Peter Jon Fowler

Painter

Sight and sound beside the Suffolk sea (1)

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As Covid 19 restriction are, unwisely in my view, lifted, it is nevertheless good to be able to get around in the car again. Actually, that is not true in the sense that throughout the 16 months of the lockdown, I have felt no inhibitions at all about poddling around locally in my decrepid Golf and have not once been stopped by officialdom. Failing its MOT was much more of an arrest. Now that traffic is back to pre-covid levels, already the middle months of 2020 take on a nostalgic air of the time when the roads were empty and the driving was good.

Anyway, we drove down the coast to Shingle Street, a huge expanse of shingle with an interesting history in fact and some tall stories from a legendary past. It used to be virtually deserted and a pleasure to be there; it’s still the latter but in summer the place has to be shared with hundreds of day-trippers who have parked their cars higgledy-piggledy along the Street. We stayed in one of the coastguard houses in winter a few years ago: magical. One particular stretch of the shingle used to be a fruitful place to search for material with an artistic potential, particularly pieces of wave-worn wood from boats, jetties and the like; now there is nothing.

     Some of my mini-sculptures made five and more years ago entirely from bits and pieces as found along the Suffolk coast in the good old days of beach-collecting, not beach-cleaning

It is clear from the miserable collection I made on my recent visit to Shingle street that other artists have been there too, taking the best bits of wood, brick, concrete and wood. But far more damaging from the artistic point of view are the activities of the well-meaning beach-cleaning gangs, volunteers sent out by local goody-goody organisations to clear our beaches of all the rubbish on them. But one man’s rubbish is an artist’s inspiration. It is quite clear where these gangs have been hoovering up the artistic potential, for there is no plastic; conversely, when you find plastic objects, you know the area is worth searching.

 

A beautifully clean stretch of shingle, a credit to the beach-cleaners but a desert to artists.

Three Martello towers dot the sea-wall. 

 

I wonder whether it might be possible to persuade the authorities that, just as stretches of the beach are reserved for ground-nesting birds or nudist bathing, there should be a new designation of uncleared beaches for deserving artists.

Miscellany

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Apparently I have allowed this web-page to lie fallow for nearly two months. Apologies for that. Goodness knows where June and July have gone; certainly I have very little to show for them, though these days just still being alive and well is quite an achievement. I have indeed achieved a personal land-mark during this time, though the family celebration of it had to be postponed because two members were found to have been in proximity to someone later testing positive for covid, and so were asked to self-quarantine for a week. We’re trying again to meet this coming weekend.

Now a little catch-up, but first a correction. The machine on which I type this is very clever but it made an elementary mistake in telling me when I last wrote in May that I had written 249 blogs. It is now telling me again that I have written 249 blogs so the celebration in the last one, and the excuse for the sheep photographs, that it was the 250th was misinformed. This is apparently the 250th blog.

Two of the items I was writing about in May and earlier have developed further. The lovely little story about the bringing back to life of Wickham Market railway station at Campsea Ashe sprang splendidly into public life with a re-opening of the argument about what the station should be called. Apparently complaints have been made by travellers who found themselves in Campsea Ashe, not Wickham Market, when they had travelled in good faith to a railway station with the name of the town they wanted to be in. Faced with getting a taxi in the wilds of the Suffolk countryside where the concept of a taxi-rank has yet to evolve, or walking 4 kms to actually arrive in Wickham Market, they were not best pleased. Needless to say, local opinion about the nomenclature is split, and in any case, even if agreement was reached that a change should be made, there is a separate argument about how Campsea Ashe should be spelt on railway name-plates and in digital timetables. My spelling here is but one of at least five variables. Rapid progress in this matter seems unlikely, though I offer ‘Wickham Ashe’, a name with a certain rustic, Suffolkian je ne sais pas about it, as a possible compromise.

Another invented name I wrote about has also had a sequel. The so-called ‘Angel of the East’ down on Aldeburgh beach continues to grow and has become almost a parody of itself. I don’t really want to write about it because it has become so silly but I am being dutiful. For me, one of the enjoyable facets of the silliness is that sticking out of the shingle beside this false ‘angel’ is a small metal plate which is inscribed ‘AG’ (presumably Antony Gormley). It was part of the original Gormley sculpture which was sold, but it was left behind; so the buyer has his real Gormley but without the equivalent of a painter’s signature to give it authenticity. Meanwhile, the plate, now falsely captioned, fails to give even spurious authenticity to the circle of red stones and baked clay beside it.

 

Metal plate inscribed AG beside the original sculpture. The photograph was taken before the work was sold.

 

On the brighter side, galleries have been opening again, and two exhibitions in particular caught my eye. One was a few miles inland in a gallery beautifully situated in a shallow valley beyond Rendham; the other was at the Lettering Arts Trust at Snape Maltings. More anon on both perhaps.

I have tentatively also painted a few pictures and am trying to clear my desk so that I can spend more time in August and beyond in pursuing the activity which brought me to Suffolk in the first place. I have not felt like painting during this last year – a mysterious effect of covid and/or lockdown I suppose – but I can feel the artistic juices coursing again and very much look forward to trying to paint again. At the moment I have not the faintest idea what or how to paint, so the attempt, failure or success, could be interesting.

