Melinda's ideas moving on


I have upped my duties at the Abbey so I can experience how it
operates at different times of day- as the light which floods the
Abbey  changes through the day, so the activities of the day vary in
tone ; the Abbey doesn’t just run religious services but puts on films! One late
afternoon I came in hoping to find my usual solace to only find  John
Huston's "The African Queen”, blasting out to  parishioners!

    Another lunchtime I was lucky enough to observe these flowers responding to the light.





Like Catherine, the women who arrange the flowers intrigue me. I 
made a film of Marion who has been flower arranging at the Abbey for
28 years. I was lucky to catch her one early morning and made a film
of her arranging the flowers at the baptism font.



I am still thinking about what aspect of Abbey life I wish to create
work, there are so many facets of the place which fascinate me , those
that are  prosaic and others which are monumental.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Catherine's first blog post Hello! My name is Catherine Ayres and I’m going to be (hopefully) writing poems as part of this project. I say ‘hopefully’ because I’m a slow writer, sometimes excruciatingly so. I could take up a whole blog of my own writing about my slow writing, so I’ll stick to Hexham Abbey for now. I first visited the Abbey a couple of months ago, with Bridget and Melinda, which is shameful because I’m a Northumbrian who’s lived here most of my life. My first impressions were coloured by my main interest, which is the lives of women in history. I’m currently (again, very slowly and in-between working full time as a teacher) researching for a PhD in creative writing, which is centred around writing poems about the women who lived on Hadrian’s Wall at the time of the Roman occupation and how I can make sense of their lived experience, as archaeologists say, by linking their lives with the lives of modern women. Hexham Abbey was built after Etheldreda, Queen of...
Read more

Melinda's ideas are developing: Consolidation

Image
I have been visiting and working in the Abbey for nearly a year and with our impending exhibition looming I need to consolidate my ideas.  I find many things intriguing about Hexham Abbey but those that are salient are the fact that it seems like a “ home”, there are routines that are steadfast but there is also a haphazardness that is tolerated; I came into find Jesus folded in half in the children’s play area! The aspect I think I am going to explore more is “wear and tear”; of the fabric of the building – sometimes you come across sticky tape of varying sorts, which is laid, on bits of stone to keep it together- a metaphor for the soul.   I've been making a series of drawings based on these findings. I think that my contribution to the exhibition in September will be a selection of drawings and paintings based on these observations.
Read more