Dorothy Courtis is a Suffolk-based author of historical novels, writing as Dorothy Stewart.
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Ballroom Arts opens to the public!
Ballroom Arts is two stunning venues for the arts and events in Aldeburgh.
Following an extensive renovation by Tom Brent, Managing Director of Urban Resolve Ltd, Ballroom Arts will open to the public on September 25th in partnership with breast cancer research charity Art for Cure and their show ‘Feast’.
Featuring artists from East Anglia and beyond, ‘Feast’ will show and sell work in the Courtyard Gallery and The Ballroom.
Tickets for the Private View on Sept 24th are available from https://www.ticketgun.com/events/feast-private-view.
We are now taking bookings for both venues from October, with full details on our website.
Ruth Wharrier
Ruth Wharrier is a freelance botanical and natural history artist and illustrator. She works as a tutor for Suffolk Wildlife Trust, is an advisor for the Arts Council Arts Award scheme and runs regular workshops for adults.
Botanical Artist and Illustrator
Harpsichord Decoration
Savouring the Sandlings
On 9th July Ivor and Jean Murrell led a group of eleven on the Savour the Sandlings walk.
We took a circular route of 11 kilometres from Westleton village across Westleton Common and Heath then through footpaths around Dunwich forest stopping at the Potton Hall café for refreshments.
Along the route Ivor stopped at various points to show sites of special interest.
On Westleton Common the cobble stones worn to a smooth round by the movement of ice age glaciers.
Besides this site were Silver studded blue butterflies, bee orchids and beautiful clumps of heather in full flower.
Everyone was interested to hear about the massive military activity in 1943 on Westleton Heath when the British army were given training in the then modern-day trench warfare. The scene of thousands of soldiers, flame-throwing tanks and explosions were recorded by the well known East Anglian war artist, Edward Bawden.
Stopping periodically, Ivor recited his published poems about the landscape, its special characteristics and the unique birds that live here like the Nightjar and Dartford warbler, also the more common Crow.
Corvus corone corone
I see you Crow.
I watch your studied nonchalance.
Your oil drip eye gives nothing back
green gleam on midnight feathers
steals surrounding light.
I know you Crow.
The trickster who can count
gifted master of the false feint
when paired and stealing food
from the unsuspecting.
I hear you Crow.
Not for you the Rook’s ‘Caw’
but a raucous shout for meat
with your ‘Pawk Pawk’
and your butcher’s beak.
I fear you Crow.
I feel your dark slow strut
feather ancient memory of the hunt,
the unknown made gravid
by the eater of the dead.
Ivor Murrell
After a long working life, with experience as a maintenance engineer, a sugar industry trouble shooter, a maltster, some involvement in ladies fashion and finally as Director General of the Maltsters Association of Great Britain, Since retiring Ivor Murrell has found more time for his writing, has achieved a BA Hons Humanities degree with the Open University and has been Chairman of The Arts Society East Suffolk.
“What a very successful walk! Ivor was so knowledgeable and his interest and delight in his local landscape made it even more enjoyable. “
Looking Out, August
It has been an odd year and sometimes it is difficult to work out which month we are in. July went out in storms, winds and rain. But now August arrives – the month of corn and harvest.
On Lammas Day, 1st August, the farmyard was filled with a flock of swallows, swifts and house martins, all wheeling and chattering together. Maybe the light northerly wind is encouraging them to follow the cuckoos south. I was surprised to see the martins as there have been none in the village this year and they haven’t returned to their nest site on the house.
This month is all about colour and movement. The barleys have already been combined and the wheats will follow – suddenly the landscape takes on a different shape. We can see several fields away as the crops are shorn. The pale straw yellows of the ripening cereals are replaced by short deep gold stubbles. Hares have fewer places to hide and the harvest exposes hidden wildlife. One day the field is covered in giant rolls of straw, the next day they are gone. It creates a sense of the year coming to an end. The days are getting shorter and we think about storing food – making jams, sloe gin, apple pies and going blackberrying. Look out for scarecrow festivals this month – a chance to ‘dress’ the front garden and celebrate the harvest.
