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An Andy Goldsworthy moment at Lulworth Cove

Doing a creativity course online rather than face to face might seem an odd choice but to me it seems quite natural. Obviously I’m no stranger to online learning. I’ve already done my degree and several courses since then via technology. Last year I did Quinn’s Raw Art class, the year before I joined the Tate Online drawing class. Both years I did Andy’s Songwriters Circle course, contributing a little to the teaching but mostly just taking part. I also teach on line (Classroom Displays Course). Once a year or so I like to do an online course myself partly for my own satisfaction and partly to see what good ideas and techniques I can pick up. I try to pick an area tangential to mine, so that I get to indulge another side of myself.

A Creativity Course Online

This year I’m going to do a creativity course online with Jani Franck (@janifranck). Her course is called UnEarth Your Creative Nature, lasts three weeks and is free. It looks very interesting and I’m intrigued by her use of video, something I know I should be doing! She is using a private Facebook Group for the community and I shall be interested to see how that works. I  have not found it  a great choice in the past for course communities really, all things considered. I’d like to see if she can make it stay on topic. Old fashioned email lists like Artist of The Round Table may be a bit antiquated but they do keep a sharp focus. I’ve tried using blog comments for my class communities recently but then you are left with the tricky job of clearing out the comments at the end of the course. Forums have their own issues, even the private ones get spam attacks!

Mostly though this is not meant to a be meta course but a chance to unlock my own creativity.

Anyway here’s Jani explaining a bit about the course:

UnEarth your Creative Nature! from Jani Franck on Vimeo.

Do join us if you fancy it!

Follow the Butterflies

If you are a bit more advanced try Jani’s 8 week course  Follow the Butterflies

The post Creativity Course Online appeared first on Linda M Hartley.

A friend shared this in Facebook this morning and I found myself deeply irritated by the message:

Questions, Questions

The video continued to make my typing fingers itch after I’d commented so I decided to blog about it and see if I can work out just why my reaction is so strong. My immediate thought is that I’m taking it too personally. Nothing unusual in that!  My second thought is that this idea scares me and might even be dangerous, both for me and for others. I was sort of serious about the artist dying in the garret. He actually says in the video that it is better to spend a short life doing what you love than a long one doing what you do not.

This fills me with questions.

• What about the men who worked for 40 years in nasty, dangerous jobs, in mines and steel foundries?
• Or the women who raised a family in the toughest of conditions?
• Were their lives of no value to them, their families or to society?
• Should they all have ‘followed their passions’ and done only what they enjoyed?

I’ve got a feeling this man is talking about a privileged minority, but making it sound like he means everyone.

Maybe I’m missing the bigger picture here. What do we as a society end up with if we make our children go through years of testing to destruction and pushing to achieve academic success and then tell them none of it is any good unless they do what they love? Is it just me or does something not add up here?

What Would I Do?

I am one of those people who has never had a great passion or even a sense that there is something that above all other things I enjoy. There are lots of things I’d do if money was no object, of course there are. I have no great talent for any of them. None of them could even remotely be described as work or lead to any sort of income.

A quick list will illustrate my point:

• Travel, I love to roam, staying in places a few days and moving on, mostly in a tent. If money was no object I would still do this but for longer at a time. I’d happily take six months to a year just exploring Spain that way. I might even write blog posts about what I saw. This is not work and would not, could not, realistically, provide an income.
• Cook, and eat, interesting food. I might even write about it sometimes but again, no income. I’m not a chef and I don’t want to be one.
• Write. I write fiction, sometimes. With no money issues I would still do it. It is an indulgence. It makes no money and I don’t see how it ever could. I read books on my iPod Touch using Kindle. I usually pay no more than 20p for a book and often pay nothing at all. People are trying to make a living from their fiction writing but I think those days are almost gone. I’d be happy if people read what I wrote and enjoyed it. I might even feel grateful to them for spending some of their precious time on my ramblings. I would not expect them to pay me for the privilege!
• Blog, sometimes more sometimes less but I’ve been blogging in some form or another for nearly 10 years. It is part of my and the way I work out what I think. Money wouldn’t stop it. I see many bloggers writing wonderful, interesting, insightful stuff totally for free. A few are hoping against hope that the elusive book deal will come their way and save them from drudgery. Most don’t even consider that. Some might make vague attempts to make enough to pay their hosting, using ads, donation buttons, Amazon Wishlists or whatever. Most give up on that when it doesn’t pay.
• Make. I draw and I take photos. Once I sewed and knitted, crocheted and quilted. Now I do it as a break from all the wordy stuff I do and I would still do it if I had all the money I’d ever need. I put my photos on line with a Creative Commons license so that others may use them. If they do I am invariably thrilled.
• Share. I find interesting things on the internet and share them with others. I’ve been doing it for many years now and am unlikely to stop any time soon. No one pays me and I don’t suppose they ever would.
• Nurture. I like to support those closest to me in what they do. I’m not always as good at it as I’d like to be but like most things I do, I try.  I’ve always loved the quote “Love does not dominate; it cultivates” (Goethe)

if money was no object

Travel, cook, write, blog, make, share. I think I’ve reached an ‘aha’ moment. I said further up the page: “I have no great talent for any of them” and here might be the crux.

