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The seed heads of Clematis tangutica ‘My Angel’ are extraordinary silvered whirligigs. The plant itself is a bit of a thug, quite at odds with its name, scrambling greedily for many metres in our small garden. Right now, from our bathroom window, I can see the seed heads sitting across the fence like a thick…
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There is a rambling rose in our garden, which produces untidy confetti-style blooms in a tremendous deep pink with golden centres. It’s still flowering even now, though surely not for much longer. As part of my Kick-About 42 experiments, I wondered what I’d get if I plunged a whole bunch of these scruffy roses into…
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An allium seed head saved from the summer gets the cryogenic suspension treatment, as I tried a bunch of different things in pursuit of producing something arresting for The Kick-About No. 42. In the space of a few images, we go from ‘paperweight’ to something a bit more sci-fi and wriggly, which is always a…
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Some deep-frozen foliage today, inspired by the prompt for The Kick-About No. 42: a caramel-coloured leaf-tip from an Osmunda regalis, and the reddish plum tones of the Parthenocissus henryana. In its almost jellied-way, the topmost image just reminds me of a Nautilus belauensis, those octopus-like creatures with their striped shells (and the ice block proved…
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A little festive offering today, throwing back but a few short days to the last weekend in November, when we gathered with a few of our neighbours for the grand switching on the Albert Street lights… Well, if not grand exactly, then a nice touch nonetheless, with the residents in our short row of terraced…
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With Andy Goldsworthy’s Ice Spiral as the prompt for The Kick-About No. 42, I set about producing my own much smaller-scale installations in the bottom drawer of my freezer. Over the course of a few days, I foraged a number of interesting bits to freeze inside blocks of ice, including this umbellifer, a dill plant…
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Although the weather has turned much colder here in the UK, it’s not yet cold enough here in Whitstable for any shows of ice or snow. With Andy Goldsworthy’s land art piece Ice Spiral as the prompt for this week’s Kick-About No. 42, I knew I’d be out of luck if I was hoping to…
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The Margate School (TMS) is an independent not-for-profit postgraduate arts school, based in and for Margate, Kent – and I’ll be teaching on their new Visual Communication course, starting in January 2022. I’ll be working with students on their Image and Narrative modules over a period of ten weeks, and I’m looking forward to getting…
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After our short city break for the KA No.41, we’ve taken a brisk, bracing detour out into the wintry countryside, where we encountered Ice Spiral by the celebrated land artist, Andy Goldsworthy. Enjoy this latest collection of artistic responses to Goldsworthy’s fleeting installation of ice, light, place and form.
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Another old song dating from a downbeat, if highly creative, period of my life, and another break-up song at that! I actually remember the melody for this one, which moves me towards doing something constructive with some of these out-pourings, if only to ensure against forgetting them completely
Red's Kingdom 