Wildlife is dispersing. Not just the summer migrants but flocks of jackdaw and rook, swelled by so many young birds, are relocating noisily away from their breeding sites. Even plants are dispersing – we come home covered in clingy seeds from cleavers and herb bennet, other seeds catapult from pods as you brush past them. The rowan tree is weighed down with orange fruit but the blackbirds have already stripped the cherries and Amelanchier berries. Around the churchyard is a thick hedge of Myrobalan plum which drops an abundance of red and yellow fruits.
The green of summer becomes dusty and drab and hedgerows switch to yellow and purple as the late season flowers appear – St John’s wort, knapweed, chicory, scabious. In gardens the towering soft leaves of Greater Mullein stretch upwards nearly six foot high. Apparently the woolly leaves were used to line moccasins but we search them for the Mullein moth. There are often surprises in the fields as farmers plant patches of wild bird seed mix. On the farm here we have magical colour palettes of Phacelia, linseed, various crucifers and Amaranth.
August is a month when we stand poised for change looking ahead to shortening days, low sunlight painting red hues in the garden, birds and insects materialising and disappearing. Harvest the sights and smells now and store them up, preparing for the winter months to come.
Beccles Society of Artists
Beccles Society of Artists is an art society, based in Beccles in north Suffolk, which is dedicated to the furtherance and enjoyment of art. Most, but not all, members are practising artists and a popular annual exhibition is held each year in August. The Society meets monthly at the Waveney Centre in Beccles for talks or demonstrations by professional artists or other experts in art and associated fields. If you are interested in becoming a member of the Society, please sign up here.
Beyond Sculpture in the Valley, the silent auction at Potton Hall
Sculpture in the Valley at Potton Hall on the edge of the Blyth Valley was a dramatically different venue to our previous homes at Earsham and Raveningham in the Waveney Valley. The area immediately behind the coastal Sandlings region of East Suffolk is one of sloping landscapes, dense woods, flower meadows, little streams and open heathlands. Potton Hall’s 10 acre site gave access to all aspects of this diversity and the creative installations – sometimes consciously but also perhaps unconsciously – responded to this variety in form and shape. What emerged for me was a feeling of creative generosity from the 40 participating artists, whether in the form of conceptual, abstract or figurative art, all of which were well represented.
Something else that emerged over the period of the exhibition was the involvement of other creative disciplines, something to which we have not given too much thought during earlier Trails. True, Mel Horwood has run dance workshops at previous venues, but the one that she organised at Potton Hall ended up being particularly expressive – even therapeutic – for the smaller number of participants involved. Members of the Suffolk Poetry Society also came together to compose and perform in situ poems written directly in response to the artworks which affected them, with startlingly original and moving results. Finally, and for the first time, we contacted local musicians to come and informally busk near the café in order to create more of an ambiance, especially at weekends. Their contributions were quietly appreciated by customers and passers-by alike, and the musicians themselves enjoyed the opportunity to strut their stuff after such a long period of not being able to play for live audiences.
Another important aspect was the willingness of Waveney & Blyth Arts’ members and friends to give generously of their time and energy to help manage the resulting ‘show’. I calculate that somewhere in the region of 55 volunteers gave more than 500 hours over a period of four weeks and five weekends. And these figures do not take into account the enormous number of paid and unpaid hours spent in preparing for the Trail – meetings, phone calls and emails; contacting artists; booklet design and marketing activity; making technical alterations to the website box office; preparing templates for recording daily actions, bookings and sales; preparing information and safety notices and numbered posts; organising volunteers and researching the constantly changing Covid requirements. It was an enormous effort!
And what do we have to show for it?
Well, most importantly the pleasure of receiving a huge number of positive comments from visitors, all of whom commented on the quality and variety of the art works and the beauty of the setting. This translated into ticket sales to nearly 2,000 visitors as well as one of our best sales of artworks since our Trails began – good for W&BA and good for the artists who sold their work! And also good for John and Priscilla Westgarth (our hosts at Potton Hall) who benefitted from a massive increase in visitor numbers, especially to their Yurt Café, with the result that they experienced a significant increase in footfall and café sales.
