Art

Finland Update

~ Cheryl

Iisalmi Church Outside
My apologies for the lack of blogging over the past few days. That’s partly due to being on the road, partly due to lack of wifi access (I get free roaming in Finland on my phone, but that doesn’t include tethering), and partly due to my being so boggled by the goings on back home that I have no idea what to say. Here, in lieu of anything more intelligent, is a little bit of Finnish history.

Well, sort of history anyway. The basic facts are true, but I have embellished them somewhat. Also I have translated the mythic context from Finnish to Scandinavian. That’s partly because you folks will be far more familiar with Scandinavian folklore, and partly because the Finns don’t have an equivalent of frost giants. Irma tells me that, like the forest, snow is something that Finns are not afraid of. They see both things as something that keeps them safe from invaders rather than a threat.

Iisalmi Church Inside 1
Once upon a time the people of Iisalmi decided that they would like to have a church of their own. They had been Christian for many generations, but there had never been a church in their town, so they decided to build one. They built the church out of wood, but this proved to be a mistake because Thor was angry with them for deserting him. He threw a bolt of lightning at the church and it burned to the ground.

The people of Iisalmi determined not to be cowed by pagan gods. Swiftly they erected a new church. But they did so in such a hurry that the first time a frost giant stomped past that winter it fell down.

Iisalmi Church Inside 2
Still the people of Iisalmi refused to be beaten. They decided to build a church out of stone that no one could burn or knock down. Stone churches are expensive, so they collected a great of money and silver to pay for it. They put all of this wealth in a great wooden chest with seven locks. But Loki saw all of this treasure are determined to have it for himself. He sent thieves to steal it, giving them magic with which to open the seven locks and get away unseen.

With their money stolen, the people of Iisalmi had no choice but to build in wood once more. They were, of course, afraid that their church would be demolished again, so they got together to decide how to proceed. After much discussion the people decided to build a church so beautiful that no one, not even pagan gods, would dare to destroy it. That is what they did, and the church is still standing today.

Iisalmi Church Inside 3
I should note that the church has been renovated several times since it was built, but they have tried to stick to an 18th Century look for it.

I note also that the altarpiece was painted by a woman, Alexandra SÃ¥ltin. Apparently her work was well known and she did paintings for several other churches in the area.

Introducing Adela Breton

~ Cheryl

Yesterday’s history conference was held in the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution (yes, of course Bath has such a thing). On the ground floor of the building there was a remarkable exhibition celebrating the life and work of a 19th Century Bath archaeologist and artist, Adela Breton. Ms. Breton spent much of her life in Mexico painting Aztec and Maya cities. As with most other pioneering women scientists, her work has been largely forgotten.

Breton’s faithful recording of the ancient cities have proved invaluable to archaeologists, but the most amazing thing she did was produce recreations of the decorative friezes on the buildings, in full color. Note that this is not a case of an artist fancifully colorizing an ancient artifact, this is an archaeologist painstakingly examining a site for evidence of pigments, and recreating the art as it would have looked when the site was inhabited.

Here’s a frieze from the Temple of the Jaguars at Chichén Itzá as it looks now.

JaguarsOriginal

And here is Breton’s recreation.

JaguarsColored

My favorite piece from the exhibition is this amazing image of a bat demon. The Maya apparently associated bats with the underworld, because they live in caves.

BatDemon

The exhibition in Bath will continue to October 1st, so do pop in if you happen to be in town. Bristol Museum will be doing something soon too.

Pauline Boty and Feminism’s Sex Problem

~ Cheryl

I spent yesterday in Bath at the annual conference of the The West of England & South Wales Women’s History Network. There were many interesting papers. I was rather sad that the one about women in the Mabinogion didn’t happen, but I very much enjoyed the one about women in Pop Art.

You may recall that a couple of years ago I wrote about a BBC documentary on the women of Pop Art. One of the women whose work starred in that show was Pauline Boty. Yesterday I was privileged to hear a talk about Boty by Sue Tate who is probably the world expert on her, or at the very least has written the book.

