This winter season I’ll be at a number of art and craft fairs in the Mid-Devon area. I’ll be displaying mounted prints and framed prints in various sizes and a selection of cards, so it’s an ideal opportunity to see my work and say hello.

One of the great things about seeing prints in the flesh is to appreciate the different paper types and print quality – it’s impossible to show on my website the beautifully soft yet detailed finish of giclee on photorag, or the almost three-dimensional quality of prints on Kodak metallic paper.

I hope to see you there!

5 and 6 November at Killerton House (National Trust) 10am till 4pm – A wide selection of quality West Country crafts on sale in the house, stable block and Discovery Centre throughout the weekend. £1.50 for non-National Trust members.

19 November Uffculme School Craft Fair, one of the largest and longest-established in the region, open from 10am until 4pm. As well as over 100 craft stalls full to bursting with gift ideas there will be a children’s craft area, a book stall, raffle, tombola, refreshments (including home baked cakes!) and entertainment from the school’s Jazz Band.

26 November Wellington School Craft Fair, again a great number and variety of stalls. Open from 10am till 2pm.

10 December Tiverton Town Hall, in aid of the Tiverton Christmas Lights fund, 10am till 4pm

Wistman’s Wood lends itself to mystery. It isn’t just the otherwordly feel of stunted, twisted oaks amongst a tangle of mossy boulders hanging with ferns and lichens. It isn’t just the puzzle over its name, variously linked to tales of druids, spirit hounds and devils. It’s also the mystery of why it exists at all.

Anyone who has enjoyed walks on Dartmoor knows that the high moor is a wide landscape of grass, heather and gorse punctuated by tors and peat bogs. But it wasn’t always this treeless. When the last ice age retreated much of Dartmoor was woodland, but 7,000 years ago hunters began burning the forest to encourage grazing animals. By the Bronze Age, most of the trees had been cleared for crops and livestock. Oddly, Wistman’s Wood remained, despite a sizeable settlement with 18 enclosures and 80 huts next to it.

Some have seen this preservation as evidence that Wistman’s Wood has been held in special regard since the most ancient of times. A rich legendary culture has built up, to the point where the wood has been described as the most haunted place on Dartmoor. It sits beneath Crockern Tor, the home of the pre-Christian spirit of Dartmoor who was said to ride a skeletal horse with a pack of phantom dogs. These were the Wisht Hounds, huge black dogs with flaming eyes that hunted the moors at night for the flesh and souls of travellers. Wistman’s Wood was said to be their kennel. As the word ‘wisht’ is Devon dialect for ‘uncanny’ or ‘haunted’ it is seen as a possible origin of the name. It may simply derive from the Saxon name for the native Britons, ‘wealas’, as it was still referred to as Welshmans Wood in the 1800’s. Some guess the name Wistman’s Wood to be a derivation of ‘wis’, meaning wise, and so speculate on the presence of druids.

Whatever the source of the name, as soon as you enter the woods you can guess why it remains uncleared: neither grazing animals or plough could penetrate. It’s densely strewn with granite boulders from the remains of a fallen tor, making it leg-breakingly difficult to move through but providing ideal protection for the pedunculate oaks to establish. The oaks remain stunted and twisted by climate and poor soil, hanging with lichen and moss and draped with epiphytic plants. In winter the bare trunks show all their strange shapes, and in summer it becomes a deeply green and lush fairy grotto. It is a remarkable remnant of ancient upland woodland and is protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

I took this shot from a clearing, just where the last patch of grass gives way to moss and fern. The dappled light makes the greens glow richly against the dark oak trunks. Even though the wood itself is quite small, it gives the impression that once you step out of the light you could be easily lost.

This photograph is available as a fine art print; I would recommend the Fuji Crystal photographic paper to bring out the rich, intense greens. For sizes, papers, mounts and prices, click through on the image.

The photograph of Wistman’s Wood is also available for commercial use under a rights-managed licence. For quotations, click through on the image.

I’ve finally organised myself enough to join Twitter, unsurprisingly under the user name louhorton – the full URL is http://www.twitter.com/louhorton. I’d be delighted if you would follow me. I’ve also added links to each page on this site so that you can easily tweet them should you wish.

