The end of the week brought the West Lancashire Open in which a friend and I have paintings. Old habits die hard and I got a little drunk on the free wine. Hey, I make no apology, its been a long week.
Chapel Gallery...West Lancashire Open
I was dressed in shorts and a cap, nothing like these smartly attired folk above, and offered up one or two vocal opinions towards the end of the night. Eek!
The real art came afterwards, on a diversion to Blackpool, my old home town, with my girlfriend on the way back from the Exhibition. I still love Blackpool and its eccentricities. Its motto 'Progress' seems to have propelled it into the 21st century with a fury.
The moon and the Glitterball
Blackpool Vanishes
The amazing Comedy Carpet, beneath the tower
We wandered around my old haunts, some now sadly closed ( The Stanley Arms!), had a pint in Scrooges Wine Bar for old times sake, and took in the slightly scary Friday night atmosphere. Blackpool is a crazy, crazy place. I would not like to live there now. It has changed, and rightly so. It has been inherited by a world that I find myself increasingly alienated from. Bless it though, with its charm and utter weirdness.
Sunday morning brought a visit to Sarah Thomas' wayfarer blog and a video interview with the lovely Edward Acland of Sprint Mill up in Cumbria. By sheer coincidence the Mill was open on Sunday as part of the NGS . It seemed too tempting to resist so off we went....WOW....what a place, what a guy, and lovely family to boot. We even met Sarah, post swim, in the river by the Mill.
Basically, Edward adopted a ruined Mill, on the River Sprint 40 years ago and adapted it to a small holding and a rather eccentric, and beautiful living museum for all manner of resting rural and farm implements, interspersed with personal collections and artefacts. In fact scrub 'museum', this place it very much alive and in vibrant good health.
The bottom image is a selection of Edwards reclaimed double glazing units, recycled into frames for his collages. They are beautifully arranged and aesthetically pleasing items. Edward is an artist by nature, not design. His work is full of integrity and wonder, from a man who seemed to have fallen into 'art' as a by-product of his lifestyle, an accidental artist. Amazing.
The rest of the small holding is as amazing, and very much a working farm. The families hand crafted furniture is fab.
This chair was surprisingly sturdy and comfortable. Sweet.
So there we have it. My week brought to quite a fine end. I even managed to sneak a pint of Windermere Pale at the Hawkshead Brewery on the way back. Ohhhhh, yes, how I love the hoppy goodness. Farewell for now Cumbria. A place of constant beauty and surprise.
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