 

 

 

 

 

Encounters with Rare-Breed Sheep

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This is a self-indulgent little pictorial essay to mark the publication of my 250th blog

 

Lisa the Jacob ewe

Whitefaced Woodland lambs

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hebridean ewes and lambs waiting for more hay

 

Manx Loaghtan eating gorse flowers

 

Hebridean mothers, one with white lambs, the other with black

 

A proud Whitefaced Woodland mother

 

Shaman, the Jacob ram

 

There’s nothing as interesting as a hole in the ground

 

 

 

 

Learning what is and is not edible

Surreal in Suffolk III: art on Aldeburgh beach

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Art on Aldeburgh beach is not an unknown or uncontentious subject; but a recent episode, local and petty in several respects, involves an internationally-known sculptor, Antony Gormley, defending his art against the ‘villain’ of the tale, a London art dealer called Mrs Wiseman (according to the BBC).

A previous dust up involved, not so long ago, controversial local artist Maggi Hambling and her scallop-like sculpture commemorating the distinguished local composer Benjamin Britten. The local row about appropriateness and setting in that case became national news and indeed, like thunder receding in the distance, still rumbles on. Similarly, the Wiseman/Gormley contretemps splutters on in a form now a long way from the original dispute. It’s all a bit surreal, though fairly standard for Suffolk and especially its seaside towns like Aldeburgh and Southwold, full of articulate, well-off and leisured folk.

 

‘Quartet (Sleeping)’ on the pebble beach at Aldeburgh with, in the background, the Wiseman residence (blue and ochre) and the South Lookout.

In 2001 Wiseman bought at a Gormley exhibition four cast iron pieces constituting a sculpture called ‘Oval, Peg, Penis, Snowman’. They were copies of the original. In 2020, she arranged them as if at the four corners of a square on the shingle beach outside her house in Aldeburgh, lying each piece down because she said the pebbles would not keep them vertical. She called the whole ‘Quartet (Sleeping)’, and donated the work to the town, saying it would add much interest to the beach for visitors. When Gormley heard of this, he objected strongly, saying the pieces were meant for an urban context and were designed to stand upright (as indeed you would expect of a penis and a snowman). Wiseman rejected this argument, stating that the owner of a bought artwork could do whatever he or she wanted with it, and was in no way constricted by the artist’s intentions or wishes – an interesting argument with widespread implications.

Apparently you need planning permission to put artworks on the beach, and Wiseman, not knowing this, had failed to apply. She said she now would, retrospectively, and the Council indicated it would view the mistake as one made in good faith. But the public now became involved in earnest, with strong views being expressed, both for and against, about the desirability of four lumps of iron on the beach.  The sexuality element in the arrangement offended some, perhaps suffering from a vivid imagination, while others found the whole merely challenging.

Suddenly the story changed. The artwork had not, after all, been given to the town – or if it had, it was taken back because, it was announced, it had been sold for a good price. The new owner quickly removed it. Presumably to forestall any thoughts about excessive private gain from a by-now well-advertised work of art, Wiseman said she would use the money from the sale to repaint the South Lookout tower, an erect structure on the edge of the beach outside her house which is central to her artistic activities in Aldeburgh. And indeed, within days scaffolding had enveloped the tower.

 

 

But there was another twist to the story. As soon as the art work was removed, a circle of red stones appeared where it had lain. This became a more and more elaborate example of ‘people’s art’ as the days passed, and when I last looked it had been further elaborated. A somewhat wobbly and unconvincing line of pebbles now linked the circle back up the beach to the centre of the base of the South Lookout; the line thickened to become like a path as more stones were added. Encouraged by the provision of pebbles and pens on a table by the Lookout, each pebble carried a personal  written message. So the line came to be purposeful; it carried meaning, and almost inevitably was called a ‘ley line.’

 

Well, if it keeps the kids happy on a cold, stoney beach, so be it; and it is certainly sociologically interesting that, in these uncertain times, people should arrange things of metal and stone in simple shapes on the beach and then give their structure a mystic significance. ‘Twaddle’ was the word that came to mind when I read the new message on the board by the non-Gormley artwork; but no harm in that perhaps when you’re under stress.

 

I don’t know whether it is meant to be ironic but, if it is not, then calling this circle of mainly baked clay sherds by reference to an iconic Gormley sculpture, ‘The Angel of the North’, is quite sad – and well within the tradition of art on Aldeburgh beach.

 

 

Notes: the idea of making lines out of stones has doubtless been re-invented many times but, locally, the best line on a beach, in sea-shells this time, was, maybe still is, at Shingle Street, a few miles down the coast. It began as a short line but the idea soon attracted many others, all adding their own sea-shells until it stretched a long way across the beach. It became quite famous, was recognised as a work of art, and soon enjoyed its own book, The Shingle Street Shell Line.