Boty rose to fame in the 1960s. She was young, blonde, very pretty, intelligent, feminist, and apparently very fond of men. Therein lies a problem, because she worked in Pop Art, a field that is pretty much synonymous with sexual objectification of women. How is an artist like Boty, who thinks that women should be allowed to enjoy sex, to situate herself within a field that is all about men’s sexual exploitation of women? That was basically the subject of Sue’s talk.

Of course in the 1970s feminism tried to solve the problem by retreating from sex. Women were supposed to become sexless, wearing shapeless clothes that disguised bodily shape, cutting their hair short, not wearing make-up or bras, and becoming “political lesbians”. Boty, who sadly died very young of cancer, would have hated that. Lots of other women must have too, because it didn’t last.

After the talk I stuck my hand up and asked Sue for her opinion on Beyoncé. I was pleased to see that I had nailed the topic. The debate around Bey’s work is much the same as that around Boty’s: how is an attractive, sexy woman supposed to be a feminist, if she uses her sexiness in her art?

And of course it isn’t limited to them. Madonna was mentioned briefly, and from my own field I would single out Justina Robson as someone who centers female sexuality in her work and is looked down upon because of it.

I don’t think that it is a debate that is going to go away, if only because which side feminists take tends to depend on how fond they are of sex, and in particular sex with men. I am, of course, obliged to stick my hand up and declare a preference there. However, I don’t think that women can be truly emancipated until they are allowed to have pride in and control over their sexuality.

Oh, and BBC, next time you want to do a documentary about women in Pop Art, get Sue to front it.

A Day in Hay

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

As I mentioned earlier, I spent yesterday at the Hay Festival. It was the first time I have been, mainly because you need a car to get there and until recently I haven’t had one. Of course having a car means that there are other distractions.

The shortest route to Hay from where I am is over the Severn Bridge, turn left at Newport and from Abergaveny head up through the Brecon Beacons via Crickhowell and Talgarth. It is beautiful country, and I wish I had had time to stop and take lots of pictures.

crickhowell
Crickhowell

I will say, though, that it would have been much easier if I had a SatNav system. Hay is not well signposted. In fact as far as the road system goes it seems that the only acceptable way to get to and from the town is via Hereford. That way the signs are HUGE! Any other route and they are practically non-existent.

Part of this may be due to the fact that Hay is very much a border town. Indeed, there is a Welcome to England sign within the town boundary. There may be some confusion in highways departments as to whether the Festival is an English thing or a Welsh one. Thankfully that confusion was not reflected inside the Festival where evidence of its Welshness could be found everywhere.

Beulah Devaney wrote an article for The Independent this year about how elitist Hay is. She’s right, most of the programme was of little or no interest to me. I can’t imagine Hay having someone like me involved the way Cheltenham did. Then again, Hay is necessarily elitist. You can’t even get there by train, and to enjoy it properly you really need to stay in the area for several days. I’m willing to bet that the cost of accommodation goes through the roof during the Festival. People do actually camp, which doubtless helps with the cost, but personally I am allergic to camping.

So no, Beulah, if we want accessible literary festivals, the first thing to do is to not have them in Hay. There are plenty of others we can target. Hay, I think, can be safely left to go its own way.

Hay600
The Festival site, with the Brecon Beacons in the background.

Why was I there, then? Well to start with I wanted to see the famous Town of Books. That was a complete failure because the main Festival site is in a field on the outskirts of town. I never got into the town itself, except driving through on my way home.

I also went to see Kate Adair. I hadn’t seen her since Trans Pride in Brighton last year and it was good to catch up. I’m really pleased to see her career in TV taking off. It is amazing that BBC Scotland has given her the ability to make shows about trans people herself. They seem to be only available on social media and in community TV in Scotland, but they still have that BBC tag on them which makes a world of difference. Sadly I’ll be a bit too old by the time Kate gets to be a big name BBC producer, so she won’t be able to help me make my trans history documentary series, but hopefully she’ll do it with someone else.

