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Sunday by the Ouseburn
Dec. 3rd, 2008 10:28 pmWe spent Sunday in Newcastle; the various artists' studios in the Ouseburn valley were holding their annual open weekend, and we went to have a look round.
There seem to be more studios to visit each year; this year for the first time, we didn't have the energy even to try to see everyrhing. I enjoyed Roger Tye's glass triffids, and some of Jim Edwards' cityscapes (the ones with the right balance of blue - a view of the Fish Quay, for example), some of Amanda Rabey's paintings looked like illustrations for a story I'd like to read. I bought two small Christmas presents, and had a slice of very fine almond cake in the café upstairs at Cobalt ("a studio group in progress"). But, as Gail said, "I was hoping to fall in love with something, and I haven't!" - not necessarily to buy anything substantial, but at least to wish I could.
I had an agreeable flirtation at Northern Print with Jo Bourne's Winter Walk. And I had a 'might have been' moment at the very end of our tour, the last space in 36 Lime Street, with the promise of a drink and a sit down at the Cluny dangling like a carrot in front of us: a strange little collection by Catriona Jones entitled The Architecture of Dressmaking: "The images show invented tools and imagined spaces created by a guild of architectural dressmakers in the garment district of New York." and I'm sorry now that I didn't give it more time.
The best thing of all was the Ouseburn itself - the area, not the waterway, (though the waterway has its charms). The warehouses and industrail buildings which line the valley of the Ouseburn as it flows down into the Tyne are a curious mixture of the derelict and the lavishly converted. Walking from Northern Print's gleaming new gallery to xsite architecture I heard myself ask "But where is the money coming from?" Gail agreed it was a good question and then, a moment later "Don't tread on that dead rat!" Walls covered in graffiti and topped with coils of wire glowed in the winter sunlight, hoardings advertise industrial services and development opportunities.
There seem to be more studios to visit each year; this year for the first time, we didn't have the energy even to try to see everyrhing. I enjoyed Roger Tye's glass triffids, and some of Jim Edwards' cityscapes (the ones with the right balance of blue - a view of the Fish Quay, for example), some of Amanda Rabey's paintings looked like illustrations for a story I'd like to read. I bought two small Christmas presents, and had a slice of very fine almond cake in the café upstairs at Cobalt ("a studio group in progress"). But, as Gail said, "I was hoping to fall in love with something, and I haven't!" - not necessarily to buy anything substantial, but at least to wish I could.
I had an agreeable flirtation at Northern Print with Jo Bourne's Winter Walk. And I had a 'might have been' moment at the very end of our tour, the last space in 36 Lime Street, with the promise of a drink and a sit down at the Cluny dangling like a carrot in front of us: a strange little collection by Catriona Jones entitled The Architecture of Dressmaking: "The images show invented tools and imagined spaces created by a guild of architectural dressmakers in the garment district of New York." and I'm sorry now that I didn't give it more time.
The best thing of all was the Ouseburn itself - the area, not the waterway, (though the waterway has its charms). The warehouses and industrail buildings which line the valley of the Ouseburn as it flows down into the Tyne are a curious mixture of the derelict and the lavishly converted. Walking from Northern Print's gleaming new gallery to xsite architecture I heard myself ask "But where is the money coming from?" Gail agreed it was a good question and then, a moment later "Don't tread on that dead rat!" Walls covered in graffiti and topped with coils of wire glowed in the winter sunlight, hoardings advertise industrial services and development opportunities.
