Transitions 3
There were three artists upstairs who work with the outside world.
David Paton had granite,some fired in a kiln so it goes from green to pink.He works in a stone quarry and talks very engagingly about questions of sculpture in and out of the quarry. He was full of lively enthusiasm and very pleased to have brought stone into Newlyn Gallery and carved into it there, although to do this more than briefly would be I advisable for health and safety reasons.
Veronica Vickery had ingeniously joined pictures arising from her study of a particular stream so that the canvasses went round corners and made a meandering path on the wall.
She had taken up the case of the re-opening of the Mexico rail foot crossing at Long Rock and had encouraged folk to post their views, now assembled on the art gallery wall on attractively weathered labels in a grid pattern. She also showed protest placards. I would have liked more information about the fatal accident there, about whether crossings are being closed in general to save money in maintaining them, but anyway it was great to see an artist putting local politics into the gallery and engaging with people involved in protest.
(Since then I read that the appeal to re-open the crossing was lost)
Downstairs Val Diggle was equally open to talking about her work, which to me was a baffling
collection of items referring to ancient civilisations, including our local men-an-tol holed stone. There was a willow construction which made shadows. Her interest is something to do with memory and it's variability. We, Pedyr and I, added to the event by trying to remember the basics of the Argentine tango, me singing the tango tune 'jealousy' spontaneously, inspired by a print of dance steps on the wall.
It was the third week of transitions and I was still interested in the wide-ranging investigations of these artists. Could they be asked back with finished work? Or is this inexplicit woolly searching the point? - the process not the product as Marshall McLuhan might have said in the 60's, but in fact he said 'the medium is the message.'
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