The Old Blue & White...after Deptford X

Although Deptford X has finished, I continued to work on and refine the piece.

Blue & white at Shellness

A day out last Sunday to the Isle of Sheppey, to the north tip at Shellness, with views across the estuary to Whitstable...

Although Shellness is a private gated community of appallingly ugly chalet style buildings, there is public access to the beach, where a massive amount of mostly cockle shells can be found (obviously how the area got its name).

As well as shells, blue and white pottery fragments also wash up here.

Calla and Cauldrons

Originally I'd wanted to model the "Old Blue & White" flowers on Calla lillies, but had to modify the idea so that the flowers could face out vertically to be seen from a distance.

As I made more of them (with a copper wire armature), they became, co-incidentally, a similar shape to the "flowers" that then later appeared as part of the London 2012 Olympic cauldron.

The Guardian on "Betty" the Cauldron...

Along with the Queen, Daniel Craig and a cast of thousands, the Olympic cauldron acquitted herself elegantly at the opening ceremony, raising her fiery petals at the end of the night to form a perfect dandelion of flame and set a new standard for understated first-night aesthetics.

The cauldron's creator, the designer Thomas Heatherwick, resisted the temptation to join the global cauldron race, opting for grace and originality over sheer bulk.

The 8.5-metre-tall cauldron, which was crafted in a workshop in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, was intended to stand apart from the fiery troughs that had come before it.

"We were aware cauldrons had been getting bigger, higher, fatter as each Olympics happened and we felt we shouldn't try to be even bigger than the last ones," he said. Betty's design, Heatherwick added, had also allowed the organisers to stress the diverse but united spirit of the Games.

"This incredible event has 204 nations coming together, so we had a child from each country bringing these copper polished objects in."

www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/29/betty-cauldron-olympic-stadium

Not reported was that the gas supply to the cauldron cost £5K a minute. (The lighting for the stadium cost £10K a minute)...Hopefully official "energy" sponsor, EDF, paid for that!

Old Blue and White at DX Opening

Deptford X Opening, last Thursday 26th July, at Creekside Centre. A few words from RH Dame Joan Ruddock and the very gracious lead curator Hew Locke. Flowers in foreground...

Earthrise

Not sure about The History of Art in Three Colours  (surely a case can be made for red). The second episode, Blue, featured Titian, Picasso and Yves Klein. The programme showed that until the precious stone lapis lazuli reached Venice from Afghanistan in the middle ages, blue was a colour little seen in western art. Then ultramarine became associated with depictions of the Virgin Mary until Titian began using it as he liked. It also made a link to the colour of the earth as viewed from outer space ("beyond the blue horizon"). This is a NASA image from the July 1969 Apollo 11 moon mission.