The other reason I was there was because it was archaeology day. There were actually two talks I was interested in seeing. The first was Paul G. Bahn, who is an expert in prehistoric art. That’s primarily cave paintings to you and me, but is also much more as I discovered. To start with ice age people did a lot of art outside. The reason that we only know their cave paintings is that paintings on rocks outside of caves tend not to last as well.

Of course there are people creating rock art today, and one of the reasons why we know so much about how cave paintings were done is that we can go to Australia and ask people how they do it. This is a tradition with a history of tens of thousands of years, and by some miracle European colonialism hasn’t wiped it out.

Probably this most spectacular thing in Paul’s talk was this:

tuc-daudoubert-bisonClay sculptures of bison from the Tuc d’Audoubert cave in France, made around 13,500 BCE.

After Paul it was on to the main event, a talk by Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe, who is the foremost archaeologist in Britain. I have been reading his books, and watching him on TV, for decades. His new book is about the history of Eurasia and looks at how civilization developed in that vast land mass. This is very much history on a grand scale, but it is also of interest to me because the narrative touches briefly on things relevant to my world.

Sir Barry’s primary thesis is that Eurasia developed civilization rapidly because the major transport routes (the Silk Roads, the Mediterranean) run within regions that are ecologically similar (i.e. east-west, rather than north-south as is the case in the Americas or Africa). That wasn’t quite what I wanted to hear, because I’m actually looking for links between Mesopotamia and India, but I was delighted to find right in the first chapter mention of trading links between the civilizations of the Fertile Crescent and those of the Indus Valley. Sir Barry’s book also contains mention of this:

buddahA statue of the Buddah found in Kabul, which is remarkable because he is wearing clothing that looks distinctly Greek or Roman in style.

I should note, by the way, that I am not specifically looking for evidence of cultural diffusion. When I do talks about trans history people tend to ask me about links between people like the galli of ancient Rome and modern day hijra. There are a lot of similarities. It is possible that the Indus civilization picked up religious ideas from Mesopotamia. But then there are the quariwarmi of the Inca empire, and to claim they got the idea from Sumer takes us totally into von Daniken territory. I want to be able to talk about what is known, not make some imperialist point.

I wish I could have stayed longer. The Michael Palin talk was, of course, sold out. Billy Bragg, on the other hand, was a definite possibility. Fortunately for me I have the memories of the Concrete Castle gig in Bridgwater years ago, when I got close to a personal Billy Bragg concert, so I’m OK about missing him.

sheep600
The locals are unfazed by all of the bookish excitement.

The Darkening Garden: The Exhibition

~ Cheryl

As some of you will know, The Darkening Garden is the title of John Clute’s book about horror fiction. It is now also the title of an art exhibition by Judith Clute. You can find it at the Camden Image Gallery (just round the corner from Camden Road railway station). I was there last night for the launch night party, as were many other people from the SF scene.

The exhibition looks great. I have seen a lot of Judith’s art over the past 10 years or so, but it has always been spread about the Clute flat, and often half-finished. To see a large collection of it on gallery walls was a great pleasure. Even better, people were buying it. Here’s hoping that Judith does well out of it.

After the party I went out for dinner with Farah Mendlesohn, Edward James, Liz Williams, Roz Kaveney and Dave Lally. We had been wondering where might be good in the area and Roz mentioned that she’d eaten at a Thai place just around the corner a while back. We went and looked, and it was still there, but now more Cambodian in its cuisine. Roz did some sums and realized it was 25 years ago that she last ate there, but hey, the food was great. How Roz manages this sort of trick is a great mystery to me. If you happen to be in Camden, Lemongrass has great food and is pretty good value. I had the spring chilli chicken.

This Is What It Sounds Like…

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Prince - Brian Bolland
… When Gods die.

The original art is by Brian Bolland. The animated gif was made by Scott M. McDaniel and is part of this fascinating analysis of the image.

My May 4th show on Ujima will be a Prince tribute show. Obviously there will be guests, but all of the music will be performed or written by Prince. And yes, that is an excuse for me to play The Bangles, but also Chaka Khan.

Rock on, purple people. At least we know there’ll be great music to dance to in the afterlife when we get there.