Echoes of Gormley’s original Oval, Peg, Penis and Snowman, all basically simple shapes, can be seen in a contemporary (2018) installation by Ryan Gander on the sculpture lawn at the Maltings, Snape. Ten black objects, not I think of cast iron, each chained to the ground, lie in a circle with no immediately obvious ‘meaning’.

Its title does not at first appear to help but in fact says what the work is: To Give Light (Northern Aspirational Charms). The whole is in praise of the enormous contribution which one small area of England, the North East, made to the invention and safety of developments in bringing artificial light into daily life. Number 5, for example, outlined as a very basic shape in the key, represents the miners’ safety lamp, the ‘Geordie lamp’, invented in 1815 by George Stephenson, born at Wylam, Northumberland.

 

Surreal in Suffolk II: Wickham Market railway station

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Wickham Market railway station is actually in Campsea Ashe, four kms. east of the eponymous small town. It is indeed rather strange to come across an apparently working railway station, as it were in the middle of nowhere. Yet it is a station of some substance, as witnessed by the bridge alongside it carrying the B1078 road over the East Suffolk Line, a piece of landscape furniture rarely enjoyed by this railway.

It can be seen, not a thing of great beauty, behind the arriving  ‘Silver Bullet’-type up-train to Ipswich (below right). Gone are the days when the railway-writer would luxuriate in such a train being ‘hauled’ by a 2-6-4 or whatever. Now, far less romantically, the front two carriages are pushed and the back two dragged by a diesel power unit in the middle.

 

The empty platform for this ‘up’ train to Ipswich calls into question the need for the disembodied voice which, god-like, urges all would-be passengers as they arrive to spread themselves along the whole length of the platform to maintain ‘social distancing’ and avoid crowding in parts of the train. About five people were travelling on this particular train. No-one disembarked or boarded at Campsea Ashe for Wickham Market.

 

 

 

But in days of much yore, a long time ago, ’twas otherwise. WIckham Market Station, despite being somewhere else, has form – as a prominent plaque explains:

 

And in addition to having been a Junction, probably with its own Fat Controller I would imagine, this historic site also has its own little niche in history because 1952, the date on which the branch line was closed, was a good decade before the infamous Beeching cuts to which the uninformed would be inclined to attribute the closure.

 

I’m guessing here but probably it was in the 1960s that the station was downgraded Beeching-wise, losing Platform 2 and one of its two ‘iron-roads’. The up-line was just in front of the young woodland in the background of the photograph (left) and the ruinous platform, now sprinkled with primroses, remains under the trees and scrub. Even I remember the semi-derelict appearance of the station ten and more years ago; and I remember too reading about a mighty community effort not only to rescue it but to restore it to its modest former appearance. That is the real point of the photograph, taken in March 2021, showing the ‘Japanese’ detailing mentioned in the plaque and the overall good condition of the station building.

But the even more important significance of the ‘restoration’ was that the local community found a new use for the building. To achieve this is real success for, while sticking an old building together is often do-able, finding a viable use for it is usually difficult even though everybody knows that using a building is the best way of preserving it. What do you do, however, with a railway station building on the edge of a village in rural Suffolk with two trains an hour?

The answer:

 

 

And so far it has worked, even though the pandemic has meant that it has not been possible to use the meeting rooms and cafe since early 2020. But here is the magic of this place in action: if you go round to the ‘back’ of the station building, overlooking the car-park, you can find, often marked by a short queue, a small window which gives straight into the kitchen; and there you place your order for a snack or takeaway meal of delicious, home-made food. The soups are to die for, and the bacon rolls will persuade you that life is worth the living after all. You can even order the cakes for your wedding or funeral if you give enough notice. But for me the surreal element is that here, in the middle of almost nowhere, I can order a black Americano from a lady who seems to be there all hours, and be given a lovely drink from a real expresso machine. Who cares whether it’s in Wickham Market or Campsea Ashe?

Surreal in Suffolk I: the East Suffolk Line

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The East Suffolk Line is a thing, if not of beauty, then of infinite wonder. It wombles its way from Ipswich to Lowestoft, a journey not many people seem to want to make, particularly during this last year when the train has often carried literally only one or two passengers. Yet its continued existence is vital for special groups of travellers like musicians going to Snape Maltings and students going to college at one end or the other. Above all, it is East Suffolk’s link with the outer world, connecting at Ipswich with trains bound for London. Oh, and with the country’s largest container port at Felixstowe, and – though its map can’t quite bring itself to show this – with Ely and its great cathedral, and with Cambridge.

The rolling stock seems entirely inappropriate for such a rustic line. It is brand new, and has greatly increased the efficiency of the service; but passengers look at it twice before boarding, wondering whether such a stream-lined,  surrealist apparition will really go to Oulton Broad South or Wickham Market, actually at Campsea Ashe. First impressions are that here is a train which took a wrong turn somewhere and has sped into Westerfield from the Swiss Alps or Japan. And how can it really go anywhere when the power unit, which we used to call the engine, is in the middle, jammed between the carriages? And how can you tell in which direction it might go when there is no knowing which is the front and which the back?

Is this train arriving or departing? Have you arrived just in time to catch it or have you just missed it?

 

And then there is Wickham Market………….