I do not have any particular gifts. There are quite a few things that I am reasonably OK at but nothing at which I excel.

That’s OK, I can live with that. I have things I do to earn a living and things I enjoy doing. It would be lovely if they were the same things but it is not essential.

Mastery

You mean I can get paid to Google and pin stuff?

He seems to believe that mastery of something is achieved by application. The 10,000 hours theory. It is a very US thing. If you don’t succeed it is because you didn’t try hard enough, didn’t put in enough effort. Eventually if you keep trying your efforts will be recognised and you will be able to make your way doing the thing you love.

To put it simply I do not think that is the case. I think it is a sort of delusion and it leads to things like some of the sad people you see on Britain’s Got Talent and the X Factor.  Mastery is a achieved in my belief system by a combination of basic underlying talent with application. You have to have both. Application without a great talent can give you pleasure but that thing remains something you do to satisfy your self. In many fields even great talent and application are not enough and luck plays a huge part.

Alternatively he suggests you find a career that incorporates elements of what you love, like the horse riding instructor he mentions. The issue with that is you have to have a love that fits in with a way of making a career. It won’t work if you don’t and it is hard to see how my list could provide a direction.

On paper teaching might fit the bill for my list, and indeed I do some of that, but the day to day realities of teaching are a long way from the list. If money was no object I absolutely would not teach. I find it too draining and I really dislike some aspects of it. I also probably wouldn’t write about some of the things I write and blog about.

Utopia?

Someday perhaps all this will be sorted out. We will all get a citizen’s wage, do our set number of chore hours each week and be able to pursue our interests unhampered for the rest of the time. Anyone remember Walden Two? (affiliate links below )

I think my ideal would be to live in some sort of Walden Pond setting for half the year and to travel the rest, and all with unlimited broadband Now that would be Utopia!

Books in this post:

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</ul></code>

Should give:

• Example 1
• Example 2
• link text of your choice

The anchor text is preceded by <a name=”insertanchor”>anchor text here</a>

The name anchor does not need the # but the link text does.
So let’s try it

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link text of your choice

This is not working for me. The links just drop me at the comment form or below it.

Hmm back to the drawing board.

The post Playing with html appeared first on Linda M Hartley.

The first river

Over on her blog Joanna is writing about the Landscapes of Home. She tells the story of finding her new home and that sense of ‘rightness’ about being there, even though it was a place she didn’t know.

It feels a little ironic that the landscape that Joanna is now so settled in was once my home. Home can be a big deal for a child growing up as an ex-pat and somehow I was never quite sure where it was. Home with a capital H was Dumfries or Annan depending which Nana I was staying with, which parent was longing for it. Home was never really England till I found myself in Rochdale. Suddenly, there I felt connected. I could walk the moors, breath in the peace and also enjoy the town and the bustle of the market.

Home as I grew older, though, became a strange and shifting concept.Sometimes I feel that like a snail I carry it with me. There is a connection to places, almost instantly  feeling comfotable and at ease there. I used to think it was ancestral memory, but it is more than that and personal geography is a good term. It is something to do with a certain kind of light, a feeling, a shift in atmosphere. I’ve had that instant feeling of ‘this is home’ in places I would never have thought it possible. There are often repeated elements though: soft rolling hills, lush green fields, little churches nestling in the folds, a winding riverside to walk by, little harbours and rocky coves, the sea and hills nearby so they feel within reach, medieval market towns. Erm, well all of that quite neatly describes Dumfriesshire, so perhaps it was the template for all the other places!

Paris

Except Paris. I’ve no idea why I feel so comfortable and at home there. I just do. And once again that was instant. Love at first sight. Of course it might have been the company I was keeping, who let me see the city through his loving eyes.

Where I live now has none of those components yet it is still, very much, home. And here is the other, maybe the most important element. Home is where the heart is and all the other stuff, whilst very nice, matters little if the heart is empty.

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Stunningly tasty and a perfect companion to a range of Mexican inspired salads (salsa, grilled peach with halumi & spinach in sherry vinegrette, and tomato & avacado in lime dressing)

I replaced the suggested cinnamon with Ras Al Hanout. Yum!

The post Sweetcorn via Pinterest appeared first on Linda M Hartley.

Nana’s house now

Note the pristine flower beds, now all gone

Places that were lost can come back to us these days thanks to the internet in general and Google Streetview in particular.

