A trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, a country estate with a large range of art scattered around the countryside. Some small pieces, some giants. Some by leading artists including the controversial Damien Hirst. Hawklad wouldn’t even let me take a photo of one particular statue ….
A sometimes mystifying but frequently stunning few hours. Unbelievably it was almost warm as well….
Definitely worth a visit.
What’s he looking at….
Somebody with lots of talent has been very busy.
Talking about talent, I could really do with even just a little bit of that stuff. I was taking the Mad Dog for his walk or more accurately HE was pulling me along for afternoon walk and deep shoulder workout, when a delivery truck pulled up. It was my niece and we had a lovely chat while she got excitedly bounced on by Captain Chaos.
My niece, now covered in dog hair (it’s a sign of affection really) eventually had to head off to make her next grocery delivery. So it was back to being remorselessly pulled while listening to a podcast on my iPhone headphones. But disaster, NO SOUND. Nothing. I stood there for ages messing about with settings, rebooting and generally shouting at the tech.
Then a brief and rare moment of clarity in which the secrets of life and the universe are revealed.
No wonder you can’t hear anything from the iPhone while you still have the earphones shoved deep into your trouser pocket…. What an absolute wazzock, that’s even beyond muppetry.
iPhone should cater for the permanently lost like me and start to make a range of THIGH or HIPphones. Or maybe have the iPhone give the user a short electric shock to warn users that they have started to become completely delusional and falsely claim that technology is in full scale rebellion. Or just maybe a friendly text message reminding the useless user that ‘bizarrely earphones are designed to work best when placed next to the ear, and definitely not in a location around the groinal region….”
Suddenly school wakes.
After hardly any communication from school suddenly it’s almost communication overload. Almost.
Missing exams papers are starting to arrive. A push to squeeze an annual review meeting in before the end of term. Some class notes from a missing in action subject. Interestingly it looks like our best guesses at what this subject has been doing in class since the schools reopened again 4 months ago have been completely wrong. Hawklad is way off topic. But as we have had no class guidance then what can we expect..
Then more Art trauma. Why is it so often Art. Hawklad submitted his exam piece and was pleased with it. Clearly the teacher was less pleased. The feedback is that the teacher had not received a final submission and had only received a rough draft drawing… A rough draft….. That rough draft is Hawklad’s (who has dyspraxia) best effort.
Hawklad’s take on all this. A shrug of the shoulders. One of those looks. No he won’t be submitting a final piece as that would be a final final piece. He will happily take a poor mark and then even more happily drop the subject in just 4 sweet weeks.
There’s a chap in the village who is an artist. A really really good artist. Has exhibitions. He has a talent for creating beauty. Even in his garden. He lets his garden go native. Will occasionally tidy it up but mainly just let’s nature sort the rest out.
Well this is what happens he does this…
This artist lost his partner a three years back. It really hit him hard. His world fell apart. Yet over time he has got going again. He has returned to making new art. He’s carrying on. He would give me a progress report every time I walked past his garden with Captain Chaos. Whisper it – the Cap likes contributing to this nature show in his own very unique way…. We talked about sitting down and having a longer chat.
Hopefully over the next couple of months I can pop over and he can show me his studio. We can have that coffee that has been on hold since the pandemic swept the world. We talked about doing this 15 months ago.
It’s good to talk.
“Dad what is it about Art. The one subject I can’t do at all. That’s why I’ve dropped it. But it’s everywhere…..”
I know what he means. With his dyspraxia he finds holding a pencil or paint brush difficult. So it wasn’t a surprise when Art was dropped for next year. But here’s the thing. This year there seems to have been a lack of drawing in Art Class. It’s been mainly writing. Which is ok with Hawklad. But Art and drawing gets everywhere. You get to draw more in other subjects than Art….
Over the last few days Hawklad has had to
– draw and paint various product designs in DT,
– draw and paint a room in DT,
– paint a backdrop to a mini stage set in English,
– draw and paint a functional land in English,
– draw various food designs for FT,
– draw a coastal feature in Geography,
– draw and paint French scene in French,
– draw a cartoon strip in Computers,
– draw a tree in RE,
– draw a cartoon strip in Citizenship
– draw an ecologically friendly house in Science
I could go on but you get the picture. And the feedback. ‘Could try to be neater’…..
“The only two subject I don’t have to draw in at present is Art, unbelievably and History. Clearly avoiding drawing should have meant me keeping Art as a subject. And if my favourite subject gets me to draw a castle or the Bayeux Tapestry then I’m officially finished with school…”
Don’t you just love art….
A quick look at this mornings weather forecast sent me scurrying outside to cut the grass. Thankfully not cutting the farmers fields. I will leave that up to the cows.
I’ve heard of sleep walking but never heard of sleep mowing…. But it felt like I was doing that this morning. Today has been hard work. The body and mind have started to grind to a halt on the back of not enough sleep. Last night it was one our kip. Similar to the night before. And the one before that……
I won’t show you my attempt at nice straight lawn stripes. Think more Salvador Dali and his Persistence of Memory painting.
Add to sleep mowing, today I added sleep working, sleep parenting and sleep housework.
