Dreaming of lemmings

Dreaming of lemmings

challenge and change with Buxton Museum

In Buxton Museum and Art Gallery throughout these distanced months there has been a fascinating exhibition. Built from material from the slowly dismantling “Derbyshire Schools Library Service” collection, “Between Two Worlds” holds a wonderful array of material from beautiful prints to dresses to Inuit carvings from cold northern lands. Everything here holds stories. There are the graceful evocative prints of Clifford Webb and then there is a small, sliver of elegance, carved on a cold night or maybe in one those endless summer days of an Inuit shaman changing into a bird. And, no, we haven’t been able to go and visit the Museum for months but gradually we’re heading for a reopening and meanwhile you could visit the Museum Blog and Youtube channel, read an article or try an activity

 

More telling than the pieces, are the terms used to curate the collection – not terms chosen by the museum, but words originally used to describe the people involved

 

“As you are, in fact, abnormal, I think it would be a good idea if you took up art” said Kyffin Williams’ Doctor. Williams had epilepsy. Williams’ work is stunning - striking landscape painting (go on, look him up)

 

The Museum, however, presents this work not as examples of the work of degenerates, the disabled, the displaced, Old Uncle Tom Cobbley And All (see below) but as statements of power, of creative strength and honesty, ways of telling the stories of people and cultures that stood, or still stand between at points of change where past and future offer possibilities, threats, challenges, cultures standing between two worlds. Working with an Arts Council England Emergency Response Fund grant, the Museum has also invited a whole bundle of local artists to respond to a challenge from the Museum

 

“We want people to say “Do you remember in 2020? We learnt to do this from the museum website; the museum made us smile; they helped our business to win through… it was brilliant… the museum an influential supporter, a change maker”. “ Brief to artists, Buxton Museum and Art Gallery

 

I’m a storyteller and poet and a creator of events…for me the museum’s challenge is resolving into a fusion between the Between Two Worlds exhibition and the stories it holds and the world we have found ourselves living in now….this is by way of a starting point post/ Other artists have gone down different paths. We didn't have to use this exhibition but for me...there were carved bones, how could I not?

 

I like looking at things.

I like feeling into unexpected connections.  

I like carvings, things to hold, to handle, to speculate over…

For me, the museum is helping me ask questions of myself and of the people around me: might not make us smile but might help us ask challenging questions about ourselves and the opportunities that might comes out this disturbed summer

 

Displaced, we are,

Disabled ,they labelled us.

Imprisoned, depressed, degenerate

All of that, that’s us!

Tolerated sometimes.

Persecuted at others.

Revived by the strength of our hearts.

Challenged, that’s us too.

Challenging: insiders, outsiders

Strangers or friends,

We remember who we are.

 

We all need to remember who we are, not a superficial O, this is me, but where our inspiration and our identity lies. I feel it is important that we use these strange weeks to stand between these worlds of before and during looking ahead to an after, consciously, awake and questioning:  to look at who we have been in these months, who we could be, should be, haven't been, might yet be.... 

All of which for me strikes a chord with a wonderful Tibetan rap that is about personal, communal and national identity and is about change and determination and also joy. So, please, drop in on Shapaley singing “Made in Tibet”

 

“we haven’t forgotten where we came from” Shapaley

 

And after all that, sitting in a box among the Inuit work is a wonderful carving of a lemming. It’s a bit damaged so it’s not on display, but for me lemmings are a delight and a reminder of the value of the overlooked, the despised. Lunch. A small animal who has been the subject of a horrible human-made story for 70 years. No, they don’t throw themselves off cliffs, unless some film director chases them

 

LEMMINGS

 

Grey owl with golden eyes

Listens,

For running feet,

Under the snow.

Hungry wolverine follows,

A scent trail under the snow.

Lynx and bobcat,

Hawk, fox and wolf,

All follow the whisper of hurried feet,

Under the snow.

 

Packed lunch.

Two-finger mitten,

Thumb glove,

Toe shoe,

A small slipper,

A hand full,

A cup full,

A whole family nests in an old hat,

A lemming casts a shadow

As round as itself.

The small one,

The quiet one,

Everyone’s lunch

Who holds the world together.

looking for summer lemmings

Pictures

• Clifford Webb prints: c. Buxton Museum and Art Gallery
• Brown Bear in Finland: c Adam Nardell
• carvings: G MacLellan

 

How many mermaids

How many mermaids?

Unfinished Poems and

 a make your own mermaid event 

 

Doxey Pool (c/o Adrian Lambert)

From the beautiful but dangerous maid in deep, cold Blakemere on Morridge to the golden-haired temptress guarding her treasures in the Kinder Downfall, to the more recent and more sinister tales from Doxey Pool on the Roaches, we have a rich legacy of watery people here in the hills. Flowing out of the hills and onto the Cheshire plains and here are stories of a waterspirit in Redesmere and tales of the Asrai, a tribe of water people in the waters of Cheshire and Staffordshire.

At Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, we have a dramatically something mermaid. Beautiful say some, hideous say other, less tactful, visitors, fascinating say a few but always worth stopping and having a good stare at…

Our mermaid is a Victorian fancy: a construction of wood and wire, human hair, seashells, bone, leather and fish skin, the years have not treated her well but she still intrigues and provokes

Find out more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-17038668

Over the last few months, among other activities at the musuem, i was running an "Unfinished Poems" project which has unfinished itself for now - we hope to revive it again - and I am slowly working my way through the 50 poems that came in. (some have already been published on this blog, go questing....)