This was my grandparent’s house. My mother’s mother and father lived here with my widowed auntie and my unmarried uncle. This was the hub of a huge extended  family of aunties, uncles and cousins. My grandparents had  a lot of children, my Mum was the next to youngest, so I have 31 full cousins! At home I might have been an only child but for most of my summers I was just one of the gang. Well, not quite, I was the tag-along, the in-betweenie, a bit younger than the rest, a bit older than the 2nd cousins, but still one amongst many. In the summer holidays we’d all be there.

Sandyhills

Sometimes we’d make great expeditions to the seaside.

Sometimes 4 generations of family were all there together.  There were a lot of us! On hot days we’d all pile into various uncles’ cars and head for Sandyhills.

There was sand, and sea, and rocks for rock pooling. There were even great places to explore when the tide was out, like The Needles Eye, The Bogle Hole, and Piper’s Cove. There were adders on the rocks and dangerous tides that could trap you. But the uncles would take us kids out and round the rocks as the tide went out and make sure we got back safe with time to spare.

There were men fishing for salmon with nets strung out into the sea. There was one ice cream van and the queue went on for ever.  This is ‘the beach’, the one where I nearly got sunstroke, the one with a fresh water spring whose water tasted better than lemonade.

The. Beach. All others since are judged against it and very few stand the comparison!

The House

My best (summer) friend lived next door in the police houses. We’d play for hours in those gardens but we knew better than to stray into the big vegetable garden or we’d be for it. Now there’s just grass where once there was row upon row of vegetables and soft fruit.

In the evenings I’d read. I’d find a quiet corner of the big living room and lose myself in a book.  I had a summer library card and I read some great novels borrowed from the rather majestic  library. My favourites were historical and usually heart-breakingly sad! Hilda Lewis’ The Gentle Falcon,  Deirdre of the Sorrows (click through & listen to it being read!), and a rather wonderful children’s book about the Underground Railway and the slave trade whose name escapes me. I’d get the same three books out at the start of the holidays every year, devour them quickly then move on to whatever else took my fancy.

Back to the house then with one final memory. Walking down the road with my Nana and seeing my Dad raise his camera. “You dare, Tommy! Just you dare!” and he did. I’m on the end, that’s one of my 2nd cousins in the middle.  I miss the hedges. It looks so bare now.And the point of all of this? Just a reflection that nothing is really lost if it’s still in my memory, even if I need a jog from a photo to bring it back into focus.

Now – it was much greener back then, even if it was in black and white!

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Similar to my iCurve from Amazon

I’m experimenting with standing up to work this month. I’m starting slow, because it is not easy! I decided to actually use my pomodoro timer  (which is a lemon not a tomato at all LOL!) and just stand for 5 minutes at a time 2 or 3 times a day. In my usual skinflint way this will involve using what I already have rather than investing in expensive equipment. I think it would be great to have a multi-purpose standing desk with a treadmill facility but I like my nomadic, work-anywhere tendencies too much. I don’t have a dedicated workspace and I like it that way. My findings so far are

1. I need to put down a foam mat to make it more comfortable
2. It is really important not to lock my knees or put all my weight on one hip.
3. Standing with legs slightly apart and knees bent works best.
4. The iCurve stand on the sideboard is just about the right height.
5. Timing it is quite worthwhile, it’s too easy to lose track and over do it, leading to aches and pains or locking hip/knees.
6. I would like to be doing 10 minutes standing 4 times a day by the end of September.
7. My calf muscles ache a bit, but in a good hurt sort of way.
8. It is quite good for writing quick notes or for checking email.
9. I need to experiment with other spots in the house. My idea is that I vary where I do it not swap one rigid placement for another.
10. Change is disruptive and that brings  up creative possibilities I like that!

I like this too but it’s nearly £500 and where would I put it?? (Amazon again)

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Lammas

Lammas Day is today, the first day of August so I thought I’d say hello to the new month and have a think about what I want to bring to it. Lammas always used to mean the start of the end of summer when I lived in Scotland. Only two weeks to the new school term, the first part of August was a time to savour. Those long, dreamy, last beach days seemed so precious. It was a time for raspberries, picking brambles on hot sticky days, summer pudding and making crowdie, for partan pie and picnics. A time of sudden thunder that cracked the sky when rain poured over me like a bucket of water from a blue sky and then was gone.

Then it was almost the middle and time for the Lammas Market. The town filled with stalls and rides, towels and sets of china to buy from big vans with barkers, Romany  caravans with amazing displays of fancy china and shiny mirrors. The helterskelter just by the Citizen office, the old fashioned gallopers and the dogems beside Luvians.

