Weird: The strange, unusual and surreal

There’s a lot of weirdness that has shaped my life, ultimately influencing the creative work I produce: Dad constructing non-conventional furniture, Psychology Today and National Geographic magazines and last but not least the Surrealists.

I have written about my father before. My blog Luggage had a photo of him strapping a pile of furniture four feet high onto the roof of the blue Buick during our family vacation. This in and of itself was weird and almost could have been likened to a mobile assemblage artwork. Much of the furniture that he brought home from that trip was eventually transformed. Wood was stripped, revarnished or painted and chairs were caned with loving hands.

About ten years later, Dad (a Presbyterian minister) went above and beyond, and decided to dismantle a church organ (not from our church) with all its bells and whistles and reassemble it in a spare bedroom in our house. My guess is he had caught wind of the instrument in need of a home through his professional connections.

Now this activity could have been deemed a bit weird, it was certainly unusual – none of my friends had a church organ in their bedrooms but it was ‘normal’ in our household and I revel in that memory.

With the leftover wooden pipes, he made two coffee tables. One of them graced our lounge where the latest issues of Psychology Today and National Geographic were carefully placed for leisurely light reading. Both of these publications I would regularly peruse. I found Jung’s philosophy to be particularly interesting and the photographs that appeared on the pages of both magazines were serious eye candy.

The creation of the pipe organ tables showed me how to use objects in a way not originally intended. Add this to an interest in unusual old objects (thanks to my parents), the inspirational imagery from the magazines as highlighted above along with an introduction to Jungian theory focusing on the unconscious, made for my own unconscious gravitational pull towards the Surrealists when I was doing my undergraduate study in Art.

We have André Breton and his colleagues (i.e. Dalí, Duchamp, Man Ray) to thank for the Surrealist movement established in the early 20th century. The Surrealists are known for their juxtaposition of diverse imagery, influenced by the unconscious often from dreams manifesting in various imaginative creative outputs including: paintings, sculpture using the found object (objet trouvé), collage, film and of course poetry.

Sarane Alexandrian writes:

the surrealists set out…to create new demands on reality…to liberate the workings of the subconscious, disrupting conscious thought….creat[ing] a new form of sensibility….it set poetry at the centre of everything, and used art to make poetry into something which could be seen and touched…

Michel mentions that if one takes surrealist imagery/poetry at face value, that the creative works appear to be weird and random. He also puts forward how these types of artworks resist simple meanings and concrete interpretations. The Surrealists he says:

confronted viewers and readers with bizarre imagery that avoided no fixed cultural meaning or else subverted established meanings….One might argue many don’t accept that life doesn’t make sense…

Thus, it seems that the Surrealists’ audience back in the day and perhaps today as well, had issues with the works because of their weirdness and non-depiction of a known reality - a fear of the weird, Fear of the Surreal, as Michel’s blog post title is called. I got lost in further reading about the Surrealists for this article, definite food for thought, however I became distracted as I began to reflect on my own work, my own weirdness and creative development.

Untitled (Alarm Clock Case) 1983

In my first drawing class at university I was making juxtaposed images such as a cigarette metamorphosing into a pencil. Later in my third year I used a box full of alarm clock cases found at a local thrift store as foundations to create a series of 15 artworks (see example above). These were to be a pivotal series. I continue to use clocks today in my work.

Insect Hotel (Grandfather Clock Case)Manchester Museum 2020

My later assemblage works purposefully make connections between different elements, like visual poetry. They often tell non-linear stories focusing on place and identity. In the case of the Insect Hotel, created during my Artist in Residence at Manchester Museum in 2020, I also incorporated poetry into the work as well and created a collection of insect themed poems.

Insect Hotel Detail Manchester Museum 2020

Often with surrealist art and my own assemblages because the viewer can’t read the works with immediate recognition other than a main object/s (i.e. clock shape) they will not take time to explore and discover the many layers of meaning and connections within them – this also goes for some types of poetry. It’s taking time with a creative piece. There’s no wrong or right way to read something no matter how weird, although one might think there is. Everything is open for interpretation and each viewer brings their personal experience when engaging.