I have been barely functioning today. Not ideal when your trying to explain Double Replacement Chemical reactions. So add either sleep teaching or sleep chemistry. It’s odd what ever I did today resembled a Salvador Dali creation.
Maybe I’ve sussed out the secret of Salvador success. Maybe he wasn’t an artistic pioneer. Maybe he couldn’t sleep, he did sleep painting.
Let’s be honest, it’s not really sunbathing weather here in Yorkshire. It’s ‘let’s see how many layers of clothes I can squeeze under the down jacket before it bursts at the seems’ weather.
“Go on then Dad, can you see it”
What is that supposed to be again.
“It’s an abstract artist’s interpretation of what our market town looks like.”
No that’s not really jumping into my brain that interpretation.
“What do you see then Dad.”
A series of random line squiggles and odd shapes. Forming what can only be described as a incoherent mess.
“Exactly Dad. Apparently that’s the town skyline and its most iconic landmarks.”
Really. If it’s most iconic landmarks then I’m certainly not seeing traffic jams, floods, not open at weekend signs, pizza takeouts and hordes of parking enforcement officers.
“Dad, Aspergers clearly doesn’t get abstract art…”
It’s ok Hawklad, Dads don’t get it as well.
“I’ve got to produce my own version of that now. Really…”
Shall we just put a pot of ink and a piece of paper in with the gerbils and let them get creative.
“Would be a good idea but the gerbils eat everything in front of them”
“Well you can help me do it.”
Ok do you want me to draw as well.
“No I‘ve seen your artistic skills. Look at the state of my hair. No you can do something your better at.”
Ok you name it.
“Go and find some chocolate for me please”
I can do that…
And still it shrinks. I’m going to miss it when it’s gone.
Back to school at home and back to the daily fun…. Started with the usual happy pep talk from a teacher. To paraphrase.
‘Remember I’ve set some work before the week off. It’s voluntary but I can see what people have done and how long you have spent on it. I am checking….I’m about to do your assessment….”
Ok….
Then I accidentally phoned the school. Who hasn’t done the ‘put the mobile in your back trouser pocket just to see how long it takes for your bum to unlock the phone and dial a number’ trick. The mobile can’t have been in the pocket for 2 minutes before suddenly I heard a strange voice coming from my nether regions. How is it that it takes me hours to figure out how to unlock the mobile, find the phone app, then repeatedly fail to type in the number. Yet my butt can unlock the phone and successfully call someone in a fraction of that time…..
So after I had apologised to school reception it was back to the usual fight with submitting pieces of work and trying to find the class work on Teams. Fights with explanations, hidden meanings and unclear instructions.
Quickly followed by the ritual Dad humiliation.
“Dad apart from Andy Warhol what other Pop Art practitioners can you name.”
Erm……..
“Ok can you at least name a few famous Pop Art pieces and before you say it, NO Godzilla doesn’t count.”
Erm there was that picture with about 100 Madonna’s replicated.
“Dad. You mean Monroe and it was 50 times…”
That’s the one. Then there was the soup tin. Erm Andy Warhol was in Men in Black 3, does that count?
So basically no help…….
But maybe my backside could become Pop Art. Probably not. Not sure how big the canvas would have to be to get 50 replicas of my butt on. But if they could then I could literally be sat on an important piece of avant garde culture. Sat on a fortune.
It’s not often I get a free work of art left on the car window. On closer inspection I realised just how intricate and special the work of nature was.
I could so easily have missed this. A few hours later it may have melted.
It’s such a great reminder for me that even though I’m living in a much restricted world that there is still much to experience. I can make this work. I just need to remember to open my eyes and continue to dream.
Last night I was tired. Unusually tired for me. But it was one of those pesky tired setups. During the evening I could feel myself nodding off. Plenty of those ‘just starting to drift off while sat on the settee – then suddenly woken by those cataclysmic sudden neck snapping forward’ moments. This went on all evening until it was bed time. But then I just wasn’t tired. Pigging fiddlesticks……
Finally sleep came but all too soon…..
“DAD, DAAAAAADDDD!”
What’s up son.
“Dad I’ve forgotten, sorry we’ve forgotten the art assignment.”
Ooh yeh, that one that isn’t due in until the 12th.
“That’s the one, But ITS THE 12th.”
Oh big pants. Can you do it as soon as you get up?
“No it’s due at the start of the first lesson.”
***********
I could see by the look in his eyes that until it was done, sleep would be impossible. So a few minutes later I was in the kitchen making hot drinks. Years ago a late night session would have had a very different meaning to tonight’s version. 3am and rocking out to Japanese Art.
Basically I sat there looking vacant, occasionally nodding (in a of course I knew that kinda way) and asking Google such questions as ‘what on earth does wabi and sabi mean’. It took an hour before Hawklad had convinced himself that he had done enough. The school panic in his world was over. His completed presentation was significantly more robust than his Dads initial suggestive assignment text
Japanese Art is cool but Godzilla is real cool. Now it’s time for bed….
Hawklad got to bed and immediately fell asleep. I guess at about 4.30am I found some sleep. I woke up a couple of hours later with one overriding thought. How can you write two pages on Japanese Art and not mention Godzilla‘s Atomic Breath just once. What has become of Art.
A Dad trying to cope with the loss of his Partner and becoming a single parent. 