Visitors could pick up one (or more!) of 8 postcards with a drawing and two lines to start a poem about a particular aspect of the museum display. Their poem could use those two lines as a launching point, or they could ignore it completely...We wanted to over people a different challenge,  different way of looking at and thinking about the collection.

Here are a mermaid set…

1. Travelling wonder, a sideshow delight

In fish and bone and monkey leather,

My path links the underground rivers and pools of the Peak,

I’m the mermaid of the heather

2. Travelling wonder, a sideshow delight

In fish and bone and monkey leather,

This is a creature you must not miss,

Like modern mermaids, all artifice.

(Susan Crane)

3. Travelling wonder, a sideshow delight

In fish and bone and monkey leather,

Her partner’s a merman but keeps out of sight

So pooling their resources whatever the weather

(John Goodwin, 1/11/17)

 

4. Travelling wonder, a sideshow delight

In fish and bone and monkey leather,

It will be out tonight

But only if clear weather

And just to keep your mermaid appetites well-whetted, we are having a Make your own mermaid (or seamonster) activity 

at the Museum. 

Thursday 22^nd February 2018

10am - 12 noon

Free, no booking needed, just dive in 

and make your own sea-person to swim away with

5. Travelling wonder, a sideshow delight

In fish and bone and monkey leather,

A bewildering sight

With many thanks to all our poets, named or anonymous!

A purple shimmer with peacocks

A purple shimmer of Blue John,

a peacock flare hidden in crystal :

the Unfinished Poems project at

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery

Dig and chisel and quarry and flake,

Polish black or shimmer blue,

Of languid tale or unslumbering wake,

Minerals glinting with a different hue,

Of rock and earth for sorrow or mirth,

For times gone by and of memories new.

(Laura Huxford)

The Collections of the Artists project is reaching its final stages now. Exciting pieces of work are poised to appear among the treasures of the Wonders of the Peak gallery in Buxton Museum and Art Gallery.

this landscape offers a lot

I have been writing poems and stories inspired by the collection. There have been earlier pieces here (links at foot of page). One of the latest pieces I have been working on is not a single bit of writing but is rather a set of unfinished poems: 2 lines that might provoke a response relating to different aspects of the collection. There are 8 of these poems, printed on postcards with a picture to colour in and some possibly useful words scattered around, inviting people to complete the poems as they explore, colour in the picture and send the postcard to a friend (but hoping they will send us the poems as well!)

The first poems are coming in now so I thought I would post these and invite readers of the blog to add their own responses to the opening lines. You may never have seen our Galleries but then you might have your own history of over-enthusiastic diggers, beautiful stone and prehistoric tool makers…

There are 8 Poems in the set: I’ll do the 3 here that we’ve had responses to and post others over the next couple of weeks

(uncredited poems are ones handed in by visitors with no name attached)

If you do write your own completed poem: send it to toadwords@btinternet.com

I can’t promise to use everything but will try to

Ashford Black Marble with inlaid decoration

DECORATIVE STONE

Starting points here are the Ashford Black Marble pieces and our Blue John carvings and window

 

these are the line drawings visitors have been colouring in

2. Dig and chisel and quarry and flake,

Polish black or shimmer blue,

In everything I seek,

None can compare

To the Wonders of the Peak

(Anon)

Unfinished poem:

Dig and chisel and quarry and flake,

Polish black or shimmer blue

Useful words: new, wake, make, bake, flew, blew

 

those cairns didn't stand much chance

VICTORIAN ARCHAEOLOGISTS

A lot of our collection grew from the efforts of those Victorian enthusiasts who went out across and under the Peaks

3. Shovels and spades dig piles of earth

Burrowing into the ancient mound

Where my ancestor lies undisturbed

Until I pull him out.

(Anon)

 4. Shovels and spades dig piles of earth

Burrowing into the ancient mound

A spade is a spade by no other name

So, it is plain to say, just shovel away

(Anon)

Unfinished poem:

Shovels and spades dig piles of earth

Burrowing into the ancient mound

Useful words: worth, hearth, treasures, found, ground

STONE AGE TOOLS

And largely as a result of those Victorians above, we have a large collection of prehistoric tools including delicate Mesolithic flints that lie like notes on the staves of their display cards. There are careful arrowheads, polished stone axes and more…

 

mesolithic flints

5. A hammer blow splits flint from stone,

A firebow wakes embers from the wood,

A knife splits flesh from the bone,

The echoes sound throughout the wood.

(Anon)

6. A hammer blow splits flint from stone,

A firebow wakes embers from the wood,

The branch bends, the sinew sings,

That flint on an arrow

Brings the goose to the fire

And the family rests.

(Creeping Toad)

Unfinished poem:

A hammer blow splits flint from stone,

A firebow wakes embers from the wood,

Useful words: moan, groan, alone, bone, good, food

With many thanks to the writers, known and unknown, of our finished poems!  

Blogs connected to this proejct:

http://creepingtoad.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/collection-of-artists-writing-starts.html

http://creepingtoad.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/fin-cop-pausing.html