THIS is the time to explore Explore York online, providing the Libraries
from Home service during the Coronavirus lockdown.
“If you are confused or overwhelmed by the huge amount of information on offer, Explore can help,” says executive assistant Gillian Holmes, encouraging visits to the website, exploreyork.org.uk, “where it is simple to find what you need”.
This encouragement comes after all Explore York library buildings, reading cafes and the City Archives were closed to the public from 12 noonon March 21, in response to Government strictures.
“We are making it easy for people to find information and advice, as
well as inspiration, as we all deal with the Coronavirus crisis.”
The Explore website has assorted useful links to help people cope during
the coming weeks. “Some sites have always been part of our online offer and
some are brand new,” says Gillian.
“We are also working with City of York Council and our many partners in
York, so that our communities can join together and we continue to support
their initiatives, just as we will when our buildings open again.
“Organisations across
the country are developing their online services in this challenging time. We
are using our expertise to gather together the best offers and add them to the
lists of sites we recommend.”
Explore
York will be developing online activities of its own, such as a Virtual Book Group. “We
will be updating the website regularly as these new things come on stream and
sharing on social media using #LibrariesFromHome,” says Gillian.
The chance to visit the new York Images site to explore the history of
the city through photographs, illustrations, maps and archival documents at exploreyork.org.uk/digital/york-images/
YORK Open
Studios 2020, the chance to meet 144 artists at 100 locations over two April weekends,
has had to be cancelled in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, with doors sadly shut for the April 17 to 19 and April 25 to 26 event, CharlesHutchPress wants to champion the creativity of York’s artists and makers, who would have been showcasing ceramic, collage, digital, illustration, jewellery, mixed media, painting, print, photography, sculpture and textile skills.
Each day, in brochure order, five artists who now miss out on the exposure of Open Studios will be given a pen portrait on these pages because so much art and craft will have been created for the event and still needs a new home. Addresses will not be included at this time.
Quercki Design, mixed media
MARGARET Bradley, who would have been a new participant in York Open Studios, specialises in eco-friendly and carbon-neutral cork fabric designs, drawn on a computer, cut on a laser, backed with colours, glued and sewn to make pictures, notebooks and sketchbooks.
A language degree first took Margaret to Lisbon as a university assistant where she acquired a deep affection for Portugal. This was followed by 30 years of work in educational aid to developing countries, where different cultures, art and music were a constant source of interest and delight.
On retirement, a return visit to Portugal brought her into contact with cork fabric, a perfect material for making things inspired by her travels, she says.
More
details can be found at quercki.com, although Quercki Design is taking a short
break, with the artist in self-isolation.
Dave Atkin, wood
USING traditional techniques, Dave carves locally sourced green wood. Influenced by the natural world, folklore and history, he experiments with form and design to create functional and individual pieces.
A professional model maker by trade, he took up wood carving as a hobby, now making spoons, kuksas and bowls, often inspired by the Green Man myth.
He now offers spoon carving courses and demonstrates at events and fairs. For more details, go to woodwyrm.co.uk.
Catherine Boyne-Whitelegg, ceramics
CATHERINE has been working as a potter for 16 years, both throwing and hand-building, creating colourful slipware pottery to be used and enjoyed, as well as raku and smoke-fired clay animals, ranging from foxes and pigs to horses and unicorns. Her work often reflects her wry humour.
She is a potter, teacher and community artist who set up her own pottery workshop at her home near York after graduating from Sunderland University with a BA (Hons) in ceramics.
Catherine’s work can be found in a number of galleries, complementing her regular exhibitions, and wedding or special occasion pieces can be commissioned. More details at boyne-whiteleggpottery.co.uk.
Mo Burrows, jewellery
MO’S contemporary jewellery
embraces the elaborate and the colourful, the dainty and the quiet, in her necklaces,
earrings and brooches.
Predominately favouring copper,
braiding and beadwork, she draws inspiration from the colour, form and texture
of the materials she uses. Frustrated by
an inability to draw, she produces designs straight from a head full of ideas. Find
Mo at facebook.com/MoBurrowsJewellery.
Joanna Lisowiec, printmaking
NEW to York Open Studios this year, Joanna’s prints and illustrations look to nature and folklore for inspiration, as she focuses on birds and animals in her bold, clean and distinctive work.
