the personal and did not take flight I thought. I may be wrong.

Blue Moon was where I desperately wanted larger pictures to delve into the detail of the images. It seemed so strong and right that it may even have carried truth. Would be lovely to spend time with it looking smelling tasting almost. But now I must acknowledge my intense prejudice. The word royal makes my skin creep so whilst the space in Imagined Corners was sublime I could not help but think so what; and where was the counterbalancing images of the shit holes in which non royal seamstresses were forced to work.

These were my initial responses to your site but I like you have kept the best till last. Below the Surface blew my mind. I wish you had spoken in Welsh but no matter. I got a physical shock when the 'bones' you had covered became uncovered again. It was mythic; it showed closure and non closure; it showed moving on and not moving on. It was Powerful and I might even say amzingly true but maybe not for others."