A Day of two halves

[shewhomust]

Spent the morning at the craft fair on Palace Green. Given the underwhelming nature of the last Frost Fair we visited, and that Durham's special events program - oh, shall we say, isn't always to my taste - I might not have gone had I not made a date with Sandra from Byblos Jewellery (website coming soon). Glad I did, though, because this one was really good - lots of exhibitors, very busy, many interesting stalls, in both the craft and the food sections. I bought a variety of small gifts, my beautiful necklace from Byblos (which Sandra had lengthened for me), a boned duck roast, a game pie...

Then after lunch we went to the dli for a guided walk round the exhibition of Unpopular Art, Grayson Perry's selection of pieces from the Arts Council's collection. I liked David Hepher's Arrangement in Turquoise and Cream (illustrated here), a huge canvas of a block of flats seen face on, a regular grid that looked almost abstract, yet with each flat showing the personality of the inhabitants in the choice of curtains, the washing hanging on the balcony, depressing in its uniformity but luminous in itself; and William Roberts' The Seaside, the colours brighter and airier than in this reproduction, half Fernand Leger, half British Rail poster - a scene of Soviet workers relaxing in a Black Sea resort, were it not for the very distinctive white cliffs in the background (more wonderful pictures of Roberts' work on the William Robers Society web site: Rush Hour, for example). I also liked Elinor Bellingham Smith's The Island, children in the foreground of a misty green East Anglian landscape (this, and other works in the exhibition, is pictured at postage stamp size in this list of items in the exhibition).

Also at the dli, I picked up some postcards from a previous exhibition, Home Fires and Deep Dales featuring four paintings by Matt Sewell of County Durham scenes. Very identifiable County Durham scenes:

Home Fires and Deep Dales
Originally uploaded by
Đark Side øf the Mountain

I reckon when I took my photo, I must have been standing pretty much where the oyster-catcher is standing in the painting.

Comments

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

That's uncanny, the photo and the painting. Wow.

J and I went to that craft fair too but when we went it was so unbelievably stuffed with people that you couldn't actually stop and look at anything. It was stifling and I'm not usually claustrophobic, but we got out of there as soon as we could.

I did get a lovely picture-album though, handmade from mulberry wood pulp. I'm going to use it to house my dress-photos.