Originally from Poland
and brought up in the United States and Switzerland, she first came to Britain
to study illustration at Edinburgh College of Art, falling in love with the
wild Highlands and later with the “quaint English countryside” when she moved
to Yorkshire for her MA in advertising and design from the University of Leeds.
“I would love to illustrate
a classic novel one day,” she says at joanna-draws.com, where you can find free
printable worksheets to “keep your children or indeed yourself entertained during
the Coronavirus pandemic”.
Tomorrow: Helen Whitehead; Sally Clarke; Adrienne French; Caroline Lord and Peter Park.
EXIT 10 Things To See Next Week in York and beyond for the unforeseeable future. Enter home entertainment, wherever you may be, whether still together or in isolation, in the shadow of the Coronavirus pandemic. From behind his closed door, CHARLES HUTCHINSON makes these further suggestions.
Compiling lists of best songs by favourite artists
THE Beatles, The Rolling Stones, solo Beatles, Van Morrison, Velvet Underground, solo Velvets, Bob Dylan, Dusty Springfield, Aretha Franklin, The Smiths, The Fall, whoever. Make a Top Ten or even Top 20, then send to friends to ask for their suggestions for the list and why they disagree with you.
You could also set up arguments: Kylie’s Top Ten versus Madonna; The Specials versus Madness; Holland Dozier Holland versus Bacharach and David; Rod Stewart versus Elton John; Abba versus Queen; U2 versus Coldplay. Any others?
Desert Island Slipped Discs
IF past editions of the BBC Radio 4 Sunday morning staple have slipped your attention, it is never too late to discover the back catalogue at the Beeb online. You could pick a running theme, such as artists, musicians, poets, scientists, entrepreneurs, comedians, sportsmen, film stars, pioneers and church leaders.
Or, given the very necessary daily Covid-19 briefings from Number 10, how about politicians? Margaret Thatcher (1978); Edward Heath (1988); Enoch Powell (1989); Alan Clark (1995); Tony Blair (1996); Gordon Brown (1996); David Cameron (2006)…or, for a satirical variation, Spitting Image’s Peter Fluck and Roger Law (1987)?
Follow the advice of Stephen Fry
FOLLOWING up last Thursday’s 10 Things advice to make a timetable for the day, Andrew Marr’s Sunday morning interview on the Beeb with national treasure and former Cundall Manor prep school teacher Stephen Fry elicited one gem of a suggestion. Take time, take longer, to do things, whether cooking a dish from a recipe book, or even when brushing your teeth.
Fry, the president of MIND, also advocated taking up a new hobby, or re-discovering a craft, in his case, calligraphy. Further suggestions: learn a language; learn sign language; test yourself on road signs (when did you last do that?).
Meanwhile, Fry’s partner in comedy since Cambridge Footlights days, House doctor Hugh Laurie, says of Coronavirus: “We solve it together by staying apart.” Couldn’t have put it better.
Administer a spring clean
STUCK at home, as you really should be by now, key workers excepted, this is the chance to gut rooms; to go through files, drawers, cupboards; to work out what clothes to keep and which to donate to charity shops. Likewise, games; books; kitchen utensils. Update Christmas card lists and address books.
Make time for nostalgia
DIG out old scrapbooks (Leeds United, League Champions, 1973-1974; the Cardiff Candlewits revue show, The Rantings Of A Raw Prawn, at the 1982 Edinburgh Fringe; cookery crush Nigella Lawson’s recipes – more pictures than recipes, to be truthful – to give three Hutch examples). Ah, those were the days.
Likewise, take a look through old photo albums, sure to trigger memories and promote family discussions… and maybe even lead you to research your family ancestry in the manner of BBC One’s Who Do You Think You Are?.
Try to find good news
GREAT Yorkshire Show off. Ryedale Festival off. York Pride off. The Olympic Games off. The list of cancellations keeps growing. Against that backdrop, however, theatres, music venues and festivals are busy re-booking acts and shows for later in the year or next year.
Keep visiting websites for updates, whether York Barbican, York Theatre Royal, the Grand Opera House, wherever.
Look out too for the streaming of past shows. More and more theatres and arts companies are doing this.