Enough rambling - to finish off, I thought I’d have a go at creating more weirdness, surrendering to the unconscious through automatic writing, one of the Surrealists’ methods of creating poetry. I found this not as enjoyable and more difficult than other Surrealists’ methods I have experimented with (collage and blackout poetry). It was an interesting exercise and quicker to do than the other types. I set a timer for two minutes, with the first two, and three minutes for the last. Here are the results:

1)
what moon bright star
giraffe feet clumsy
sink into soil a sandpit
a dark hole swallow
whole and grains like
timer oh the flowers arched
droop stems petals are
gone as dust flies into the
wind my eyes pop out roll
along the hill on a journey beyond
the horizon

2)
homeward bound dogs run past
the prairie dogs on grass by
trees alone she stands among
men who circle the feet with
dogs barking cars racing down the
long straight road to nowhere
somewhere another she lights a
fire to keep warm opening a tin
of beans

3)
onto the shore seaweed slime
open eyes diamonds shine
red or white at night and day
squint moon squint
can you see through black abyss
the owl fluffs its wings
brown speckled feathers
one is lost floating free
to land in moss and fungi
ants crawl spiders weave
squirrels climb the cat stalks
rodents hide

Thank you for reading, 

Kate J

Sources
Alexandrian, S. 1989. Surrealist Art. 2nd Edition. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd Cambridge Dictionary, 2024
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/weird Accessed 14 April
Language is a virus, 2024. Automatic Writing.
https://www.languageisavirus.com/creative-writing-techniques/automatic-writing.php 
Accessed 14 April
Michel, L., 2023. Fear of the Surreal.
https://countercraft.substack.com/p/fear-of-the-surreal Accessed 15 April 2024

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Dandelion Clocks

Ever one to avoid the obvious, I thought I'd blog about dandelions - and their  clocks  - on this last day of British Summer Time. Yes, we need to reset our timepieces overnight back to GMT; (and it's also the end of European Summer Time, lest we forget our alignment to the continent). The north wind has begun to blow and we're already seeing snow in the UK for the first time since the beastly tail-end of February, but at least it has been a gloriously sunny (if bracingly cold) day in the jewel of the north - and we get an extra hour in bed tonight.

I suppose the dandelion might be regarded as the marmite of the plant world, loved by many for its colour and culinary properties, loathed by as many others for being the bane of lawns and flowerbeds. I personally think dandelions are a good thing, so this will be a bit of a PR exercise on their behalf. Let's start with a few interesting facts; (you know the Saturday blog is usually good for a fact or two)...


Beautiful Dandelion Clock

Dandelions are tap-rooted, flowering herbaceous perennials, genus Taraxacum. Their name is derived from the shape of the leaves (jagged like a lion's teeth), first from the Greek (leontodon), then Latin (dens leonis), via Middle French (dents de lion) and so to English. Interestingly the modern French word for the plant is pissenlit (literally bed-wetter), derived from the plant's medicinal property as a diuretic.

The dandelion has been common to Europe and Asia for millennia but was only introduced to the New World in the 17th century when the emigrees on the Mayflower took it to North America for its culinary and medicinal uses.

It looks spectacular in flower (in the right places), a carpet of gold in spring and summer; it also looks amazing when seeding. I once bought my father, who collected paperweights, a dandelion clock trapped in glass. It's a beautiful thing. The artefact reverted to me when he died and sits on a windowsill where it catches the light to best effect.

Fresh dandelion leaves go nicely in a green salad (and guinea-pigs love them); various plant extracts are used to make dandelion wine or root beer (anyone remember Dandelion & Burdock?); its ground dried roots have acted as a coffee substitute in times of war and deprivation.

As a herbal remedy it has been used since ancient times as a treatment for kidney and urinary infections.

More recently it has been found that the milky substance within its hollow stem (surely everyone has seen and felt the stuff on their fingers) is a latex sap and might be an alternative source of rubber in future. Dandelion latex has been given the name taraxagum (a play on its scientific name).

What a versatile and valuable plant, I hope you agree. Just writing this has got me longing for its return in the spring! In the meantime, I have a paperweight to enjoy.

How many of you as kids used to pick dandelion clocks (also known colloquially as 'blowballs') and puff away at them? We were told by our elders that you could tell the time by how many puffs it took to blow all the seeds off the head of the stalk. It was always good fun. I've no idea why or how long ago that piece of folklore originated but it has certainly worked wonders for the propagation of the dandelion down the centuries. I passed the habit on to my own children, the eldest of whom had a shock of sticking up silky hair remarkably like a dandelion's seed-head when she was a baby (see above).

Today's poem takes as its jumping-off point that age-old children's game of blowing the dandelion clock.

What Time Is It?
Grip the stalk with sticky fingers,
take a breath and concentrate,
blue eyes a-wonder.

The first puff blasts a quadrant
of filaments parachuting on the breeze
to pastures new. Well done - one o'clock.

As many hie with the second puff,
half the fluff of the blowball plundered
and gone to ground - two o'clock.

The next huff expires with a hint
of a wheeze but a good third
of the seed-head stands - three o'clock.

