It was rather dark first thing this morning when I stumbled out of the kitchen door down to the garden for Willow. She scampers off without a care while I need a torch and mutter evil things about my overgrown garden.
Now, after breakfast and a mug of tea I am feeling a lot more human and can quietly tap away whilst the washing machine and the radio serenade each other in the kitchen.
Wills is dozing by my feet and I think I will be adding 'wash the dog' to my today's To-do list. She, despite us all yelling
Noooooooooooooooooo, paddled in the most revolting pea green soup of a canal for a quick drink.... urgh.
It is still incredibly dry and scorched down there and only now, now that summer has ended has South Yorkshire declared a drought situation - surely earlier in the year would have been advisory?
We also visited the Yorkshire Sculpture Park at West Bretton on the Saturday as a birthday treat for Himself.
We headed there after lunch as the morning was a bit cool and damp with a frisky wind, which to be honest was very similar to the afternoon weather however as tickets had been purchased and we agreed to wrap up warmly and take flasks of tea. We set off in fine spirits and apart from a rather 'Willow is a menace' moment when she was banished to the van. (Don't worry she had her bed, was wrapped up in her duvet and had a bowl of water) we had a most enjoyable time.
The 10 metre tall Virgin Mother
We worked our way down from the main building and it was interesting to see how varying the reactions were to some of the art works. Damien Hirst's The Virgin Mother is one that Himself and I know and have seen around however the younger four were rather taken aback with one quite revolted by the 'stripped back' half of the sculpture.
No it isn't pretty however, art is supposed to make you think... question ... love...hate.... what ever - but it is supposed to trigger thought and discussion - so this one certainly did.
We started following the main suggested route however it was rather populated by other visitors, so we soon struck off the central path and followed the less visited ones. Then it became rather more interesting.
We came across a series of 'boxes' that, before I read the description - I felt look like those dreadful solitary confinement torture cages that are used by less savoury governments - then we found the info-board. I was correct.... and the design was inspired by a certain 'first world country'...... used up until very recently and to be honest - probably still being used to 'extract the 'truth' as seen by the victor'.
A detention cage in cold water
It made our group rather less chatty until we'd come out the other side of the woodland and sat on a wooden bench watching the water.
Behind us were two very differing sculptures.
One I rather liked (despite it not being a style I am particularly fond of) and the other which made me think of graffiti and plaster of Paris. however, art or in this case, sculpture is designed to trigger responses and questions. The Bruce Beasley work was covered in what looked like compass lines and marks which seemed to enliven the rather masculine geometric form.
It was soon after here that Willow just became too difficult to handle, both boys had kindly offered to hold her lead and soon returned her to me, they now realise how hard she is to control on lead. I make her sound like an absolute horror, which she is not - she just pulls and zig zags and back tracks and spins round and pulls and pulls and pulls and no matter how much training we have done, it seems that she is just wilful and her previous life of not being trained to behave on a lead is now making it very hard to actually enjoy taking her for a walk.
So, as from today, we are back to square one on the lead, and I will just have to not forgive any transgression until she realises that a nicely behaved-on-the-lead dog gets lovely walks... I will admit to missing out on a lot at the YSP thanks to her bad behaviour and - no more. I either leave her in the car/van/at home or we get better at working together. (I prefer the latter idea but at the moment I am nursing a very tired left hand and sore right thumb hanging on to her lead from yesterday)
Claye Bowler - Over my Dead Body
And my favourite - of the ones I did get to see?
Jaume Plense - Wilsis - a fantastically mind bending distorted sculpture that from one angle is a benign almost Mona Lisa smiling face however and to walk around it - it is completely flat.
I have only shared a small section of the photos I took (also 'pinched a few from the boys 😄) and we only saw a small section of what is on offer at the 500 acre park.
Please do follow the links - the photos taken by the sculpture park or the artist are in far greater detail or closer than I could ever get. Besides trying to take a half decent image whilst it was blowing a hoolie and hanging on to a dog who wants to head for the horizon - not easy!!
We saw Verity in Ilfracombe many years ago, she was huge towering over the harbour, no colour, I was rather impressed, Im not sure about adding the colour, it takes away some of the beauty.
ReplyDeleteThe info board said that it was bronze painted to look plastic - and it did.
DeleteI think the bronze only version would be more striking, the bright colours look (to me) rather tacky
What a thought-provoking collection of sculptures, and I agree with you about the last one - it took my breath away.
ReplyDeleteSo sorry about Willow. Lead training is SO difficult and we really struggled with Ellie. In the end she just seemed to settle down of her own accord (after at least 5 years!). Good luck. I do admire everything you're doing with her.
Thank you :) - I will persist to get Wills to behave on the lead, otherwise what is the point? Silly thing is, she is very intelligent and has learnt so much, which why I think it is not stupidity but wilfulness - she knows what to do and when I make her do it - she can do it (for about 30 - 40 seconds) and just as I am thinking - yay it's getting better - she then starts again grrrrrr!
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