29 June 2022: Sun, Saltwater, Summer Drift
In recent weeks the town has returned to the hustle and bustle of summer holiday-making. It is great to see all this activity extended to Toppings bookshop opposite the gallery, its Georgian steps the venue for postings, memes, and tick-tockings. I love the sunny aspect of this Lara Scobie pot:
Summer in this part of the world makes me think of Edward Thomas’s poem Adlestrop, and how he forgot to mention ‘Wiltshire’ at the end.
Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
This hot weather has one’s thoughts turning to the beach, and preferably a Cornish one… This is a lesser known spot:
Mizuyo Yamashita is a potter who specialises, amongst other things, in the Japanese art of Kintsugi… we have just received four of her new black flagon forms:
Anyone who loves someone else
already has a broken heart.
It’s the law: If you want that light
to flood your body, you must
expose the scars through which
it pours, for they are the source
of your beauty and your strength.
Think of the Japanese who fill
the cracks in a ceramic bowl
with pure gold, not only flaunting
those so-called flaws, but also
making each one a priceless vein
through which light now moves.
– James Crews, Kintsugi
And finally (for Christine),
Everyone who terrifies you is 65 per cent water.
And everyone you love is made of stardust,
and I know
sometimes
you cannot breathe deeply, and
the night sky is no home, and
that you are down to your last 2 per cent,
but
nothing is infinite,
not even loss.
You are made of the sea and the stars, and
one day,
you are going to find yourself again.
– Finn Butler, Saltwater
Please email or phone the gallery to purchase or make further inquiries, or if we can help in any way.
Thank you for reading.
Aidan