Thursday, 18 February 2021
Czech Prints - Puppets
Wednesday, 20 January 2021
Czech Prints - Owls
I am going start the series with a post about a subject dear to my heart - owls. When I was nearly three, my family moved house. My father took me exploring the garden, an event that has stayed with me to this day. The previous owner had kept owls in the old stables that sat at the bottom of the garden of our rather normal terraced house and Dad showed me the pellets. The experience is the subject of the poem that gave my newly published poetry collection its title. The poem appears at the bottom of this post.
Ever since then I have had a love of owls and it seems that the Czechs have too, as owls feature in quite a few prints in the collection. Here are a few of my favourites:
First we found the snake
a ball of coiled skin and muscle
in a pickling jar at the base of the
hedge.
I followed my father up
the outside stair to the stable loft,
on one side the railway signal
without a track,
on the other a brick wall,
pocked as the moon,
that would crumble
like cheese in the rain
under the thud of my ball
and send it flying sideways
escaping me.
The tread creaked as my father
entered
and I followed into the dim.
I looked around, but saw
only an empty perching post.
The owl had gone with its master.
At my father’s instruction
I held out my hands
as if ready to receive bread and
wine,
but into my bowl of fingers
he dropped a pellet,
a galaxy of small bones and feathers
cocooned in fur.
That night I woke.
The moon shredded by clouds
hung over the stable roof
and an owl called unbound
from the cypress tree.
Friday, 8 September 2017
The Extraordinary Portmoneum
Friday, 22 January 2016
Czech Ex Libris
For my Christmas present to my husband I made a small album of Czech bookplates. I have in the past bought exlibris and other graphics for our artist son, but a few months ago my husband and I were talking about the possibility of creating an exlibris collection. We have run out of wall space for pictures and prints in our home and so a collection of small prints which can be kept in an album appeals. Many antikvariat shops will have a box or an album on a shelf somewhere in which you can find a few or many exlibris treasures. It is a way of collecting original prints, often signed, by well-known Czech artists for as little as a £ each. I know of no other way to develop such an art collection.
I picked up a collection of 32 bookplates on a Czech auction website and another on ebay. I emailed a gallery about a collection I missed and met with its lovely art director for a coffee in Prague and came away with nearly one hundred bookplates to add to the collection. Now everywhere I go I am on the look-out for antikvariats and pop in to ask for exlibris. Yesterday my husband and I were in Plzen (where the beer comes from) and spent a happy hour sifting through two shoeboxes.
I have included three of my favourites in this post, but I promise to post with more in future. Watch this space as our collection grows
Friday, 26 November 2010
Lost in Translation
I thought I might share with you more about what was discussed at the Lost in Translation exhibition opening, which featured the work of Czech artists and writers who live in the UK and the work of British artists and writers who live in the Czech Republic.
The picture above is by Katia Lom who said;
I have found refuge and my own way to come to terms with this industrious city through its pockets of nature. I have come to realise that there is peace to be found amongst this bustling city and that, even within its urbanised landscape, heavens of trees and animals can be found, from an animal farm in Hackney, to the great leafy neighbourhoods of North London. These discoveries have enabled me to start feeling more settled as I have found a common ground in nature and animals.
It struck me that this attachment especially to trees is very Czech. The forest is very powerful in the Czech psyche, equivalent perhaps in its significance as the sea is to the Brits.
A number of the pictures referenced another profound influence on the Czech psyche - fairytales. In Hana Vojackova's artwork (above) the Little Red Riding Hood's forest becomes London's East End. She writes:
More pictures from the exhibition together with the artists' thoughts can currently be found in a Facebook web album.
I have always admired the way the Czechs are able to accept the truth of fairytales. Many Brits would be embarrassed to talk about such "childish" things, we have put them away. But they are still there, hidden and hiding inside us and they still are "true". The reason Czech art is so strong is that it can see the world through them. We Brits have a lot to learn.
Sunday, 5 September 2010
Zumberk
Zumberk is one of those well kept Czech secret places, so well kept that my Czech friend had not heard of it. She even corrected my pronunciation, thinking I was talking about somewhere else. And yet Zumberk was only forty minutes drive away.
I found a short reference to it in a guidebook and as I was passing I dropped in. I couldn't believe my eyes. There it was - a perfect fortified village with fairytale towers, standing above a still small lake. And there was more - in the manor house the South Bohemian Museum displayed a wonderful collection of South Bohemian painted furniture.
I have always coveted the examples of Czech painted furniture I have seen, but here was a treasure trove: the finest examples of the local styles. The exhibition highlighted the subtle and not so subtle differences between the folk art from different areas of South Bohemia. And the building was fascinating too.
Unfortunately Zumberk is not geared to the British visitor: it is where I was asked to translate by the guide, but then we were, we were told, the first English speaking group to visit. And they did have a folder of English translation they can give you as you walk round, which allows us to spend as much time as we want to gaze at the exhibits.
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Statues at the Monastery
In the gardens of the Dominican Monastery next to the Church of on the Sacrifice of the Virgin in Piarist Square (Ceske Budejovice) is a series of wonderful statues of religious figures. Sometimes the gate to the Garden is closed, but my husband and I found them open yesterday and wandered in. Here are some photos of what we found.
Including this rather severe St Anne!