Online exhibitions
GALLERIES in York are going online to keep the art (and hopefully sales) going. Step forward Pyramid Gallery, in Stonegate, where owner Terry Brett has launched Strange Days.
This service is not only a website portal for works from this season’s Full Sunlight show, featuring Askrigg artist Piers Browne and Holtby sculptor Hannah Arnup, but Terry also is inviting the 144 artists from next month’s cancelled York Open Studios to show their work on there too.
Anywhere else?
LOTTE Inch Gallery, at Fourteen Bootham, will host its first online-only exhibition, Yorkshire artist Tom Wood’s The Abstract Crow, from April 17 to May 16.
“Known for his imaginative and allusive abstract approach to painting, Tom will pay homage to his love for the natural world in his new paintings,” says Lotte.
Venturing outdoors
AMID the stricter Government strictures, aside from walking the dog and one burst of exercise a day, gardening looks the most fruitful way to spend time outdoors. The first mow of the season; buds coming through; plants to plant; garden furniture to varnish: ready, steady, grow.
And what about…
Podcasts. Books. More podcasts. More books. Season two of Liar on Monday nights on ITV. Noughts + Crosses on BBC One on Thursdays. Writing a 10 Things like this one. Reading the regular Tweets from Matt Haig, the Reasons To Stay Alive author with the York past. Drinking hot drinks, gargling regularly, and building up your zinc levels, as well as all that hand-washing.
LOTTE Inch Gallery, in Bootham, York, is going online only “for
the time being”.
“While the Covid-19 situation poses a threat to us all, we
want to ensure that everyone stays well and healthy and, as such, have closed the
doors at Fourteen Bootham until we are advised by the Government that we can
re-open,” says Lotte.
“However, just because the doors are closed, it doesn’t mean that you can’t still look at some of the beautiful work that features in our current exhibition, York artist Mick Leach’s Urban Abstraction. All Mick’s paintings are now on our online shop at lotteinch.co.uk, along with Katie Timson’s beautifully delicate ceramics and Evie Leach’s refined silver and semi-precious stone jewellery.”
Running until April 11, Leach’s debut solo show of sophisticated abstract work endeavours to recreate the textures, colours, layers and shapes of York’s decaying urban landscape.
Working mainly
with acrylics mixed with French chalk powder, Leach applies paint with palette
knives to gain his textured, layered effect. Various colours and media are then
added to enhance the layers and textures to evoke the memory and feeling of the
places that most inspire him.
“As a self-taught artist and full-time worker, Mick’s ‘side-career’ (sic) in painting has been steadily and successfully taking shape since early 2016,” says Lotte. “This new exhibition highlights his striking talent and his sympathetic and considered manipulation of materials.
“His work is never subjective, but
produced instead from memory, in an attempt to recreate the feel of a location
while simultaneously allowing his work to find its own course.”
Inspiration
behind this series, being shown in York for the first time, is drawn from
the many large cities that Leach has visited or lived in, in particular from
the city of York; the place he calls home.
“In this
new body of paintings, Mick attempts to recreate the colours and feel of the
ancient stonework, the dark alleyways, sunken windows, and the contrast of the
modern world against this ancient city, a place rich with contradictions,” says
Lotte.
Coming
next will be Lotte Inch Gallery’s first online-only exhibition, Tom Wood’s The
Abstract Crow, running from 10am on April 17 to May 16.
“Keep an
eye out for more details coming soon and follow Lotte Inch Gallery on Instagram
for sneak previews of the new works that Tom will be including in his show,”
says Lotte.
“This will be a solo show of new paintings by this internationally recognised and technically brilliant Yorkshire artist. Known for his imaginative and allusive abstract approach to painting, Tom will pay homage to his love for the natural world in The Abstract Crow.”
Since graduating from Sheffield School of Art in 1978, Wood
has exhibited his work worldwide. For example, his celebrated portraits of
Professor Lord Robert Winston and Leeds playwright Alan Bennett, both
commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery, London, have been on display at
the Australian National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.
Wood has held solo shows at the Yale Center for British Art, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA,
and Schloss Cappenberg, Kreiss Unna, Germany. Among his commissions are
portraits for the National Trust, Warwick University and the Harewood Trust, for
whom his large double portrait of the late 7th Earl and Countess of
Harewood is on permanent display at Harewood House, near Leeds.
