Good Things Come
To those who wait half a lifetime
This is a between-essays week, I have plenty of good news and an offer to share.
Back to School
This week has been like no other regarding the range of work that I get invited to do. In a couple of weeks’ time I will be 52 years old; a year for every week of the year. It is also exactly half that time, 26 years, since I left art college, on finishing my MA in Painting at Chelsea School of Art in London. The scene I came out into was the epitome of commodity capitalism and although there were some great people and some good art, the London art scene itself was not for me. Opening nights at galleries were a perfect encapsulation of class hierarchy, transposed onto the supposedly classless and right-on scene. Instead, class per se was replaced by fame / influence / whether Charles Saatchi had shown an interest, and after a few months of people I knew perfectly well staring over my head to see if someone more important was coming through the door, I baulked, and formed a band. Team art-making ensued for the next decade.
So when one of my only three friends from the art world days arranged for me to be invited as a guest tutor at the Turps Art School, I jumped. Turps (painting) and Mass (sculpture) are radical breaks from regular art education in UK and I wish they had existed when I was studying. Tuition is affordable and art isn’t taught to illustrate theory. Painters paint and sculptors make in a collegiate, supportive and intellectually challenging environment. Their magazine is here. After half a lifetime, this visiting lecturer gig feels like it undid all the remaining aversion to art school that remained in me from my ‘institutionalised’ youth. On Monday I gave a talk, very much from the heart, pretty much around what I write about here. Then followed a tour of the studios and a few crits with students. It was a joy to see the passion and commitment of the painters of all ages and styles. I very much hope to visit the sculpture site, Mass, later this year. London UK people can see their shows and events at the gallery here.
Ochre Art
This week I was invited to the Archaeology Department of Exeter University to bring in ochre samples and share them with the team documenting and studying a fantastic Indigenous ochre mural site in Colombia. I was asked for input regarding possible tools or methods that may have been used to make certain marks and areas of paint application from a practising ochre artist’s point of view. I am glad to say that it was a rich exchange and that demonstrating some methods and materials, especially when it came to improvised brushes and calcination (burning), and storage, of ochre led to some ‘aha’ moments for the professors. I also had a chance to test samples of Colombian achiote (annatto) mixed into red ochre, and local plant starches as binders, and to help the experimental archaeologists devise permanence, weathering and wear tests for the paint, to compare to the hi res images of the site before the next visit. There will be more to come on this great project, but for now, the opportunity to be in yet another fresh context and meet hearty people involved in the appreciation, study and preservation of ochre art was a real privilege.
Upcoming art courses online and in person
I’ll be teaching some great earth arts courses online over the next weeks and months, if you’d like to know more, click here.
I finally met future colleagues basket maker Elizabeth Crawford and the celebrant Isla Macleod at Embercombe in Devon UK. We will be teaching The Making Course there together this August, with a host of land-based practises to reconnect people to earth, springs, trees, rushes, willow, ochres and their own voices. More about this in a month when the course goes live. Friday was spent on the incredibly beautiful, biodiverse site itself, including seeing a newly discovered spring, complete with nascent biogenic ochre… A more auspicious day could not have been had, as both Isla and I are keepers of springs which the other one loves second only to our ‘own’. She knew about me from reading this, and made a pilgrimage there herself 2 years back. I was taken to St Aldhelm’s spring last year, and now cannot wait to go back there with her, this time.
I’ll also be teaching with Dark Mountain on this online course in March, straddling the equinox. For more details or to join us, click here.
Chi Kung Class for Paid Subscribers
For my paying subscribers, at last - the live chi kung session! Sorry for the delay. Next week you will receive a information for a 90 minute session you can join on 10th February 2024. The time slot will be afternoon in UK, and morning in USA, so that more people can come. I’ll be recapping the exercises I have posted on here so far and completing the set with the beautiful, energising Five Elements set. I have been practising this since 1987 and have found it to be incredibly helpful. You can watch the chi kung I have posted so far at the archive.
Chi kung is great for the mind and body and suitable for all. No previous experience is necessary. If you would like to receive the link to this event and access to the previous videos, then subscribe to Uncivil Savant for the month, or even better, the year! I’ll plan more online sessions if there is demand for it. I’ll send the link out a week before the class. I have made a 20% off special offer that lasts until 10th February.
Great books
A month ago I finished reading ‘s superb book Here Be Monsters. I have lent my copy to one of my nephews, so can’t quote you from the many underlined paragraphs and marked pages. However, I didn’t want to wait until my copy came back before I urged you to read this. Rhyd, like me, doesn’t want things to be better only for ‘people just like us’. He also knows that if we only sit down and make peace with people we already get along with, that peace won’t last. Whether you are a ‘leftist’, a ‘conservative’, a person of faith, an atheist, or none of the above, you’ll find Rhyd’s clear, well-researched analysis of the state we’re in incredibly useful. In fact, especially if you are not part of the left, you’ll get a real, nuanced and multifaceted insight into why and how the culture war got to the point of everyone shouting at each other across the aisles and the internet. Peppered with personal anecdotes, hair-raising reportage (and what I would frankly call ‘teaching stories’ if this were a book leaning only slightly more towards the life of the soul), this book is a humane and necessary addition to your reading pile.
I am currently reading ‘s speculative fiction book, Exogenesis. I am only a couple of chapters in, but I am hooked. This is also problematic, as I’ll explain. For the last five days I have been sleeping on the bedroom floor of my colleague, master-tanner Theresa Emmerich Kamper, after days spent lugging massive bags of ochre to and from the uni, or de-fleshing and membraning over a dozen reindeer and roe deer hides, in preparation for tanning them next month. So when I go to bed, exhausted, I should probably just go to sleep. But instead, I am propped up at an odd angle getting the slanting light from the other end of the room, addicted to the plot, themes and characterisation and intrigued as to what will happen next. My back is very unhappy with me! But the rest of me is very pleased that I have a long train journey home tomorrow where I can continue to read. I’ll review it properly when I finish.
Next week is essay week in my regular fortnightly rhythm, so there will be a new long form piece ready for you dealing with a very particular kind of religious experience.
I hope to see you then. Have a great week ahead.
Always such juice to help with the thin ice of a Monday morning.
Still enjoying your twiggy topic-breaks.
Kx
Best thing I ever did was invest in a proper old person reading lamp. I am old 😂 and it works