Dorset Art Weeks and project days

This weekend we have a couple of project days scheduled at Mr Kite’s place. We’re going to be making an earth oven for our new outdoor kitchen area. Gabriel is making a yurt, so we’ll be doing some steambending for the lattice. We’ll be doing a charcoal burn with the help of our friend Adam who has recently switched from a messy career as a charcoal maker to the cleaner thatching trade. Gabriel and Mr Kite found a solar water heater at the local dump and promptly purchased it for all of £7. Perhaps we might see if anyone knows anything about how to get the thing working. At the moment it’s got a split pipe and one glass tube is smashed.

Mary and I will be making some Elderflower wine and I’ll make sure everyone is fed and watered. On Friday Mary and I plan to pick some of our own at Ansty PYO. Gooseberries are our target, and they will be turned into Elderflower and Gooseberry jam.

Here are some pictures of a project day preparation session that took place a couple of weekends ago. The boys got excited about how fast the solar panel managed to heat water, despite the smashed tube and leaking pipe. The three of us pondered about convection, efficiency, optimum angles etc. It was like a physics lesson at school, except relevant and exciting.

The guys experimented with steam bending some wood for the yurt in their ‘bespoke’ steamer.

I went around some of the Dorset Art Weeks studios. They were, on the most part, very inspiring. Here is a photo of Guy Mallinson’s woods. It was weird going there, seeing the similarities and differences between these woods and the woods that I often go to. I might talk about it some other time and put more photos of the place up. I might not. Wait and see, I guess.

I enjoyed Charlie Baird's paintings on display in Shaftesbury along with Peter Ursem's printmaking work. This image above was my favourite by Baird. The original was amazing to see. I liked Peter Ursem's work. The book of River Stour prints were especially interesting because there were two pages ripped out of it during a previous exhibition. Someone tried to steal these pages. They folded one of the pages up neatly so the image itself remained unspoilt. The pages were found and then put back into the book. I felt the art was in the story behind the imperfection of what had been a perfect book. This story became the art, because the story is more interesting than the art.

I have just been given the papers to sign for my new allotment. These are exciting times.