“We look forward to re-opening soon, but in the meantime, we
encourage you to browse online,” says Lotte. “Do note that if you live in the
York area, we are pleased to be able to offer a free and safe delivery service.
Just select ‘Collect In Store’ and we’ll be in touch to arrange delivery of
your items.
“Take care of yourselves and your loved ones,” she signs off.
VILLAGE Gallery, in
Colliergate, York, will be “doing something a little different to our normal
show” for its next exhibition, opening on March 31.
On display and for sale will
be photographers by Instagrammer Katherine-of-Yorkshire, who uses only her
phone camera to take her photos.
“Apart from occasional
cropping, and selecting which filter to use, there’s no other manipulation or
photoshopping of the images,” says gallery owner Simon Main.
“Katherine’s preference is
to photograph in black and white because she finds the result more timeless
than using colour.
“From our perspective
though, in addition to this, we see that she has a seemingly natural talent and
eye for composition, and she manages to convey a deep feeling of peace, even
when documenting the floods in York that happen all too regularly.”
In response to the ongoing Coronavirus situation, Village Gallery
will not be holding its customary preview on the evening before the opening. “Enhanced
regular cleaning and disinfecting practices have been put in place to keep our
customers and us as safe as we can,” says Simon.
“Until we are forced to do
otherwise, the gallery will remain open for its usual opening hours, Tuesday to
Saturday, 10am to 5pm, and we look forward to seeing everyone throughout the
period of the exhibition run until May 9.”
Aside from its regularly changing
2D and 3D art exhibitions, each running for six weeks, Village Gallery is York’s
official stockist of Lalique glass and crystal, also selling art, jewellery,
ceramics, glass and sculpture, predominantly by Yorkshire artists.
THE
Coronavirus pandemic may have shut doors on next month’s York Open Studios, but
Pyramid Gallery is stepping in to offer an online exhibition to York artists.
What’s more, gallery owner Terry Brett is calling this new service Strange Days, after the song of that title by The Doors. As rather more than one door closes, The Doors open new possibilities for a different form of Pyramid selling.
“This applies to artists who have sold through the gallery either recently or in the past, and we’re extending this invitation to any of 2020’s 144 York Open Studio artists,” says Terry.
“The
artists will keep the work that they’re showing at their studio, and between
them and the gallery, delivery will be arranged to the purchaser’s address if
it is within a YO postcode.”
Terry has run Pyramid Gallery, in Stonegate, since 1994, says: “We need to survive in these Strange Days, and so do our artists. We noticed many posts on social media this week by worried artists who had heard that York Open Studios was cancelled. We wanted to do something positive for them. It has given us an aim and lots of work to do, which is very useful for morale.”
Morale that he believes is under immediate threat from this week’s urgently announced Government financial policies in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. “I am disappointed by the ineffectiveness of government to make sensible and working decisions,” says Terry.
“While
other European nations are protecting citizens and employees from economic
crisis and worry, our Government seems unable to make the decision to support
individuals and freelance workers or self-employed artists.
“These
matters are being passed down to the community to resolve. It’s not a good
approach. The Government should offer quickly to make payments to everyone, so
that we know we can pay rents, employ people and buy essentials.”
Pyramid Gallery
is reducing its normal commission to the artist for this event to 20 per cent
plus VAT on each sale and is arranging the delivery free of charge to the
customer.
“Some
artists have already submitted work for the online show, and images are being
placed on the website all the time,” says Terry. “The show will continue as
long as there is a Coronavirus crisis.”
Pyramid Gallery continues to open its doors, Monday to Saturday, between 10am and 5pm, but will be closed on Sundays. On show until April 26 is Full Sunlight, an exhibition of etchings and paintings by Piers Browne, studio ceramics by Hannah Arnup, figurative sculptures by Helen Martino and glass by Fiaz Elson.
Oh, spoiler
alert, here are Jim Morrison’s 1967 lyrics to The Doors’ Strange Days:
Strange
days have found us
Strange days
have tracked us down
They’re
going to destroy
Our
casual joys
We shall
go on playing
Or find a
new town
Yeah!
Strange eyes fill strange rooms
Voices
will signal their tired end
The
hostess is grinning
Her guests
sleep from sinning
Hear me
talk of sin
And you
know this is it
Yeah!
