Croatian Painting on Glass; and other tales

M Hodge "Bear's Dream" 2012

It's taken me a year to finally get around to this piece but it somehow seems appropriate writing about painting on glass under the clear light of the Adriatic, where colour bounces around with the sharp precision of painstakingly applied oil paint. This so-called naïve method of painting came to my attention last April when I met a modern master of the art at a British Croatian Society event. Melanie Hodge is the reason why, out of the two museums I visited in Zagreb, one of them was the Croatian Museum of Naive Art.

Croatian Culture and Civilisation part 1

Death of the last King of Croatia

I've decided to put my Croatian Culture and Civilisation notes here because they are slightly more serious in tone than stories about me being ridiculous on my travels around the country. Given that I will be examined about this course, it makes sense that it gets written up - though there may be more academic information available. As I've already said, the first Croatian Culture and Civilisation class I attended emphasised the mix of cultural influences: Illyrian, Celtic, Greek, Romans (with their associated enforced mixture), then Slavs and Ottomans. Like anywhere in the world it has seen tumultuous population changes and a large diaspora, which needs to be seen against a background of local, national and international events and developments.

A short hiatus

A short hiatus is occurring as I am actually in transit.

I have no idea what is going to occur on this blog in the future. Art, librarianship, lectures and more exploration of the things around me, I hope, In the meantime the travels are being recorded at Contrary Towers.

Normality(ish) will resume shortly.

Travelling

The beauty sparkles from deep inside;
To catch the city pulse to see the light.
The unexpected shoots sideways,
To glow, to shine, diffuse across my mind

The lights have been my safe harbour;
The bustle of noise has been my home.
The planned voyage takes me further east,
To travel, to explore, my mind takes shape

The old and the new collide
In glass and metal and skin reflected.
Reflecting on both leave me in colour,
To imagine, I am free, your spirit is free

Reconstructing the impossible: Diocletian and Split

Just no. And no again!

What is it about art, sculpture and architecture that really makes me tingle passionately? Why is it such an obsession with me? This latest lecture from the combined British-Croatian and Split based Croatian-British Societies, given by Goran Nikšić, Conservation Architect, Head of the Service for the Old City Core of Split, provides the perfect answer. He is an architect unravelling a historic architectural mystery; romantic nineteenth century myths are less interesting than the late antiquity/Roman life he is actually uncovering. As he talked about his findings, my brain tingle awoke and once again, I was gripped by an art story.

Revelations in glass

Eleanor Morgan

It's been my intention to write and record something about glass for a while now, primarily looking at it from a combined scientific and contemporary art point of view. For instance, Luke Jerram's mysterious shapes of viruses - ebola, MRSA and swine flu - crafted from glass, or the sculpture made from glass laboratory implements recently exhibited in the Wellcome windows. Then recently there was the stunning Glass Delusions at the Grant Museum which was partly inspired by nature's foray into silica based organisms. The inexplicable and unique scientific nature of glass makes it a perfect material of artistic endeavour, able to capture fragility, a human moment of stillness in a medium of movement.