This Week on Ujima: Cavan Scott, Suffragettes & Art

~ Cheryl

My first guest on this week’s Women’s Outlook was Cavan Scott. Cav is a very busy boy. We first talked about his Star Wars tie-in novels, one of which was chosen for World Book Day and went on to become the best selling book in the UK for a while. We talked about his forthcoming Sherlock Holmes novel, The Patchwork Devil. We talked about his comics and radio play work on Doctor Who. And of course we talked about The Beano, for which he writes Mini the Minx and several other strips.

For Bristol people, Cav’s book launch for The Patchwork Devil is on April 30th at Forbidden Planet. It is a lunchtime event.

You can listen to the first hour of the show here.

Next up on the show was our expert on suffragettes, Lucienne Boyce. She was in to tell us all about a local screening of Make More Noise, a compilation of silent film coverage of actual suffragettes from the first two decades of the 20th Century.

Finally I welcomed Ruth Kapadia from the local office of The Arts Council. We talked about the sort of work that The Arts Council does, and how people can apply for grants.

You can listen to the second hour of the show here.

Of course I also talked quite a bit about the cricket. West Indies are currently world champions for the Twenty20 format at under 19 level, in the women’s game, and in the men’s game. The entire Caribbean is celebrating, and we celebrated with them. All of the music was related to the cricket in some way. Here’s the playlist:

  • We are the Champions – Queen
  • Dreadlock Holiday – Boney M
  • Champion – DJ Bravo
  • Da Cricket Loba Gatama – Latif Nangarhari
  • Cloth – Bullets
  • Come Rise with Me – Machal Montano & Claudette Peters
  • Gavaskar – Andy Narell & Lord Relator
  • David Rudder – Rally Round the West Indies

Coming Soon – Western Shore

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Western Shore - Juliet E. McKenna
Barring unforeseen disasters, the latest Juliet E. McKenna novel should be in ebook stores later this week. Western Shore continues the saga of the Aldabreshin Compass. More fabulous Ben Baldwin artwork. Next up, Eastern Tide. I’m looking forward to being able to show you the full cover set.

Happy Solstice

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Uffington Hare - Dru Marland


Today, in the Northern Hemisphere, we will have the longest night of the year. Tomorrow will be the shortest day. After that, Gods willing, the sun will begin to return to our lands.

This year’s card is “Uffington Hare” by Dru Marland. Symbolically it is a bit of a mash-up, because hares are scared to Eoster whose festival is normally celebrated in the spring, but it is a lovely picture. You can buy greetings cards with this picture, and some of my aged relatives who still do the paper thing will be getting them next year.

My Solstice dinner has been postponed until tomorrow because some bright spark decided to hold the December BristolCon Fringe meeting on a religious holiday (War on Solstice! I demand an outraged article in the Daily Mail.) Still, it will be nice to spend the evening with friends and good fiction. Do come on down to the Shakespeare if you are in town. We have been promised mince pies.

Communing With The Ancestors

~ Cheryl

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/12/Silver_cauldron.jpg/800px-Silver_cauldron.jpg

Photo by Rosemania via Wikipedia.

Yesterday I was in London. The main reason for that was to interview Stuart Milk from the Harvey Milk Foundation. You’ll be hearing a lot more about that in the coming weeks. However, as I was there I took the opportunity to visit the Celts exhibition at the British Museum.

Of course the BM has a lot of great Celtic artifacts in their normal collection. The big question for this exhibition is what it could bring that you can’t see for free. As it turned out, the Museum had brought in items from all over the UK and other parts of Europe. I think it did rather well.

The highlight is undoubtedly the Gundestrup cauldron, an item that I have seen pictures of many times but have never viewed in person. Interestingly, despite the obvious Celtic imagery, it is believed to have been made in Thrace, silverwork of that type being unknown in the Celtic world.

The largest item on display is a reconstruction of a Brigante chariot, which I suspect would be even more impressive in motion than it is just sat there. The Snettisham Hoard certainly wins for bling but it is a BM regular so doesn’t count. In any case my favorite torc was this beautiful silver one on loan from a museum in Stuttgart. It is rare to see a torc with such naturalistic end pieces.