Strange days have found us
And
through their strange hours
We linger
alone
Bodies
confused
Memories
misused
As we run
from the day
To a
strange night of stone
Let’s look forward to the day when Pyramid Gallery can host an exhibition with another of The Doors’ titles, The End, but in a good way, not an Apocalypse Now way.
EVEN a gallery with the bravura name of Art Of Protest must concede to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Craig Humble’s cutting-edge, fashion-savvy gallery in Little Stonegate, York, was to have launched its York Fashion Week exhibition of Pam Glew’s Kiminos with a preview this evening.
Not now. Today Craig posted a statement in the window, under the heading Gallery Closed – Temporarily, to announce that “sadly, with a heavy heart we are closing the gallery in response to the global pandemic”.
“Due to a combination of recent announcements, the importance for all our future of beating this outbreak and the reality of the ever-thinning streets of York, I am closing the gallery for at least a couple of weeks from Thursday March 19th, while the way forward becomes clear. Hopefully this is an au revoir; rather than a goodbye,” says Craig.
“I will be developing the website and investigating the online opportunities that can be maintained while away from the gallery, so keep an eye out on social media for any changes and news.”
Those hoping to visit the Pam Glew exhibition “to purchase one of the amazing pieces”, says Craig, can click on the Pam Glew Catalogue button on the website, artofprotestgallery.com, for a catalogue of available work.
“Thank you for being part of the movement over the past three years and I look forward to seeing you on the other side of this pause. When we return, it will be with the exhibition newly which has been hung for York Fashion Week featuring Pam Glew’s Kiminos,” he adds.
Craig ends the statement by advising:
Although the gallery is closed from Thursday March 19, email
and social media will be monitored if you want to get in touch.
JORVIK Viking Centre, in York, is temporarily closed for the foreseeable future in response to Government advice relating to minimising the risk of Covid-19.
Today’s statement from the Coppergate visitor attraction said: “The health and wellbeing of our staff, volunteers and visitors is our number one priority and so we have decided this action is the best step to take at this moment in time.
“We will do all that we can to keep you updated on the situation through our website and social media channels.
“If you are a visitor, group leader or school booked with us over the next few weeks, our reservations team will be contacting you shortly to discuss what your options are with regards rescheduling, refunds and alternative experiences. We apologise for any inconvenience this closure may have caused.”
The statement continued: “We are owned by York Archaeological Trust, an educational charity with a mission of ‘Building Better Lives Through Heritage’; and so ensuring all of our audiences remain engaged with their past is one of our key aims.
“With this in mind, we are working hard behind the scenes to create some new digital content that we look forward to sharing with you in the coming days and weeks. Please keep checking our social media and website for details.”
Meanwhile, donations are being sought for Jorvik’s own future wellbeing. “If you would like to show your support and offer a donation to York Archaeological Trust to help assist us during this difficult time, it would be appreciated enormously,”
Donors are asked to click on a link at jorvikvikingcentre.co.uk. Alternatively, please email enquiries@yorkat.co.uk or call 01904 663000.
Exit 10 Things To See Next Week in York and beyond for the unforeseeable future. Enter home entertainment, wherever you may be, whether still together or in isolation, in the shadow of the Coronavirus pandemic. From behind his closed door, CHARLES HUTCHINSON makes these suggestions.
Compiling your Desert Island Discs
CREATE your own Desert Island Discs and accompanying reasons, should you ever be called to answer Lauren Laverne’s questions on the BBC Radio 4 Sunday morning staple. Cue Eric Coates’s opening theme, By The Sleepy Lagoon, then your eight music choices, one book choice, one luxury.
Then play your list, but cutting it down to eight will be much harder than you first expect.
Desert Island Discs, suggestion number two
AND while you are about it, also take every opportunity to raid the Beeb’s Desert Island Discs back catalogue at BBC Sounds. Recommendations? Ian Wright, former footballer, turned broadcaster; Dr John Cooper Clarke, sage Salford stick insect and man of multitudinous words; Kathy Burke, Camden Town actress, comedian, writer, producer and director.
Make a timetable for the day
LIKE you would at work…though this timetable may not be possible, if indeed you are working from home.