However, the exciting news is that John and Priscilla have decided to offer interested artists an extension to the sculpture trail in the form of a ‘Silent Auction’. This is taking place over the next two months ending on 12th September when sales will be confirmed to the highest bidders above the artists’ declared reserve prices. In the event 20 artists showing 35 sculptures/installations are taking part in this arrangement which will include new works in addition to ones already previewed during Sculpture in the Valley. So, tell your friends and neighbours about this extension and encourage them to discover the delights of Potton Hall and experience the continuing ‘afterlife’ of all our creative efforts!
Simon Raven
Site Manager for the Trail
Richard Hemmings
Richard lives in Suffolk.
Drawing and works in pencil, ink and pastel.
Also mixed media.
Occasional poems.
Looking Out, July
Half way through the year now, the summer solstice has passed and the on-off summer lurches on. The days will begin to shorten. Swifts are screaming through the garden as they prepare to leave us. Every year, they fly up at the eaves of the house and perch briefly on the gutters. I assume they are checking out nest sites for next year and will probably be first time breeders at three or four years old. Swifts seem to define our summers but then one morning I realise they haven’t been heard for a few days. They were still here this week but as July moves on so will the swifts.
July’s other great winged visitors are the dragonflies and damselflies. I made a lockdown pond and, although small and still settling into itself, it has been blessed by four different species. The first to arrive was a male Broad Bodied Chaser – known for quickly colonising new ponds. It is very territorial and sits on nearby perches to keep an eye open for rivals, every few minutes doing a quick tour and back to its sunny spot. After a week a female arrived, brown to his blue, and was soon laying eggs into the water. Chasers lay what are known as Exophytic eggs, round eggs that are deposited directly into the water and lie just below the surface.
The next visitor was the Common Blue Damselfly. Tiny little darts of blue hovering around the pond – there were five males on several days. One female arrived and, protected by her successful suitor, laid her eggs. Damselflies lay Endophytic eggs, oval shaped eggs laid directly into plant stems or rotting wood.
Now I have a new pond already expectant with three species of these amazing creatures. Eggs usually hatch within a few weeks but it will be 2-3 years before the life cycle completes and the larvae emerge to become the dragonflies that grace our summer. Just before dawn on a warm July day the nymphs will emerge from the pond and around12 hours later the adults take to the wing. With fossil dragonflies being found from over 300 million years ago this is a story that keeps unfolding.
Damselflies are smaller and at rest close their wings whereas the larger dragonflies rest with their wings open. Damselflies have more of a fluttering flight, seeming delicate and more fluid in character. The more robust dragonfly can be an aggressive predator and its stiff wings can be heard as it comes up to inspect you or rushes down a green lane looking for insects. Masters of aerobatics they can move each wing independently allowing them to hover, fly backwards and turn sharply. They can also fly at speeds of up to 30mph.
There are 57 species recorded in the UK but only a dozen are more commonly seen. They are rich in imagery and name. Darters, chasers and hawkers describe the main groups of dragonflies and their colours are jewels: emerald, azure, sapphire and ruby. Imagine the rippled reflections of sunlight on water and you will see the glory of these winged insects as they sparkle across a wetland.
I have a fancy for a dual life
so I can taste the water
and the air. I’d like to try
being ugly, overlooked
and where I can hang out
with fish and frogs and feel
caress of ripples, share
the bubbled oxygen that
diving beetles bring,
and the sun clear through
a skin of water. But then –
oh joy – to creep up some
tall stem of reed, clasp to it
under summer sun, to shed
the damp and blackened me
and there, plant slung,
unfold a mirror to the sky,
pump up my wings,
shiver out of water
– and to fly.
Halesworth Museum
When you visit Halesworth make sure you visit the Museum, housed in the Victorian Railway Station.
For more than twenty years volunteers have been collecting and researching the history and archaeology of this fascinating corner of Suffolk.
Spend some time with the displays which will take you across 10,000 years, from the earliest settlers in the Blyth Valley to the busy hub of malting, brewing and agriculture which was the town in Victorian times.