ring of brodgar

Isn't this beautiful!
It's stone/s, maybe tiles, found on the recent excavations at the Ring Of Brodgar on Orkney. They have incised patterns on them, which are particularly noticeable on the stone on the right hand side. A 'butterfly' design, of 2 triangles, attached by their points, can be seen.
My initial response to this photo when I saw it, was to think that it had painterly qualities; texture, colour, form, composition. It's like an abstract painting. Wish I could make paintings with such power.
They also found one of those mysterious carves stone balls in the dig. I've come across many of these carved balls during my visits to Scotland.
The website has a photo of the carved ball, with the following text;
'hardly anyone has ever found a carved stone ball in a modern archaeological context.'
So a very important find indeed! 

You can find out more about the archaeological dig here, which is where I got this photo.


And here's a photo from the twitter feed of the orkneyjar.com website. The carved stone ball, rediscovered after thousands of years hidden away.

collography on felt

This is the second collography plate, printed onto a piece of felt I made in my textiles class. I'm going to embellish it with some stitching, though I suspect this may be quite minimal.
It reminds me of rock art; as though it's a stone surface, which has been decorated. I like that look. And it was unintentional. This is the exciting part of felt making, that unintended things occur!
On Tuesday I take possession of an amount of silk...courtesy of my friend Berenice, via ebay! Second-hand, so ok for me to use!
That story will have to wait!

Richard Long @ The Hepworth Wakefield

Two of Long's characteristic circles.

The top one is titled, 'Cornish Slate Ellipse' from 2009. It's as it describes itself, an ellipse shape, rather than a pure circle. The slate is grey with very smooth tops, and people with me said the blocks looked painted. It had the look of a raft, with slats of wood lashed together, or field patterns, seen from high above.

 The circle above, is titled, 'Blaenau Ffestiniog Circle' from 2011. This has lots of colours in the slate, which is sharp-edged, and spikey. Perpendicular, as opposed to horizontal. Colours included black, greys, browns, ochres. These slate pieces come from Wales. It echoes the mountains of Snowdonia, and the Welsh landscape.

Hare Stone

At Lime Tree Farm in North Yorkshire, stands a stone circle, erected by willing helpers at the end of last century. Each of the stones was put in place at specific points throughout the year, situated in particular directions.
When I went there a few years ago, I was struck by the patterns of quartz, running through the rock. 
To me, it created a Hare. I was seeing a number of Hares during the late 1990's, at lots of different locations. Once you've seen a Hare, you can never mistake them for rabbits! I've seen some huge ones, the size of a medium-sized dog! And they have a very particular way of looking at you; as if they're seeing right into you, and through you. Very magical, are Hares. So it's not surprising that I saw the Hare in the quartz of this stone. 

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

A film by Werner Hertzog.

On Wednesday we went to Bradford to see this documentary film, about the Chauvet caves in Southern France. The caves were discovered in 1994, and were hidden by a landslide; inside were discovered 32,000 year old rock art images. Bison, lions, bears, horses, all from the time when ice-sheets covered northern Europe, and there existed still, a landbridge between Britain, and the European continent.

The images are stunning. The animals are almost alive; you can almost see them breathing, hear them neighing/growling/galloping. The geology of the earth has altered so much, that calcification has blanketed some of the bear skulls, joining them to the rock of the cave floor. Many of the stalactites and stalagmites weren't there when the rock art was created!

Mind-boggling! One of the skulls of the cave bears is placed on a stone, looking out at the original entrance of the cave. The stone is almost an 'altar'. It was obviously deliberately positioned there.

Interviews with an archeologist who has worked on the cave site, revealed that he had dreamed of lions, after working in the cave for 5 days. He had to stay out of the caves for a while, to get his bearings again.

Hertzog asked him 'were you afraid?' The archaeologist replied 'no', but he was aware of 'something deep'.

In the course of the filming the crew, and some of the scientists admitted that they had felt that the people who'd made the art, were watching them, whilst they were working in the caves.

Jon and I left the cinema in silence. I was just awed, in the true sense of the word. Jon said 'It puts all this in perspective, doesn't it?' as we took in the Bradford cityscape, and got into the car, to drive home.

The archaeologist had said that we could learn from other tribal societies how to look at rock art differently. He recounted how an ethnographer had visited Australia, with an Aboriginal guide, and they had visited a rock shelter where rock art was painted. The rock art hadn't been re-painted for a while, and the Aborigine began to paint. The ethnographer asked why he was repainting it; the Aborigine replied 'I'm not repainting it; the spirits are'.