Ted Hughes -Lovesong

He loved her and she loved him.
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment’s brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin’s attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon’s gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other’s face

Rembrandt Prints

Made For Each Other

Simon Carroll -Contemporary Ceramic Artist

Above, are two large scale ceramic pieces by the artist Simon Carroll. His work is characterized by the dramatic ‘raked’ pathways that power through the clay giving them a bravado and swagger that is impossible to ignore. These monumental pieces are however somewhat dwarfed by the sand drawings Carroll made at Bedruthan Steps, Cornwall. Often reaching the size of football pitches, these herculean undertakings have been captured on film and can be seen by clicking the link here;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPqCqJLQAY4

BNKR Architects

This is one of my favourite buildings created by BNKR Architects. It was built with the surrounding landscape firmly in mind and described by them as follows – ‘Acapulco’s hills are made up of huge granite rocks piled on top of each other. In a purely mimetic endeavour, we worked hard to make the chapel look like “just another” colossal boulder atop the mountain’. To learn about their work visit http://www.bunkerarquitectura.com/

Contemporary Figurative Ceramics

This is one of my latest ceramic wall pieces and it illustrates how the printmaking process has influenced how I work in clay. I ’emboss’ the surface with textured stamps and after an initial firing apply an underglaze. This underglaze is then ‘wiped’ from the surface very much like how you would prepare a plate for printing. The underglaze remains in the textured areas and drawn lines to create a high contrast between light and dark.

Iris Bodemer Jewellery

This necklace is by the German jeweller Iris Bodemer and created in 2016. Her pieces usually involve a combination of materials, here she uses silver and tourmalines, that lend her pieces a bold, physical presence. Bodemer cites the American Composer John Cage as a primary influence who taught her ‘ to explore the power of material, to carefully look at the little things, and that inspiration is everywhere and first of all inside yourself’. To see more of her work go to www.irisbodemer.de