Mini museums, minarets, and the art of staying sharp

Story Street #12

September is when I normally feel a boost of energy for sharpening pencils ready for a new season of illustration work and story writing. But this year, I am sharpening chisels instead. It’s for my new hobby – can you guess what it is?

Read on to the end to find out! But first, some interesting adventures…

Museum makers

Once a year the ArtWorkers’ Guild hold a special event in their beautiful Georgian house in Queen Square, Bloomsbury. The ‘Table Top Museums’ are the quirkiest collections of objects, displayed with love and pride by their artist curators – ranging from lucky charms to toilet paper from art galleries around the world. My friend Fee Campbell showed her measuring implements;

illustrator pal Sally Kindberg shared her collection of ‘surprising packaging’ including an Ever Ready Pocket Trout and a squeaky pork chop;

and I really enjoyed chatting about Orkney with Bex Shaw – her ‘Mixture of Mercies’ referred to the Orcadian term for the clutter that accumulates in a kitchen drawer, and her collection included seaweed and stones from Birsay, together with wonderfully organic ceramics she’d made using soil samples from the bay in the glaze.

Tony Hayward’s Viewmaster Museum brought back some memories – and I was thrilled to win one of these 70s classics in his raffle! I chose pictures of chandeliers in a German schloss for mine – the stereoscopic vision still seems stunning despite all the technological advances since these were invented.

Does anyone else remember with pleasure the gentle sound of the Viewmaster click as you advance to the next image?

Claire Fletcher’s Lucky Charms were beautifully displayed, from carefully pressed four-leaf clovers to a box of tiny cowrie shells. In August, on a beach in Orkney, I met a lovely woman who told me her (very interesting) life story and gave me one of these that she’d just found – they are known locally as ‘groatie buckies’. It’s tiny, pink and whorled like a baby’s fingertip, and I’ll always treasure it.

Looking at all the collections made me wonder what I might exhibit. Then I remembered many years ago I was inspired by Peter Blake’s ‘Museum for Myself’ to make one of my own – and here it is!

Treasures include a false thumb from the river Wandle, a lucky Japanese boat, a set of mystery bone objects (if you know what they are, do tell!), a 7” single by a French pop star – and a little BOAC purse that I remember keeping old pennies in after decimalisation. The photo at the bottom right is of a giant origami project I made in my school days – we had a craze of making what we used to call Bada Bada Birds, then used newspaper to make one big enough to sit in. I remember finding it immensely exciting.

Meeting the hula hoop king

A few months ago I was doing a reading at my local library – ‘So You Want To Be A Frog’, my non-fiction book illustrated by Neil Clark, went down very well with a group from a local school, Albermarle Primary. So well in fact, that I arranged with the school to become a regular visitor, starting from this autumn.

I do lots of school visits, particularly in the spring term, but I always leave feeling sad that I’ll never get to see those children again, or get to see how the stories they started with my story map develop – but that’s all about to change.

During September I did a couple of assemblies at Albermarle to introduce myself and answered lots of great questions – I can’t wait to visit again! One boy even taught me how to do a hula hoop trick in the playground, something I never thought I’d be able to master…

Mosques and minarets

I was really touched when one of the students at Evelina Hospital School won a Jack Petchey award – and chose to spend it on an art workshop with me. She’s from Afghanistan, so the challenge was to devise a project that would reflect her cultural heritage, that everyone could do in bed while on dialysis and which could be instantly framed for each child to take home.

I’d been playing with my Panpastels, and hit on the idea of stencils. I’d never tried combining the two before, but it turned out to be just right for this project – dry materials allowing for both soft and intense shades, ideal for layering, and not too messy.

(Well, it turned out it was quite messy – my fingernails still look rather grimy – but it was containable with a bit of planning and a lot of wipes). And it was worth it for the results!

Here’s my demo, featuring distant mountains, various domes, archways and minarets to represent mosques, and some birds just to complete the scene…

And here’s what some of the children made – just blending with primary colours. Don’t they look great? One boy is a HUGE dinosaur fan, so I made a special stencil from his drawing, (straying slightly from the theme…).

If you’d like to try this project yourself, here’s how I did it: I drew on heavy cartridge paper for the stencils, and cut the shapes with a scalpel, taking care to keep the ‘cutaway’ parts whole. I cut up washing up sponges to apply the pastel, gently rubbing it into the paper – you can get some lovely blends if you use two colours at once. Keep the stencil held down with your fingers while applying the pastels. Have a bin or box handy to tap the dust into after each application. Any smudges can easily be cleaned up with an ordinary rubber. We didn’t use fixative as the artwork was going straight into frames, but it probably would have been a good idea. Let me know if you give it a whirl.

Plant don’t pave!

One of my favourite events of the year is Southfields Harvest – a community day packed with allotment produce, advice on street planting, and home-made cake. I always run an art activity and really enjoy catching up with friends old and new during the day. It was a chance encounter at last year’s event that led to my big Wandle mural project, and it was so nice this year to see some of the children who took part coming back for more collage.

Helped by Fee Campbell (of Measuring Museum fame!) and my Mum, and many many local people, we transformed a painted grey street into a public garden bursting with bees, flowers and butterflies. The idea, suggested by local group Greening the Grid, was to promote ‘Plant Don’t Pave’, encouraging people to keep their gardens filled with plants rather than concrete.

Here’s the before, and three hours after: I think it makes a convincing case! Thankyou to everyone who joined in so enthusiastically – I’m looking forward to installing the finished work at Southfields Library soon.

Three years of Thursdays

Now, about that new hobby of mine… I hope this picture clue will help you guess:

Yes, I really am making my own violin from scratch! Merton College in South London has been teaching this very special skill for 50 years, and when I found out about it, I was like a moth to a flame. After the open day back in May, I thought to myself, “this will be a lovely thing to do next year after I turn 60,” and the very thought gave me a warm glow of anticipation.

But when I mentioned this to a friend she said “What are you waiting for? Do it now!!” She was SO right!

And that’s why I found myself in the violin-making workshop this September surrounded by fascinating tools, wood samples, intriguing scrolls of plans, and a very interesting group of people. I’m going to have to overcome my fear of power tools, and I’ll also need to rise above my instinct to bash things out in a way that’s something less than meticulous.

“That’ll do” is NOT going to cut it in Merton.

It’s going to take me three years of Thursdays to make something I hope will be playable, but I am loving the journey already. See bits from my diary below, showing me braving the bandsaw, and getting a plaudit for my planing!

The icing on the cake is that we have a Session after class each week, and there are some terrific trad players in the group. I am a very happy student.

Is there anything you’re dreaming of doing and putting off for ridiculously arbitrary reasons? Let me know in the comments and I will motivate you to do it NOW!

A treat for font fans

Before I go, here’s a recommendation especially for anyone who loves typography – graphic designer Angela Lyons does an excellent monthly newsletter called ‘Font Friday’. It will lead you to all sorts of delightful lettering discoveries… and an excellent T-shirt for freelancers who love cats (yes that’s me).

You can sign up (for free) here:

I’m going to leave you with this lovely fungus I spotted in Richmond Park - doesn’t it look like a load of bread fresh from the oven? Delicious!

See you in November – I’m expecting to be on a fiddle high by then after a week at Blazin’ in Beauly… and in the meantime, if you have any friends who might enjoy this newsletter, do share using the button below.