Next stop, Facebook.

Saturday 27th November I’ll be at another Christmas Fair, this time in Wellington, Somerset. It’s the Christmas Craft and Produce fair at Wellington School, held in the Princess Royal Sports Complex. With over 80 stalls in attendance it should prove to be as enjoyable as last week’s fair at Uffculme. Opening times 10am until 3pm.

Christmas must be coming because the Craft Fairs are hitting their stride. This Saturday (the 20th) I’ll be at Uffculme School Craft Fair, one of the largest and most long-standing events in the area. For the 24th year the school will be holding it’s fundraising event in the school halls, with a huge number of stallholders offering all sorts of fabulous things from hammocks to glassware, paintings to handmade jewellery.
I’ll be there with a range of mounted prints, framed prints and greeting cards.
The fair is open from 10am until 4pm, at Uffculme School, Chapel Hill, Uffculme, Devon, EX15 3AG

From the 4th to the 17th of May the Artful Encounters exhibition can be seen at the Exeter Picturehouse Bar.

This touring exhibition was created just before the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter closed for a major refurbishment. I was one of four unconnected photographers who had been exploring the visual delights of the museum and sharing our images online. We were brought together to create a collection reflecting our affection, fascination and quirky view of RAMM.

I’d spent many an absorbing hour exploring in RAMM, so I needed no second invitation to roam the corridors. I’ve always thought that the more I visit a museum, the more surprises I find. The smaller exhibits, or the ones tucked in darker corners, are the ones that can bring the most reward. And the longer I spent looking, the more I appreciated the intentions of those who originally arranged and lit the exhibits. Their choices affect the perceptions of whoever views the exhibit, and challenges me to find a different perspective.

Here are a few of my images selected for the exhibit:

I spotted this just as the curator was locking up the cabinet after I had been photographing another exhibit. One of those moments when I was chuckling into the back of my camera. I titled this The Party Bore, because every party has someone you really need to avoid. The queasy green light adds to the bad party feel.

Bones, feathers, starfish exoskeletons… there are many opportunities to indulge my love of ‘natural abstracts’ in the museum. This starfish was in a glass case with very subdued light which made the use of a tripod essential. My problem at 5 foot 4 is that I’m too short to get my eye over the viewfinder easily. I need extendable legs.

This is the fossil of a heart-shaped sea urchin, found in a Bronze Age burial at the poetically named Farway Down. It’s a striking thought that long before we settled on the convention of heart shapes representing love, someone chose to bury this with their dead.

I first photographed this through the glass back in January 2006, and it really sparked my imagination. It’s like the thrice-found object; discovered first by people who would not have had the slightest inkling of what a fossil is, then again by archaeologists, then again by me. That’s the joy of museums: they make me feel like I am discovering things for myself.

I wanted to somehow reflect the idea that this was given, or buried, as a token of something. That something we’ll never know, because although archaeology can surmise intent from the evidence, the actual intent remains private. At any rate, the person who placed it in the grave with the deceased did so with reason. So I thought showing it in hands would be simple, direct and human.

Of course, objects shouldn’t be touched for reasons of preservation. So I placed it on an upturned shot glass and asked the Curator of Local History & Antiquities to provide the hands. I love the effect it gave of floating slightly. The wedding ring provides a more modern echo to the concept of connection between individuals.

This is Lake Hart, in South Australia. It’s one of the smaller salt lakes in the Lake Eyre basin, a vast region covering a sixth of Australia. It’s a harsh landscape; the deserts of this region are thought to be the largest source of airborne dust in the southern hemisphere. Rain is intermittent, but when there is enough to create rivers they have nowhere to go as the basin does not drain into the sea. They can only flow into the many salt lakes and evaporate.

Despite being in this huge and unforgiving landscape, Lake Hart is not quite as remote as you might think. The south tip of the lake is skirted by both the Stuart Highway and the famous Ghan rail line as they head out across the stony plains and into the desert, on their 3,000 km trip from Adelaide to Darwin. In the middle of the 20th century it was mined for salt, and later the north of the lake became the centre of rocket launching and missile testing for the military base at Woomera.