Nevertheless, should the time need passing, allow, say, an hour for each activity, be it writing; reading; playing board games at the stipulated distances apart or card games, which can be done on your own, such as Patience; watching a movie, maybe a long-neglected DVD rescued from a dusty shelf; or whatever else is on your list.
Re-discover a childhood joy
PLUCKING one out of the air, how about jigsaw puzzles, a favourite of Mother Hutch and Granny Pyman before her.
“They are wonderfully relaxing yet keep the brain very active and there’s a feeling of creative satisfaction on completion,” recommends York actor Ian Giles, a devotee of such puzzle solving.
Singing
YORK singer Jessa Liversidge runs the Singing For All choir, as heard savouring I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing at Big Ian’s A Night To Remember at a packed York Barbican (remember those days?) on Leap Year Saturday.
Now, abiding by the Government’s Avoid Unnecessary Social Contact advice, to keep people singing, she is planning a range of online singing opportunities to suit not only her Singing For All and Easingwold Community Singers folks, but “any frustrated singers”. “Get in touch to find out how to join,” says Jessa, whose Twitter account is @jessaliversidge. She posts regularly.
Lighting a candle
THE Archbishop of York, the Most Reverend Dr John Sentamu, is asking us all to place a lighted candle in our window at 7pm this coming Sunday “as a sign of solidarity and hope in the light of Christ that can never be extinguished”.
Baking
ALL those cookbooks that you bought for the nice pictures, but have never opened since, are bursting with opportunities to try out a new dish…if the supermarket shelves have not been emptied by 10 o’clock in the morning.
Why not raid the store cupboard too, check the dates (and the dried dates from last Christmas) and see if anything may come in handy. The likelihood is more and more hours will have to be spent at home; this is a chance to stretch your culinary skills.
Gardening
HOPEFULLY, going for walks, maintaining a safe, previously anti-social distance, will still be a possibility, as advocated by Prime Minister Johnson, until otherwise stated.
If not, or if isolation is your way ahead, spring is in the air, gardens are turning green, the grass is growing. Gardening will surely be one of the unbroken joys of the ever-so-uncertain path that lies ahead.
Should you not have a garden, windowsills are havens for green-fingered pursuits: the seeds of much content.
And what about…
Podcasts. Books. More podcasts. More books. Box sets (yawn). Discovering a new band online, or maybe an old one you had long neglected. Writing a 10 Things like this one. Reading Bard of Barnsley Ian McMillan’s morning Tweets, or any time of day, in fact. Reading York musician and motivational speaker Big Ian Donaghy’s perennially positive thoughts for the day @trainingcarers, BIGIAN #DEMENTIAisAteamGAME. Watch Channel 4 News, especially Jon Snow, one bright-tied 72 year old who should defy the imminent Government “curfew” on the over-70s. (UPDATE: 19/3/2020. Or maybe not. Tonight he broadcast from his central London home.)
And finally…
PLEASE stop flicking through social media at every turn…except for displays of the ever-so-British black humour in response to the new C-word.
Any suggestions for further editions of 10 Things To Do At Home And Beyond are most welcome. Please send to charles.hutchinson104@gmail.com
WHITBY sculptor Emma Stothard’s wildlife work has
come on leaps and bounds over the past year for her latest show at Nunnington
Hall, Nunnington, near Helmsley.
To mark 2020 being a leap year, she has created a
one-off installation of 366 Leaping Hares, one for each day of the year, combining
sculptures,
illustrations and paintings, all for sale, on display amid the historic
collection in the Smoking Room of the National Trust country house.
Alas, Nunnington Hall is now closed with effect from this Wednesday (May 18), in response to Government advice on the Coronavirus pandemic. “The safety of our staff, volunteers and visitors is our priority,” says senior visitor experience officer Laura Kennedy.
Let’s take a leap of faith, however, beyond the month of the Mad March Hare
and leap ahead to later in the year when hopefully you can still see 366
Leaping Hares. “The idea came first, doing something for 2020, for Leap Year,
rather than responding to a particular space, and I thought ‘let’s do 366
hares’,” says Emma. “Given that number, I knew some would need to be small,
with some bigger ones for contrast.”
Emma spent the past year creating each work, whether clay, wire or willow
sculptures, textiles hangs and cushions, drawings and ceramic tiles.
