Arts Articles
The dancing Quakers
In memory of Mr Dove and Miss Carman c. 1880 Friends, and nothing more, despite the gossip, rampant, when you share a dressing room and put a sign up, DO NOT KNOCK, WE ARE AT WORSHIP. That’s the nicest word I’ve seen for it! Dan Leno quipped, prompting Miss...
Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’
‘Journeys with “The Waste Land”’ an exhibition I initiated as a curator, has recently opened at the Turner Contemporary art gallery in Margate. After six years of planning, it has so far been well attended and received, though inevitably some negative reaction has also come our way. Its starting point...
Bird on the wire
It was a chance meeting as they often are when you’re really doing something else, or going somewhere with purpose as I was that day, in my moveable house, wheels at each side, spinning along – earth-bound traveller.
Meeting for Worship
Reflections on a silent Meeting for Worship, Colchester, November 2017 We sat in a circle, Listening for the echoes of grace within. For a while nothing seemed to be happening; The sun fell on our faces, Faint noises filtered from outside, No one spoke.
Love to the loveless
It probably would not be allowed now. The safeguarding implications would be horrendous. But when I first boarded at Sidcot School in 1968, aged eleven, it was the rule that all pupils not engaged in sports fixtures should be off the premises and roaming freely on Saturday afternoons. Some would gravitate...
Blessings abounding
You are blessed when your spirit can endure no more: you have only God’s hands to sustain you. You are blessed when you grieve for what is most dear to you: only then are you ready for the comfort of God.
Homeless
Somehow my life dropped me into a shop doorway, the reek of stale urine, the sting of cold concrete. Wrapped up in my quilt of shredded green nylon, an old woollen blanket, a damp square of cardboard, I sat and waited for the day to die slowly, with a cup...
Silent night
Silent night, children take flight Run for their lives on a starlit night Leave the home they were born and bred Uncharted highways of hope lie ahead To escape from the bombs and the gunfire Fleeing the fear and the dread.
Interview: John Creed
The artistic metalworker and sculptor John Creed has enjoyed a varied career in industry, education and the creative arts spanning more than five decades. An instinctive artist, his work seems to emerge from the hinterland between conceptual and practical, aesthetic and utilitarian, making his work particularly striking and tangible. Much...
Images of Christ: The Presence in the Midst
Almost all the art works in this series have been either in churches or in public galleries. Last month’s was the nearest I could come to an image of Christ in an outside space. But I also wanted to point you towards one in a domestic space. And that...