All this activity aside, the lake itself is quite stunning, a pristine stretch of sparkling white under the wide blue sky. As the salt dries, it cracks into plates leaving zig-zag ridges across the surface. It is blindingly white under the hot midday sun, and the crystals crunch underfoot as you walk across the brittle crust.

Turning round to face across the lake, all signs of land disappears and the landscape becomes an alien world of blue and white. The distant shoreline becomes a dark line on the horizon. With just sky, salt and that strip of blue hill the image becomes a simple statement of space.

With a solitary plant is in shot, the image becomes a reminder of the forces of drought and salination, two issues that confront Australians as they try to balance river use for irrigation with an ecosystem suffering from severe water shortages.

This image of a salt lake is available as a royalty-free licence; click through on the image for prices and sizing. Two further images of the salt lake are available under a rights managed licence or as prints: see this post for details.
 
 

This weekend I’ll be at a craft fair in a rather fascinating location: the Walronds in Cullompton. Right in the heart of town, this building has a rich history dating back to the mid-1500′s when the land became free after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It’s a Grade 1 listed building but is desperately in need of funding for repairs, being the only building in Mid Devon on English Heritage’s Buildings at Risk register. The two charities involved in rescuing this building are determined to encourage community use of the house as part of the regeneration of Cullompton centre.

The craft fair is not just a way to raise money, but is also a way to invite more people into the building to see for themselves what is possible. The fair takes place on Saturday 10th April from 10am until 5pm, and admission is £1 (half price concessions). Tours of the house will be available also.

This is the first time at a fair where I have been warned to bring lighting because of the oak panelled rooms!

On Saturday 27th March I’ll be at a fundraising event organised by the Mid Devon Business League to benefit the Devon Community Foundation, which provides support to a wide range of groups throughout the county. Held at Blundells School in Tiverton, the Ladies Evening offers a diverse programme of therapies, workshops and music, and I’ll be one of a group of local artists, craftspeople and fine food retailers in attendance.

As my previous post was of snow, I thought it would be fun to indulge in a little visual pun.

This is Lake Hart, in South Australia. It’s one of the smaller salt lakes in the Lake Eyre basin, a vast region covering a sixth of Australia. It’s a harsh landscape; the deserts of this region are thought to be the largest source of airborne dust in the southern hemisphere. Rain is intermittent, but when there is enough to create rivers they have nowhere to go as the basin does not drain into the sea. They can only flow into the many salt lakes and evaporate.

Despite being in this huge and unforgiving landscape, Lake Hart is not quite as remote as you might think. The south tip of the lake is skirted by both the Stuart Highway and the famous Ghan rail line as they head out across the stony plains and into the desert, on their 3,000 km trip from Adelaide to Darwin. In the middle of the 20th century it was mined for salt, and later the north of the lake became the centre of rocket launching and missile testing for the military base at Woomera.

All this activity aside, the lake itself is quite stunning, a pristine stretch of sparkling white under the wide blue sky. As the salt dries it cracks into plates leaving zig-zag ridges across the surface. It is blindingly white under the hot midday sun, and the crystals crunch underfoot as you walk across the brittle crust.

The photograph above I took looking back to shore, where the fertile land becomes a ribbon of rusty colour between the salt and the sky. It becomes a sliver of habitation between the two extremes, while the streaks of cirrus clouds echo the cracks running across the salt. Across the land you can see the line of the Ghan railway which carries a passenger service twice a week.

Turning round to face across the lake, all signs of land disappears and the landscape becomes an alien world of blue and white. The distant shoreline becomes a dark line on the horizon. With just sky, salt and that strip of blue hill the image becomes a simple statement of space.

It’s a reminder of the forces of drought and salination, two issues that confront Australians as they try to balance river use for irrigation with an ecosystem suffering from severe water shortages.

Both images are available as fine art prints; I would recommend a C-type print on Fuji Crystal photographic paper to capture the richly saturated blue of the sky. For sizes, papers, mounts and prices, click through on the images.

These two photographs of the salt lake are available also for commercial use under a rights-managed licence. For quotations, click through on the images. I have made another image of the salt lake available under a royalty free licence; see this post for details.