On holiday in France this year, I am staying with my family in an old 3-storied house in the Loire. It is full of beams, right next door to a church. The village is quiet, the houses silent, the shop fronts closed. The summer air hangs over the place, people aren’t around. But the bells. The bells ring out […]
Sounds of a summer visual theology Read More »
This month has been a month of recalibration, the long 8 weeks of this summer term (second half) feeling like a marathon. I’d sprinted to St Cyriac’s Day last month, a deadline for my latest project; and now somehow July has passed with my wondering where the solid ground is. Practitioner reflection brought about by
3 front lines when you ‘turn pro’ with art and motherhood Read More »
Today, 16th June, is St Cyriac’s feast day in the church calendar. It hasn’t been particularly noted at St Cyriac’s Lacock in the recent past, but this year we had something to celebrate. In 2013, the Lacock Cup, the church’s medieval masterpiece, was sold to the British Museum and the Wiltshire Museum for £1.3m. Agreed
St Cyriac’s Day and the tale of the Lacock Cup Read More »
Earlier this year, my first journal article from my doctoral thesis on the Bible in photography was published in History of Photography. The journal itself has been a prompt many a time for my research – its articles shine so many lights into the past, with deeply attentive and close looking into histories that haven’t
How a Victorian vicar used photographs to explain the Bible Read More »
On a Thursday in Lent, I found myself at Chelsea College of Art, in their Banqueting Hall, for an evening performance/service by Mark Dean, Pastiche Mass. Supported in his position as Chaplain at the College, Mark presided over a service that included the invitation to receive communion, as well as the traditionally sung elements such
Pastiche Mass with Mark Dean Read More »
Lent started on the 6th March. I went to an Ash Wednesday service at St Anne’s Bowden Hill (Wilts), got the cross marked on my head and remembered that I am dust. This Lent, I’m putting my foreground research in the background, and committing my time to a church project for Lacock and Bowden Hill.
Lent and soul patience Read More »
The recently published report (Dec 2018) from the Arts Council, Livelihoods of Visual Artists: 2016 Data Report, found that 90% of visual artists in the UK don’t make enough money to live on. Across the 2,000 artists surveyed, the average income from art practice was £6,000. This is further skewed by a small number of
A Financial Picture of Self-employment Read More »
I’m in endurance mode with George Steiner’s Real Presences (1989). What pitted, articulate, ranging, poetic depth he brings to present-day understandings of the arts. At my sense of it, he says we need a reckoning with the undisputed ‘life of meaning in the text, in music, in art’ (p.50) because our world is doing away
Catching the last days of this exhibition at the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands, I went to see David LaChapelle’s Good News for Modern Man in October this year. Not quite a retrospective for the photographer, the show concentrates on his fine art photography with oversized tableaux prints produced in bold, searing, colours and drawing
Good News : David LaChapelle’s photo-gospel Read More »
Remembrance Sunday 2018 sees commemorations across the world, remembering the end of the First World War 100 years ago. I’ve been involved in a community project at St Cyriac’s Lacock, ‘In Remembrance and Hope: Lacock Remembers’. The project saw local leaders Rachael McHenry and Jane Wheeler (Wiltshire Scrapstore) coordinate and cajole hundreds of contributors into
