Craftco exhibition this November.
Member Activities
Halesworth Bookshop, Adrian Bell
The Halesworth Bookshop is presenting ADRIAN BELL, A COUNTRYMAN’S WINTER NOTEBOOK at The Cut next week.
From 1950 to 1980 Adrian Bell wrote a weekly column called ‘A Countryman’s Notebook’ for Suffolk and Norfolk’s long-serving local paper, the Eastern Daily Press.
His columns were, as his son Martin Bell says in his preface, ‘not really journalism but prose poems about the natural life around him’, and these essays share that which is common to all his writing – a deep appreciation of the small moments of each passing day.
Now a selection of these beautifully crafted essays has been gathered together and introduced by Richard Hawking to form the first, of a quartet of Bell’s writings on the seasons.
Winter is the first.
With Richard Hawking, author of ‘At the Field’s Edge: Adrian Bell and the English Countryside’, and Professor Jules Pretty, author of ‘This East Country’, in conversation.
Tuesday 26th October 2021 at 7:30 pm
£8
Veronica Worrell – Climate Cultures
Recently an edit of my ‘Project Unseen’ was included in a virtual exhibition curated by Duke University, USA. This attracted the attention of undergraduates in China who were curating a live environmental art exhibition in Shanghai. Regretfully this indoor show was cancelled due to Covid but the undergraduates persisted and artwork was exhibited at an outside Art Fair. They organised the printing of one of my images to be included.
I wrote up the story to emphasis the need for collaboration not only with nature but with each other as we move towards COP26, Glasgow next month. .. a conference which, as John Kerry sais, ‘ is the best hope for the world’.
I tell the story of this one picture and offer hope in advance of COP26. I was delighted my essay has been published by Climate Cultures. Please follow the link below to peruse.
Alan Gouk + Steven Walker
An exhibition of recent paintings. The Cut, Halesworth October 2021.
Alan is a pre-eminent Abstract British painter, now in his 82nd year, he is at his peak of artistic maturity. Steven Walker is an emerging abstract painter fully committed to discovering what abstract painting means to him.
The nature of both artists reveal commonalities such as: to be always beginning, being direct, an emphasis is placed on making a statement. The works are made in the moment. They bristle, are luminous and effervescent. The colourful gestures have a deliberately confrontational nature, but secrets remain, requiring sustained and repeated viewing. To say the paint flows is an understatement — the colour and fluidity merge together and describe that ineffable quality the paint can have when it is both relaxed and controlled. Alan’s paintings are architecturally specific constructs in a primacy of immediate colour responses.
Exhibition opens 12 October in the Malt Room Gallery and Concourse.
Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 4pm.
Iestyn Edwards with his memoir of entertaining troops. In a tutu.
My Tutu Went AWOL tells how being overheard practising Schubert in an Aldeburgh police lock up led the author to a royal concert on H.M.S. Victory and then to a misguided tour dancing the Sugar Plum on UK military bases around the warzones of Iraq and Afghanistan.
‘Holding tent overnight in Basra. Got told off by the Sergeant Major for drying my ballet tights on the anti-blast wall. “This is my beautifully administered camp, sunshine. Not a wash to wear for a west end Wendy”.
What was that noise?
Desert wind?
Camels going through the bins?
No, actually, it’s ack ack ack ack ack. Ack. Ack…doof! Where’s the nearest hard cover for an insurgency attack again?’
As heard on BBC Radio 4 Saturday Live, Woman’s Hour, Loose Ends and Midweek.
‘Only the divinely unique Iestyn Edwards could be in a tutu in war-zones and write about it so perfectly. Fascinating, moving and completely hilarious.’ Miranda Hart
‘A rare and perfect synthesis of artiness and larkiness!’ The Times
‘Achingly funny.’ Daily Mail
‘Extremely funny – and fascinating. An enchanting and unlikely mixture of showbiz memoir, war reportage and bromantic comedy.’ ***** Piers Torday
Pakefield Singers
After eighteen months when live music across East Anglia was all but silenced, Pakefield Singers can look back with satisfaction at what they were able to achieve. Now they can look forward with optimism, to inviting you to an exciting concert on November 13th!
Under the expert leadership of their indefatigable conductor, Vetta Wise, Pakefield Singers continued to meet throughout the pandemic, either online or face-to-face (when that was allowed) This concert follows their well-received outdoor ‘” return” performance in July 2021, when the choir performed old favourites, as well as some new pieces learnt in lockdown.
Mozart’s iconic and poignant Requiem is a fitting choice as we journey through the pandemic, and is paired with his serene and uplifting Laudate Dominum. We are delighted that the venue is the beautiful St Mary’s Church, Halesworth, where we were about to perform when Lockdown intervened!