All have been individually hand-finished and dated by the sculptor,
not least a special Leap Day Hare to mark Saturday, February 29. “Each of those
366 days is going to be special for someone – a birthday, an anniversary, maybe
even a proposal of marriage on the Leap Day itself!” says Emma.
She has responded too to Nunnington Hall’s “rich sense of history”. “Generations
have lived here, and you can feel their presence in the furniture, the
wallpaper and the textiles,” she says.
Consequently, Emma’s installation explores the array of materials that
embodies the ever-changing architecture and fabric of the historic building,
while experimenting with contemporary methods too in her hotchpotch of hares
that range from four-foot willow sculptures to four-inch miniature wire and
clay collectables.
Placed by Emma amid the historic collection, some are in full view; others are in the Smoking Room’s hidden spaces, nooks and crannies, even emerging from drawers or to be spotted under furniture.
Hare, there, everywhere, yes, Emma loves hares. “They’re just so
wonderful to see, aren’t they,” she enthuses. “I see them quite a lot when I’m
walking across the fields with my dog.
“I love spotting them because they’re so elusive, so quick moving. They’re
magical to sculpt, and it’s the same with roe deer. I find them fascinating, beautiful,
because you can never get that close to them.
“We’re steeped in their history and it feels a real privilege to be in their presence when they run out of front of me.”
The large number of hares required was the green light for Emma to
broaden her working practices. “Like casting in bronze for the first time. I’d
been recommended by (the late) Sally Arnup to use Aron McCartney, who has a
metal-casting foundry at Barnard Castle,
but there never came a time to be able to cast anything until now,” she says.
“Now that I have, hopefully we can continue with the relationship.”
This is not the first time that Nunnington Hall has had an impact on
Emma’s work. “I first exhibited here in 2012 on the Rievaulx Terrace, when I
was also commissioned to make my first wire sculpture of a horse, which you can
still see here,” she says. “They like to move it around the gardens to keep
people on their toes.
“The wire horse was the first time I moved away from working in willow and
has led me to doing more public commissions in wire and now bronze wire. There
are 12 little galvanized ones in the new exhibition, coated in zinc in the
galvanizing process.”
Her outdoor willow sculptures, meanwhile, must be treated at regular
intervals. “Think of it as a seasonal chore in the garden,” she says. “Four times
a year; 50 per cent linseed oil; 50 per cent Turps substitute, which is a
traditional way to protect the strength of the willow.
“There’s no reason you can’t get ten years out of them if you look after
them properly, as linseed oil builds a layer of varnish, like shellac. So, remember,
four times a year, once a season.”
In Staithes, you can spot Emma’s coral and coronation blue lobsters, her 9ft marine crustaceans first exhibited in the Sculpture By The Sea exhibition at the 2015 Staithes Festival of Arts and Heritage, and now she has made Withernsea Crab, a three metre-high sculpture of a brown crab for the Withernsea Fish Trail.
Emma also had been working on sculptures for
Jardin Blanc at May’s now cancelled 2020 Chelsea Flower Show, her fourth such
commission for the hospitality area, where Raymond Blanc is the executive chef.
More Emma work, by the way, can be found at Blanc’s Oxfordshire restaurant, the
Belmond Le Manoir au Quat’Saisons.
At the time of this interview, Emma was on the cusp of signing a contract to create seven life-size sculptures celebrating Whitby’s fishing heritage on the east side of the East Coat harbour. ”I’m hoping to have the first piece installed in time for the Whitby Fish & Ships Festival in May,” she said. The 2020 festival has since been cancelled, but look out for Emma’s sculptures at the 2021 event on May 15 and 16 next spring.
Looking ahead, where would Emma most love to exhibit? “My dream is to do an exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park [at West Bretton, near Wakefield], particularly as I did my teacher-training there at Bretton Hall,” she says.
One final question for Emma: is it true that boxing hares are not male rivals scrapping over a female in hare-to-hare combat but in fact, contrary to myth, jack versus jill (as hares were known). “That’s right: it’s male against female, and in my boxing-hare couples, it’s always a female fending off a male,” she says.
As and when Nunnington Hall re-opens, Emma Stothard’s installation 366 Leaping
Hares would then be on view and on sale until November 1.