Other items of interest were two musical instruments, a gorgeous Irish harp and the Deskford Carnyx. There were also many items from the Christian era, and I discovered that the tradition of the distinctive Celtic ringed cross started because stonemasons were unable to prevent the arms of big crosses from falling off without the additional support.

The exhibition was at pains to point out (presumably primarily for American visitors) that the term “Celtic” has only recently been applied to native British peoples (and by “British” I mean “not English”). Greek and Roman writers never used the word to refer to the inhabitants of these islands. However, there is a distinct cultural connection between the British tribes and those continental peoples who were described as Celtic. It also demonstrated how Celtic artistic styles influenced Romano-British culture, and the art of Anglo-Saxon and Viking arrivals to the islands.

The so-called Celtic Revival was also part of the exhibition. I was particularly impressed by the Book of the White Earl, a collection of early Irish literature put together by an Irish earl in the early 15th Century. There was some fairly impressive Welsh cosplay nonsense too. We do seem to have a talent for inventing this stuff.

Druids dress and regalia © Medievalhistories

Photo via MedievalPictures.com

Today on Ujima : Sanctum, TDOR, Tara and Tade

~ Cheryl

I was in charge of the Women’s Outlook show on Ujima again today. My first guest was Sara Zaltash who, like me, has performed at Sanctum. She’s one of those brave people who have been performing there in the middle of the night. And if you think that a trans woman reading science fiction stories is off the wall, just wait until you hear what Sara was doing.

Sara’s parents are Iranian, so along side discussion of her Sanctum performance we chatted about the issue of women’s rights in Iran. That was with reference to this article in yesterday’s Telegraph. I did rather like the idea that women in Iran are getting round laws about being their husbands’ property by refusing to get married. Of course personally I think the solution is to bring back Ishtar worship, but I can see that might be a bit unpopular in some quarters.

After Sara my next guest was Chris Hubley, a local artist who is staging an exhibition of work by trans artists as part of Trans Awareness Month (which November is). That includes a fundraiser party on the 13th at which I might be reading a bit of poetry. Chris and I talked a bit about the Trans Day of Remembrance (TDOR) and how we both want trans people to be known for things other than being tragic. You can find out more about the events Chris is organizing here.

You can listen to the first hour of the show here.

Chris had to rush off to catch a bus to London, but before he went we had a brief chat about the Tara Hudson case. Chris explains why he doesn’t have a Gender Recognition Certificate. If the Ministry of Justice were being consistent they should hold that, were Chris to commit a crime, he should be sent to a women’s prison. My guess, though, is that it wouldn’t happen. The trouble with the MoJ Guidelines is that they are based on the assumption that the primary goal is to protect the other inmates from the trans person, not the other way around. Trans women, because they are still seen as men by the MoJ, are deemed a danger to other women prisoners. Trans men are also seen as men by the MoJ, and therefore also deemed to belong in men’s prisons.

That only took up 15 minutes as Chris had to go, so in the next slot I brought in Paulette and our new colleague, Zuzana, who were just back from a trip to Calais to deliver supplies to the refugee camp there. They will have a much fuller report on the trip in tomorrow’s Outlook show. It sounds like it will be well worth a listen.

In the final segment of the show I ran a pre-recorded interview with Tade Thompson about his new novel, Making Wolf. Tade and I talk a lot about the background to the novel, which is set in an imaginary country carved off from Nigeria after the civil war. There’s a lot of great material in there.

You can listen to the second half of the show here.

The playlist for the show was as follows:

  • Thieves in the Temple – Prince
  • So Blue – Mahsa Vahdat & Mighty Sam McClain
  • Pressure Off – Duran Duran with Janelle Monáe & Nile Rodgers
  • Love will save the day – Koko Jones
  • Appletree – Erykah Badu
  • Lovin’ You – Minnie Riperton (dedicated to Kevin)
  • Killer on the Rampage – Eddy Grant
  • Jezebel – Sade

I am particularly grateful to Sara for introducing me to Mahsa and Sam. I was also very pleased to be able to music by a trans woman of color during our discussion of TDOR.

