Walk to barn october 8

Walk to the Barn with David Rhodes from the De La Warr
Bright hot sunshine, and even vehicles going to the cows in the field below the barns and a chain saw in the woods opposite the road as we were walking up.  So maybe not silence, but definitely bucolic.  We sat and talked at home first, and a tour of the paintings.  The conversation was ever winding, hard to recall what was said so here are fragments -
St Leonards community, Angie and Len, Kate and her two exhibitions, Norman's Road and Polly's leaving party and a mother slapping her child
John Cage and his new book and exhibition
De la Warr as a hub for artists to meet
the drawing class and its unknown participants
the bricks in the ruined farmhouse, the blue headers, the r and d in the snow, the metal buckets in the grass, oak trees and my collection of photographs, giving him an acorn, a shower of acorns as we stood next to the bee hives, which looked like wasps outside one, the charm of the empty outhouse, the old iron window, practicality, his father a master tool maker, his 8 years as a toolmaker, how things 'made' for art appeal to him, that the artist does not have to be the 'maker', conceptual art.
What is education and what is art, I replied all art can be education
we both left school without A Levels, he did an access course then a degree, that people should go to university later
conversations as art, conversations as communication
things about our parents, things about my children, his partner
Pam Dor and Shaping Voices
The story of the owner who only liked ruins and not seeing anyone
'We must be modest in front of the weather" a Greenlandic saying.  He liked the lenticular photograph more than the others
Two wasps came in, they were not bees, we had the last two honey biscuits  I  had bought for the visit to  Angie.
 About Joanna and Biber,  about teaching the children this week to do improvisation, and their answers to how it felt, weird, unusual, feeling on the edge of something, unknowing - and how I was pleased with their answers, that it made them artists - that's where we all want to be as artists
about walking and thinking, about ghosts - from the people who walked on the ground before us, to the cold air moment of feeling one, to my sons easy recognition of them before he knew they were ghosts, to my "Visitor" project with Judith, to teenage girls and menopausal women hormonal change giving one a kind of extra sense, a heightened intuition.



a certain awkwardness
re defining conversation in the realm of art and ordinariness
a shared thermos and honey biscuit
high sun and John Cage
To have a viewpoint
like the owner only wishing to see ruins
ghosts among the blue headers, practical makers, brick after brick
unsettling wasps visited, a newly dead squirrel kept life and death close
Plunking acorn drop
gift of a seed

to more winding voices

Barn Circle

Barn Circle Oct 7 2010 from clare whistler on Vimeo.

Poems about seeds 2

"To see things in the seed, that is genius."

Lao Tzu

Poems about seeds

"Before the seed there comes the thought of bloom."

E.B.White

Felicity Harvest meeting October 7

Arrived in a flash of brightness, a crabapple and chili jam in her hands.  We sat in the kitchen and talked, in a roundabout way.   About becoming celebrants, about training, about what it entailed, about her life, especially since retiring,I told the story of Angie, seeds, a tiny bit about the barn, Jonathan's birthday, gifts, mixture of ritual and performance.  Left with the idea of collaborating as celebrants...

ideas come from  anywhere - I am opening to all.

Visit to the barn

Possible rain at any moment, autumnal and blowsy, last blackberries kept children going. Niki and Alf, Iona, Arthur, Iris did the walk with Raphael and me. Dividing into different groupings, I talked to Iona about her Autumn box and helped her collect acorns and pink leaves, carried Iris and remembered how when your children are two, one's arms are at their strongest. A gentle approach to a small idyll. We sat on the steps and the children used the pond nets to find newts. Niki could sit and watch her children in their beauty and inquisitiveness and rejoice in it, tinged with her illness, her fear, her shaken hold on life. Capturing a wonder at her children in the simplicity of experience. That is what I will take away from that walk. And the long conversation I had with her on the way back as she carried the sleeping Iris. A barn visit can take many directions. I must try to collect them all.

October 3rd 2010 

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Hello, welcome!
To compliment the site www.clarewhistler.co.uk this blog will host images, films and useful information. Eventually these elements will migrate to fully featured pages on the site.

Clare