amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae

Monday 26 April 2010

Echoing Green and the Incredible Shrinking Man

Echoing Green is formed from Woolen Yarns(various), Jute Threads, Cotton Brocade and Gesso Paint on Hardwood Panel. Echoing Green is a poem by Blake whose fearless amateurism I  admire, reminding me of Johnsons slightly more opinionated guile, also.... The television documentaries by Bryan Cox about the universe and the Earths connection to each planet in the solar system has given rise to some astonishingly lucid dreams, if a hell exists apart from existing in "other people" it must surely exist on the surface of those barren - beautifully scary places. On the subject of Landscape & Consciousness, Spatial Alchemy - I don't go out of my way to sound pretentious but since it is to the Romantic Poets that I've turned, I'm lingering on poem The Echoing Green for its reference to cyclic chronological consciousness, The Village green where countless generations seemed to gravitate - obviously such lines were conceived before the time of the CCTV camera or for that matter, television. I do find it a bit odd that the inhabitants, particularly the children living in tenemented communities are considered anti-social for assembling on the street corners and sitting along walls etc. Contrary to our dangerous"Street Life" the Echoing Green was the amen corner of its day, hopefully the Echoing Green possesses a wider context rather than the "centered" contemplary detail, matters linked with the wider interests of human consciousness of the landscape, how the landscape may fulfill certain ambitions, how such ambitions impact upon the land and the influence that the very stuff of Landscape brings to bear upon the inhabitants of that land.
In particular the notion that we people named things, either gradually or perhaps occasionally or immedietly, we named them with our consciousness, our forefingers, our eyes and our voices and these facilities were in part informed by the very landscape we were "naming" at that time and now.

That is why the loss of any language is the loss of a whole dimension, there is - in my present opinion - no clear evidence that one language is accurately translated from another, general translation is obviously attainable but if you were to suggest a meaning of a word in a language that is "not your own" you can only describe the meaning in a shallow dimension, "it looks like". "it sounds like" etc in some languages, for example the name of a colour is the same for a particular term of endearment, you could argue that such minutae is nonsensical hair splitting although I believe the reverse effects can be sampled when, for example particular Irish writers write in English because they might imbue the language with a playful spirit, as a child might play with ryhmes and repetition, Beckett seemed to savour words so ultra sensitively in their radiating impact upon the receptivity of a narratives montage; the effect upon the reader comprehension . It would be interesting and improbable to know if the success of the English Language is because it has no "core" to the words, no shadow or twin and if the abandonment of our  Brythonic Languages, the P-Celtic and Gallic languages which stem from the majority of Britain's landmass was given up relatively passively for the attractive qualities of "shallow speech", a language with which one could excel in insincerity. English at its best required a broad vocabulary or the sort of treatment previously alluded to in Beckett.
 I point at a hill and say the word for hill in the language that came through that hill.
The film The Incredible Shrinking Man ends with the protaganist reassuring himself as he stares up into the starry heavens after surviving a mauling from the domestic cat and then a battle royale with a spider, he stares up from the deep grass blades of his jungle lawn and muses....I still exist.....just as I looked down onto the Thistle as it caught my full attention, the microcosm.

Drawings taken from Echoing Green, these are graphite on machine paper, like a very fine Newsprint but much nicer grade

Jonathan Polkest | National Association for the Visual Arts Ltd

Jathan Polkest | National Association for the Visual Arts Ltdon

Wednesday 21 April 2010

ECHOING GREEN. Jonathan Polkest

Nefyn, Porth Dinlleyn, last Saturday17th of April 2021 an incredibly gem-like meteorite shower from the beach at Porth DinLleyn, a place almost entirely formed from Greenstone - Horneblende Schist's as the local name implies "Carreg Dhe".Although Nefyn is a very interesting location, geologically. It is the location for the life and times of St. Beuno, the large church at Clynnog Vaur and the little church at Pystll, both impressive structures although Pystll's humble scale and cliffside location lend a spiritual dimension reminiscent of the little church at Old Town, St.Mary's, Isles of Scilly, Cornwall, Pystll is by comparison deserted added to which the aisle is strewn with aromatic herbs which react as the "pilgrim" makes their way towards the altar.