A final determined puffed-cheek blow
dispatches all but a single seed.
Good enough, goldilocks,

aglow with a winning smile,
dandelion out-roared - four o'clock
... and time for that inhaler.


Okay, that's it. Time's up. Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Clocks - Piano Lessons

I longed to be able to play the piano like Russ Conway, or like my father’s friend, Joe who often played the old upright at the far end of the vault in the pub we had at the time. I pestered long and hard, until at around age seven I could just about stretch my hand to nearly an octave which meant that I was ready to have lessons. Learning didn’t come easy. I disliked the teacher, for one thing, and the smells in what I eventually called that house of horrors. Escape came in the form of a house move, well, pub move, to a tiny place near Glossop, Derbyshire. My piano lessons continued with a local teacher. He made it fun, we got along and I did well. Then came another move. Back to Blackpool, different pub, on the promenade this time and it was wonderful. Dad thought I’d be pleased that he’d arranged my piano lessons with my first teacher.

I began to dread Saturday mornings. My lesson was at twelve o’clock. I never mentioned it in the hope that my parents would forget and it would be too late to go, but that didn’t happen. I was at secondary school by now. I had tried to suggest that I gave it up, but I was never able to fully explain why I wanted to and my pleas landed on deaf ears.

I don’t know whether my father took me to my lessons too early, or if the teacher was running late with the pupil before me, but I spent a lot of time waiting in the horrible sitting room with the hideous grandfather clock. The room was dingy, crammed with dark furniture and smelled of polish mixed with whatever was cooking for dinner wafting through from the kitchen. The clock had a deep, hollow tick-tock and mechanical whirring sound just before a loud chime every quarter of an hour. It was huge and took up the whole corner of the room, like it had been squashed in next to the ancient bookcase. There were some strange books in there. Sometimes I’d look at the fascinating drawings of the human reproductive organs I’d found in a medical dictionary. I would rush to stuff it back in the right place when the silence of the upstairs piano signified the end of the lesson before mine.

It would leave the noisy rhythm of the grandfather clock and climb the creaky staircase to the small room at the front of the house. There was a desk in the window where the teacher would sit, barking out orders and sending out puffs of stinking cigar smoke that filled the air and sometimes made me feel dizzy. I would place myself on the piano stool in front of the upright piano, set my music out, sit up straight and wait to be told to start. I hoped he would stay at his desk but he didn’t. He would lean over me to scribble a direction on my music and I would hold my breath. I didn’t want to breathe in his horrid cigar smoke and I was bracing myself for his fat hand on my shoulder.

Every tick and tock in that old-fashioned sitting room filled me with immense dread of going upstairs. I was never able to share my worries. I thought my parents would think I was imagining things or exaggerating.

In Haworth Parsonage there is a beautiful grandfather clock on the half-landing.  I can’t bring myself to take much notice of it, except to wonder if it is the same one that Rev. Patrick Bronte used to wind up every day.

I found this Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem,

The Old Clock on the Stairs

 

Somewhat back from the village street

Stands the old-fashioned country-seat.

Across its antique portico

Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw;

And from its station in the hall

An ancient timepiece says to all, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

Half-way up the stairs it stands,

And points and beckons with its hands

From its case of massive oak,

Like a monk, who, under his cloak,

Crosses himself, and sighs, alas!

With sorrowful voice to all who pass, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

By day its voice is low and light;

But in the silent dead of night,

Distinct as a passing footstep's fall,

It echoes along the vacant hall,

Along the ceiling, along the floor,

And seems to say, at each chamber-door, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

Through days of sorrow and of mirth,

Through days of death and days of birth,

Through every swift vicissitude

Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood,

And as if, like God, it all things saw,

It calmly repeats those words of awe, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

In that mansion used to be

Free-hearted Hospitality;

His great fires up the chimney roared;

The stranger feasted at his board;

But, like the skeleton at the feast,

That warning timepiece never ceased, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

There groups of merry children played,

There youths and maidens dreaming strayed;

O precious hours! O golden prime,

And affluence of love and time!

Even as a miser counts his gold,

Those hours the ancient timepiece told, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

From that chamber, clothed in white,

The bride came forth on her wedding night;

There, in that silent room below,

The dead lay in his shroud of snow;

And in the hush that followed the prayer,

Was heard the old clock on the stair, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

All are scattered now and fled,

Some are married, some are dead;

And when I ask, with throbs of pain,

"Ah! when shall they all meet again?"

As in the days long since gone by,

The ancient timepiece makes reply, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

Never here, forever there,

Where all parting, pain, and care,

And death, and time shall disappear, —

Forever there, but never here!

The horologe of Eternity

Sayeth this incessantly, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow  1807-1882

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

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