I’m going to be on Paulette’s education show briefly tomorrow morning. She’s interviewing Roger Griffith and I about performing at Sanctum was how/whether our various educational backgrounds prepared us for being writers. That will be between 10:00 and 11:00.

Well, That Was Sanctum

~ Cheryl

I did the Sanctum thing last night.

The actual site is lovely. Temple Church looks great, and the performance space that Theaster Gates has built is really nice. It is also not nearly as cold as I had feared. The staff there were all really helpful. And there was an audience.

Well, there was when I started anyway. Probably the best thing that can be said about my experience there is that it could have been worse. No one booed, no one threw anything, and I didn’t get hauled off stage by the management. However, about half the audience walked out during my performance, often not waiting breaks between items, and one person started talking loudly to his companion while I was reading.

Part of that is understandable in that I’m not that great a writer. I know many people who are far better at short fiction and poetry than I am. Part of it in undoubtedly because I had been scheduled to perform late at night on my way back from Cambridge. I was very tired when I got there, and had little time to rehearse. I have definitely done better performances.

On the other hand, I think this was probably the best I could have expected from the evening. The lack of a published schedule meant that I didn’t know most of the audience and they had no idea what to expect from me. They almost certainly were not expecting a trans woman reading science fiction and activist poetry. That isn’t an easy sell. One of the stories I read had gone down a storm in Cambridge the day before, but fell flat at Sanctum. The poem I did for 50 Voices went down really well there but was much less well received last night. Audiences differ, and given the sort of thing I write I’m never going to be particularly popular with an audience made of of random people who would attend a high profile art event.

It is what it is, as they say. More generally, Sanctum seems to be going very well. I very much hope to get to see some of it myself at some point. And I’ll have one of the performers on the radio with me on Wednesday.

Sanctum Is Here

~ Cheryl

Temple Church, Photo credit: Max McClure

Photo credit: Max McClure

Some time in the next few weeks I will be performing in this building. It is Temple Church in Bristol. Like many local churches it is somewhat the worse for wear, mainly thanks to the Luftwaffe. It is, however, an English Heritage site, and for the next few weeks it will be home to a unique arts event: Sanctum.

The event is the brainchild of American artist, Theaster Gates. For the next 24 days there will be continuous performances — yes even through the night — at the venue. Over 500 artists are involved, including many of my writer friends such as Kevlin Henney, Pete Sutton and Tom Parker. There will also be music, performance, probably magicians and acrobats. Theaster and his team have tried to make things as varied as possible.

One of the conceits of the event is that there is no published program. You turn up for an hour and see what you get. Yes Forrest, just like a box of chocolates. So I can’t tell you when my set will be. However, I do promise to report back on how it goes. I will also be doing some trans-related material, and there is no better time to be doing that in Bristol. I may also have written a fantasy story involving a ruined church.

For further information about the event, see Bristol 24/7.

The Twitter tag for the event is #sanctumbristol.

Coming Soon from Wizard’s Tower

~ Cheryl

Southern Fire - Juliet McKenna

The Colin Harvey hardcovers will be on sale at BristolCon, and through other venues soon thereafter. My next project is the Aldabreshin Compass series from Juliet E. McKenna. We’ll be publishing all four books, one per month, from October onwards. All of them have fabulous new covers by Ben Baldwin, such as the one for the first volume, Southern Fire, pictured above.

By the way, as the Aldabreshin Archipelago is located towards the equatorial regions of Juliet’s world, most of the characters in these books are black.

Today on Ujima – BristolCon, Stephanie, Art & Refugees

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Today’s Women’s Outlook show had a lot of science fiction content. For the first half hour I was joined by Joanne Hall, the Chair of BristolCon. We discussed the various things that people will be able to see and do at the convention, and then we went on discuss Jo’s new book, Spark & Carousel, which is launching at the convention. We may have noted that Jim Burns like a beer or two.

One of the many fine authors who will be attending this year’s BristolCon is Stephanie Saulter. Last week I did a phone interview with her about her latest novel, Regeneration, which I broadcast today. The whole thing is about half an hour long, so I had to cut it down quite a bit for the show because of ads, music and news. I will post the extended version on Salon Futura in due course.

