Magic Lives Everywhere
Mar. 24th, 2021 11:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustSpring arrived on Saturday: according to the calendar, and according to the weather. We would have visited the Botanic Gardens, but they are currently only open Monday to Friday, so we went instead to Ushaw College. Fewer spring flowers, but more artworks - or at least, more that I hadn't seen already. Ushaw had celebrated the opening of their gardens and (outdoor) café with the installation of a series of stained glass pieces by glass artist Stuart Langley (website only partly functioning). I'll start with the first one we saw - and which I had to ask durham_rambler to photograph on his phone, since my camera battery had died:
but "Magic Lives Everywhere", that's what you want to see inscribed on the door in the wall, isn't it?
The first thing we saw as we drove in was that there are windows in the trees. Seven glass panels reference things to be found within the college, a former Catholic seminary. So 'Snake':
as the explanory board points out, picks out a detail of a nineteenth century madonna, Our Lady of Help by Karl Hoffman, to illustrate good overcoming evil "with pink painted toenails".
'Virus' brings together that familiar microscopic image with the hand of God from a marble in the college's collection and the embroideries of Dame Werburg Welch "encoutag[ing] us to focud on the positive changes and outlooks the pandemic has revealed." I'm uneasy about this message, but the glass shining among the branches is pretty ...
We walked across the front of the college, and down towards the lake. The wooden animals there are old friends, although I'm not sure I have seen this owl before:
and, being myopic myself, didn't at first notice the spectacles.
We'd seen a number of clumps of daffodils, but these, as we completed our circuit of the lake, were the only ones I would really call a host:
appropriately, since they are both beside the lake (though it's not a very big lake) and beneath the trees (even though it's just a single row of trees marking the field edge).
One last window is a survivor from a past Lumiere festival:
Ah, here is is in all its glory:
Now it hangs tattered and lifeless on the wall built for the playing of some forgotten game...
But just follow that wall along to the left, and - magic lives everywhere.
durham_rambler to photograph on his phone, since my camera battery had died:but "Magic Lives Everywhere", that's what you want to see inscribed on the door in the wall, isn't it?
The first thing we saw as we drove in was that there are windows in the trees. Seven glass panels reference things to be found within the college, a former Catholic seminary. So 'Snake':
as the explanory board points out, picks out a detail of a nineteenth century madonna, Our Lady of Help by Karl Hoffman, to illustrate good overcoming evil "with pink painted toenails".
'Virus' brings together that familiar microscopic image with the hand of God from a marble in the college's collection and the embroideries of Dame Werburg Welch "encoutag[ing] us to focud on the positive changes and outlooks the pandemic has revealed." I'm uneasy about this message, but the glass shining among the branches is pretty ...
We walked across the front of the college, and down towards the lake. The wooden animals there are old friends, although I'm not sure I have seen this owl before:
and, being myopic myself, didn't at first notice the spectacles.
We'd seen a number of clumps of daffodils, but these, as we completed our circuit of the lake, were the only ones I would really call a host:
appropriately, since they are both beside the lake (though it's not a very big lake) and beneath the trees (even though it's just a single row of trees marking the field edge).
One last window is a survivor from a past Lumiere festival:
Ah, here is is in all its glory:
Now it hangs tattered and lifeless on the wall built for the playing of some forgotten game...
But just follow that wall along to the left, and - magic lives everywhere.
no subject
Date: 2021-03-24 01:13 pm (UTC)The spectacles on the owl were sweet, too.
no subject
Date: 2021-03-24 05:37 pm (UTC)The impromptu nature of the spectacles stopped it being *too* sweet, I think -
no subject
Date: 2021-03-24 02:38 pm (UTC)Watch out for pics later!
no subject
Date: 2021-03-24 05:37 pm (UTC)