Before then, when I was little, it was the time to buy crayons and supplies for the new school year. Scratchy new clothes and shoes too. It was also a time to savour because my Scots friends would all be going back to school but I usually had another couple of weeks holiday with Nana. This was my revenge for their early start, for their already being brown and half feral before I’d even started my holiday. My two extra weeks of pottering round the town, reading, sewing and pleasing myself while they were back behind desks was made all the more pleasurable for knowing that was where they were.

What do I want to bring from then to this month? Well, something akin to those feelings of it being a time to savour and enjoy. Picnics, yes, I think some picnics would be nice. A few ‘beach’ days, but with no need for a beach. (Next month will supply lots of those!) I like the idea of taking out some sandwiches and going off for a gentle day out doing nothing much. A boat perhaps? Yes, a day on or by the Thames so that’s either Richmond by boat or a train then a boat down to Teddington Lock. A day at Hampstead Heath might do the trick too. Ok so there’s a couple of good days out and no need to mention or worry about the O word!

Who cares if it’s wet!  I’d love to order up some good weather but August can go either way. The trick is to be ready to grab the good days and to work the rest.

Lammas day salad

What else do I want from August? Lots of fresh, raw fruit and vegetables. Easy and a good start made today already.

That feeling of preparing for the coming term. It’s too soon to even think about that now but I can feel it just around the corner. Maybe I’ll start to think about supplies and things I might need, just let it start to tickle the back of my mind while I enjoy these August days.

A project. I always loved a summer project and these long expansive days will give me a chance to think of one. So I’d like to give myself permission to do that, to skip some stones, to be open to new ideas and let something emerge, if it will.

I’m looking for feelings of ease, for island time, where things get done without too much hassle and with a sense of there being plenty. The start of mellow fruitfulness I suppose.

The post Hello Lammas appeared first on Linda M Hartley.

The Orbit Tower – a red squiggle of steel

The Orbit Tower, is a new art work by Anish Kapoor. It will dominate the Olympic Park in East London long after 2012 but it will be at least 2 more years before it re-opens to the general public. The tower will provide an amazing view of London and what promises to be a ‘startling and disorientating’ experience for visitors.
This was how the tower started life, as a few squiggles.

Over the last year I’ve watched it become a ‘love it or hate it’ landmark on the local skyline.

The Orbit Tower, a personal response from East London

I’ve watched the Orbit Tower rise over the Olympic site at Stratford in East London and found that I have very mixed feelings about it. I normally love Anish Kapoor’s work but with this one I’m just not convinced. I’m torn between admiring it and feeling like it was a quickly dashed off design with no thought of, or consultation with, the local community.

The Orbit Tower from the train on a grey day

There is the worrying resemblance to a hooka pipe for starters. Is Kapoor playing with us? The hooka is much in evidence in this area of London, even following the smoking ban. There are lots of places that advertise hooka gardens where people can smoke these scented pipes outside (mostly in tented areas- this is rainy London!). Once you’ve seen the resemblance it is quite hard to ignore the reference. Having something that looks like a giant red hooka dominating the local skyline does seem a slightly odd statement. No one asked the people of East London if this was what they wanted to represent their city or to be a lasting memorial.
I also worry that it is too much like a fairground attraction. I’ve heard children on the train asking when they can go on the giant helter-skelter and who can blame them? There will be an element of this sort of sensational experience about the tower, as there is with many other Kapoor pieces. Kapoor delights in the disorientating effects the tower can produce in visitors and this leads to another problem.
It is designed to be experienced rather than just seen and yet for many locals that it will simply not be possible. Unless you have games tickets ( and that is a whole other story!) you cannot access the site this summer. The whole site will then close for 2 years during which time the fate of the park and the various buildings, including the Orbit Tower, will be decided. So for most of those of us who live in East London the tower will be a visual rather than a physical experience.
Looking at the tower as a purely visual construction I feel less than convinced. I like the red steel construction but for me the grey of the metal inner core rather spoils the effect. The red steel works well against a blue sky but for much of the year this image of the tower from a passing train, against a leaden grey backdrop is how many people will see the tower.
I’d much rather have seen something by Anthony Gormley. To me this is no where near as impressive as the Angel of the North or even Event Horizion. Kapoor has done much better and more interesting work in other cities so I’m left wondering why London has ended up with this.

London’s Eiffel Tower?

The Orbit Tower seems to provoke a strong response in most people. Most Parisians hated the Eiffel Tower when it was first built but now it is the most iconic symbol of Paris and universally admired. Could the same thing happen here?

Will the Orbit Tower become London’s Eiffel Tower, the new international symbol of London?

Or will it become a huge white elephant stranded in the middle of a no-go park area where no one will want to go after the games?

Will tourists be standing in line just to photograph the Orbit Tower in 50 years time?

Flickr: Orbit Tower

Orbit Tower Facebook Page

You can even follow it on Twitter!

Orbit Tower Twitter

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