In a Bloomsbury state of mind

After going to see the excellent Radical Bloomsbury show at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery last week I was moved to take a trip to Firle, East Sussex to visit Charleston, the country home of artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant which became a meeting place for their friends – the writers, painters and intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury group.
       
Charleston is an 18^th century farmhouse with a walled garden set at the foot of the South Downs. Each room inside is full of paintings, textiles and ceramics including work by Renoir, Picasso and Delacroix as well as furniture and objects from the Omega Workshops. However, I was most interested in seeing the hand-painted embellishments by Bell and Grant who (inspired by Italian fresco painting and the Post-Impressionists) decorated the walls, wonky doors and furniture. The beautiful stencilled dark grey walls in the dining room were particularly impressive, as was the richly painted large circular Omega dining table. I also loved the patched heavy curtains made of several long pieces of sewn-together contrasting fabrics, and the fact that the makeshift curtain poles were dusty with even a cobweb or two. Another delight was Quentin Bell’s witty ceramic colander lampshades.
     
I travelled there by train and bike using the Charleston website’s bike route guide (I took the shortest route from Berwick station) though I’d recommend avoiding cycling along the A27 and taking one of the more circuitous off-road routes if you can. Pedalling along the country roads with cars and the odd lorry whizzing past me at high speed I took courage from imagining Virginia Woolf out on her bike, probably cycling along the same roads to and from the house all those years ago.

  

In search of loveliness

Lovely badges by Mel Sheppard

Undercurrent Weekend provided family fun in the increasingly quaint town of Shoreham-by-Sea. Central to the event was Rachel Henson’s Flickers Under the Bridge, a series of beautifully photographed commemorative flicker books and journey across the soon-to-be-demolished cranky footbridge.  

     The highlight of the festival was The Loveliness Principle, a treasure hunt which began with a phone call, took us round the town, across the bridge, along the narrow footpath on a tour of Shoreham’s houseboats and ended with a gift of delicious home-made shortbread from Rabbit, which we ate in Beach Green’s exciting adventure playground. 

     Wonderful bike ride there along Lancing's seafront cycle path, and a typically annoying train ride back with a disgruntled guard trying to prevent us getting on board with our bikes. It wouldn’t have happened if Rabbit had been driving the train.

The great wall of Worthing - painting a community mural

I spent this afternoon helping to paint a fabulous mural near Worthing’s Aquarena at the site of the now defunct but formerly much-loved seafront paddling pool.

       The mural is a community art project devised by visual artists Nadia Chalk and Vanessa Breen. Over two days residents of the town have worked in the blazing sunshine helping to make Chalk and Breen’s vision come to life. The mural depicts scenes from life in Worthing as well as local landmarks and symbols. It disguises the ongoing construction work to give us a new state-of-the-art swimming pool and will remain in place until the building is finished.

       Local feeling towards the demolition of the old free paddling pool and it’s companion the Peter Pan playground has been mixed, as are feelings towards the construction of a new super-pool complex. However, having a community mural at the site is a lovely gesture and it would be a fine thing if Worthing Borough Council would consider commissioning a permanent piece of community art near this space as a testament to all those happy hours whiled away by children of all ages at this site.

It was a lovely day and brilliantly managed by Nadia and Vanessa with excellent results.