The Church at Pystll, near Clynnog Vaur, near Nefyn on the Lleyn Peninsular, North Wales.

  Lines & Strata Exhibition Photographs from Denbigh, North Wales U.K.

Wednesday 7 April 2010

Lines and Strata Exhibition dates

March 6th 2010 Lines & Strata Drawing exhibition in Denbigh Library Gallery until April 17th 2010; Denbigh Library Art Gallery, Hall Square, Denbigh LL16 3NU Phone 01745 816313.

Lines and Strata August 21st to September 30th 2010; Oriel Mwldan, Bath House Road, Cardigan SA43 1JY Phone 01239 621200.

Lines and Strata November 1st until November 27th 2010; Art Matters Gallery, White Lion Street, Tenby, Pembrokeshire, SA70 7ES email info@artmatters.org.uk Phone 01834 843375.

Lines and Strata January 22nd until March 5th 2011; Gwynedd Museum & Art Gallery, Bangor. Ffordd Gwynedd, Bangor LL 57 1DT Phone 01248 353368 email: AmgueddfaGwynedd@gwynedd.gov.uk


http://linesandstrata.wordpress.com/


Lines and Strata represents a good sectional sample of arts practice, focusing on linear execution, mark making as well as an applied technique; an inspirational resource with a broad agenda.

Cwm Bychan - Nant Mor. This piece is executed on Flax, Acrylic Gesso and black wool yarns. The original source of this idea is near Beddgelart, where a dry stone building used as an animal pen (perhaps) has begun to disintergrate but this erosion of the original form is being elevated by the onslaught of spring foliage rising up around the old stones. The version above the original is rendered on paper using charcoal and a frottaging technique that is simple to do and a lot less arduous than the Suture Stitching of my original work. Anytime you feel like setting up an opportunity to workshop the frottaging just contact me at 
jonathan_polkest@hotmail.com




Cear Gybbi - Holy Mountain. (Gauze,Muslin, Wool Yarn on panel with Gesso)


http://www.axisweb.org/artist/jonathanpolkest


Cear Gybbi Scraffitto/Frottage on paper.

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Monday 5 April 2010

Thistles, Thorns and Briers

Thistles Thorns & Briers began to form after a moment of illogical hiatus, walking across a meadow in West Cornwall near Porthennals on my way to the shop where I noticed and for want of something more to digress the chore in hand, I photographed the Thistle as a Mandala would be viewed, directly above the top with radiant foliage and the looping cyclic pattern in each leaf, a layer of miniscule thornlets arranged as the hairs on a pigskin resisting the remaining dew droplets. The flower of this plant is a pink to blue colour and looking up I saw many in various stages of development.
The idea of a trap laid close to the ground for the unwary pedestrian crossed my mind as the common story of the Scots Thistle is retold, eulogized into an identifiable icon as an emblem of national pride because a nocturnal marauding viking trod into the spiny heart of a thistle as he stole upon the slumbering would-be-victims who sat bolt upright at the nordic scream of agony, it is too too Beano/Dandy for my sceptical reasoning but I am prepared to leave the matter unchallenged until I learn more about the Thistle.
They are beneficial to the Liver and the Kidney, both the antithesis of the stereotypical whiskey infused inter-clan relationship.


I have more Jute to suture, hard work as this is a plant based fibre, eaten as a glutonous vegetable in parts of Africa although grown more commonly in South Asia and in particular India where it formed the basis of a textile industry for clothing as well as more domestic and industrial purposes. This connection with a robust plant based textile infused some curiosity about the Thistles original purpose in earlier society, it is very fibreous and we seem to have lost so many of our original reasons for doing things. We tend to get all contemporary activities that have a long history within human society presented as "early forms of trading", "early forms of technology", just by comparing the modern reason with the early technique and for me , that cannot stack up.
I have seen Flint Tool workings in Sussex described as "Flint Tool Factory", or Greenstone deposits in West Cornwall described as "Greenstone Axe-Head Factories" implying that money changed hands as it might in eastern green B&Q, you simply cannot compare the early activities of a developing society with the monetarized systems of modern if somewhat flawed, society.