Saturday 13th November – Mozart’s Requiem 7.30pm – St Mary’s Church, Halesworth IP198LL
Performed by Pakefield Singers, with conductor Vetta Wise, organist Tim Patient and soloists.
Tickets – £10 (age 16 and under free) From – The Halesworth Bookshop 42 Thoroughfare, ‘Take Note Music’ Grove Road, Lowestoft, and on the door.
Unreserved seating. No interval. www.pakefieldsingers.com
Mill Street Etching Studio – Winter Workshops
The next workshops will be on the 11th and 12th of December in 2021 and will include a one-day ‘Refresher course in Etching’ and a one-day ‘Aquatints Part II’, following on from our Aquatint course in September 2021. Please do email directly for more information on these two courses and to reserve your place, dates to be confirmed in late 2021.
Alternatively if you are a practising artist and printmaker and want to start on an edition or work on a current plate, please email direct to book an Induction prior to using the printmaking studios with 24 hour access. Please email Caro at enquiries@millstreetetchingstudio.co.uk
Ruth McCabe – Continuing Open Studio Saturdays
Ruth is holding 2 more Autumn open studio days on Saturdays.
October 30
November 27
Ruth has set up a ‘Bargains table’ for the sale of older pieces in oils, watercolour and mixed media. She will also have one surprise larger work on sale at 50% of original price each Saturday.
Her new 2021 collection of collaged work made with hand painted acid free papers. Framed, unframed and artist-made cards will also be on view and for sale. Paymetns by Sumup or for known customers, BACS.
*A NEW STRAND TO HER WORK: Artists interested in exploring how insights into themselves can be gained by reflecting on a piece of work are welcome to book a 30 minute introductory session bringing an example with them. *£10 introductory fee.
Email Ruth on rc4619@icloud.com to arrange a covid safe time to pop in. No obligation to buy.
Visits can also be arranged at other times if the open Saturdays don’t suit.
Shorelines, at Ways with Words
Robert Jellicoe
The Jellicoe family have lived in Southwold since 1811. Robert Jellicoe will illuminate a lost way of life and explore the history of Southwold’s longshore fishermen, community and beach life. From the exploits of the Lifeboat, annual fishing seasons, ‘big boating’ from Lowestoft and the necessity of poaching and stealing root crops in the lean winter months will be illuminated through first-hand testimony and archive material.
‘A Daring, tender and fascinating, this is a wonderful work’ – Robert Mcfarlane
Voices of a Lost Southwold Culture at the Ways With Words Festival on Saturday November 6th at 9.30am at St Edmunds Hall, Southwold, £14
And also in conversation with DJ Taylor at Jarrolds in Norwich on 11th November 6.30-8pm. Tickets are £5 from Jarrolds which is redeemable against purchase of the book.
Shorelines, Voices of Southwold Fishermen
Shorelines is a ground-breaking work about Southwold’s longshore fishermen.
Written by Robert Jellicoe, who comes from a longstanding Southwold family, it brings a lost way of life into sharp focus using first-hand testimony and original archival material.
Inspired to start collecting in 1976 after attending a series of lectures given by George Ewart Evans, a pioneer of oral history, Jellicoe recognized that a culture of fishing and beach life had disappeared. He began to tape record those who remembered it, gathering an unprecedented insight into a long forgotten way of life and language. Fascinated by what he learnt, Jellicoe went on to research other aspects of beach life.
Shorelines creates a vivid account of both the history and culture of this community.
We hear of the Beach Companies, the exploits of the Lifeboat, the annual round of fishing seasons, the experience of ‘big-boating’ from Lowestoft on voyages to the Shetlands and to Cornwall and of surviving the winter
months through back-breaking work, poaching and even stealing root crops from the fields.
This is a book of voices, including those imagined by the author himself, speaking from the beach, the sea, the pubs and the depths. Illustrated by P H Emerson’s extraordinary photographs, the paintings of Joseph Southall and local artists and the novels of Neil Bell.
The result is a magnificent salvage operation and a fitting tribute to the Southwold fishermen, their own men and a ‘right royal lot’.
Daring, tender and fascinating, this is wonderful work Robert Macfarlane
What a treasury … That world … will never return and you have secured it a
place in the memory. Southwold will be grateful to you. Adam Nicolson
SHORELINES is a 304 page hardback book, PRICE £20
with 16 colour plates and 38 black & white illustrations
ISBN 978-0-9954792-7-2
Out in late OCTOBER 2021
Copies available from local bookshops and
online from www.blackdogbooks.co.uk