You can listen to the first hour of the show here.

The second half began with the studio full of artists. They were all people involved with the Art on the Hill art trail, which is one of many such trails in Bristol. Nicolette de Sausmarez provided all of the admin details, Jane Lee & Sue Jones talked about their art, and Alan Gibson represented Nota Bene, a local a cappella group.

Finally we got serious and discussed the refugee crisis. Paulette, who is back from Jamaica at last, announced a new initiative from Ujima to help people in Calais. I talked to Dr. Naomi Millner from Bristol University who wrote this fine article about what we can do to provide practical help.

You can listen to the second hour of the show here.

The playlist for today’s show was as follows:

  • Earth, Wind & Fire – Fantasy
  • Janelle Monáe – Tightrope
  • Pointer Sisters – We are family
  • Bob Marley – Could you be loved?
  • Prince – Art Official Cage
  • Nota Bene – Let’s do it
  • Jamiroquai – Emergency on Planet Earth
  • Jama – No Borders

And finally, here is a news report about Ujima’s recent win at the National Diversity Awards.

Oxford, Briefly

~ Cheryl

Yesterday was a lot of fun.

The radio show went well after a slight technical hitch at the start. More on that tomorrow.

I got to Oxford on time, and Lev Grossman’s talk was very interesting. He’s a very nice chap too. More on that tomorrow as well.

Today I spent a bit of time in the Ashmolean. The Great British Drawings exhibition is nice, though it does serve to emphasize once again that Byrne-Jones wasn’t very good. I went mainly to see Rossetti’s Proserpine, which is indeed lovely, and to confirm my suspicion that there would be nothing from Simeon Solomon in it. There wasn’t. You would have thought that the British art establishment would have grown up by now, but clearly it hasn’t. Still, there was a Ronald Searle and a Gerald Scarfe, which cheered me up.

The Caricatures exhibit is interesting mainly for the evidence that slut-shaming of women has a very long history. The best thing in it is this gorgeous little cartoon of gout.

The Ed Paschke exhibition is very bright. I suspect that the cover of Roz Kaveney’s Tiny Pieces of Skull may have some Paschke influence.

The exhibition I really wanted to see was Gods in Colour, where they have taken a selection of Greek and Roman statues, and painted them up to look like they would have looked when they were new. It was great. I wish they had done more.

Oh, and I had lunch in a pub called the Eagle and Child, which was apparently the venue for some sort of fannish pub meet years ago. A bunch of wannabe fantasy writers known as The Inklings used to go there and discuss their work over a pint or several. I did not find Viriconium.

Gods and Heroes

~ Cheryl

I have been enjoying Alastair Sooke’s documentary series, Treasures of Ancient Greece. However, I think he’s quite wrong when he says in the final episode that the influence of Greek art on Western culture has waned thanks to its co-option by the Nazis and the rise of non-realist forms of art. He’s just not looking in the right place.

Greek Superheroes


That statue was on display at an exhibition called Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2008. I would love to have seen that.

I’m sure there are people who have made a study of this sort of thing, but to my inexpert eye Jim Starlin in particular has a direct line of descent via Michelangelo to ancient Greece. I’m sure there are many more examples.

An Old Portrait

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Pirate Queen
As most of you will know, I am quite old. One of the difficulties of advanced age is that you forget things that you did in your mis-spent youth. So I was quite surprised this morning when my Greek friend, Sissy Pantelis, found an old portrait of me from the days when I had a pirate ship in the Caribbean. (Sissy’s memory is better than mine. She was made immortal by Aphrodite some time around the days of the Trojan War and seems to have got the hang of this extended lifetime thing.)

Anyway, here it is. I’ve clearly put on a lot of weight since those days, though the artist might have flattered me a bit for fear of having to feed the sharks, personally. The hat still fits, though. I can’t for the life of me remember who the artist was, but maybe Sissy will help out.

Update: The art is by Sabine Rich. She has an Etsy shop, but it is currently closed, I suspect due to the VATMOSS nonsense (she’s French).