Fields? Family? Anybody?

Easily impressed by what's in front of me, let's do a bit of family story telling today.

My granddad turned 90 yesterday. So, happy, happy birthday, Friedel! He'd been, first anxiously (so as to not tempt fate) then eagerly planning his big bash to offset the far too many funerals that now mark his diary of events.

With having been 'elsewhere' for so long and so persistently, I successfully managed to avoid most family occasions, so much so that I tend to say "there's not much family" where I'm from. Obviously a lie - as the table full of people who I don't know testifies.

So, the first happy family party for me in... I don't know... probably 14 years?... my parents' silver anniversary I guess?...

The village where my mother grew up shares a lot of family from my mother's and my father's side. My dad's uncle lived opposite my mother's parents. And they are all from around there anyway... well, both my grandfathers' families, not my grandmothers' sides.

Where am I going with this? To the fields, and to Albert Koenig. But first two tangents: to Reñaca a bit north of Valparaiso in Chile and to my grans's christmas biscuits.

Field with orange

Tangent 1: after too much lunch, my dad, Torben and I go for a walk - round the swimming pool, and through some fields... I grin, take some photos. Welcome back, just the right time for late summer fields again. There's the little river, well... a burn really... where my mum learned to swim. We come back and my mum says... "I've been talking about you, and Harald wants to talk to you about Chile." Well, let's talk about Chile. H. is one of the son's of my granddad's best friend. H. has travelled, plenty of times to Latin America, to Africa and to Asia. He wants to retire between Reñaca and Viña del Mar, just north of Valpo. ¡Qué raro! He tells me 'talk some more, Gesa, your German sounds so lovely and strange'.

Tangent 2: 'Gesa, Gesa, Gesa - Annegret wants to talk to you about Kolutschen', my mum says excitedly after yet more food. 'They found your blog'. Yes, I know they found my blog. And a few hours later I'm talking to people I spent summer weekends with in their outdoor pool, whom I last saw about 30 years ago, and we talk about never having gone away and about being strange. And about Oma Eschede's Kolutschen recipe, which they stumbled upon last winter. Annegret tells me 'You know, I didn't need the recipe, I have it myself - it's really only two people in the world who made these, my mother-in-law and your gran. We were just curious and googled. And how weird to find them. My daughter asked: Do you know a Gesa Helms? But she's not from here. She's from somewhere in England!'

Na, and then the Men's Choir came and sung. Sung some more and drunk some more. It's so rural and villagey, I tend to forget just how familiar this all is, how I can decipher it blind, find it elsewhere such as in rural northwest Scotland and find the markers, the points to orientate yourself by, to trip up and despair over.

My granddad, orchestrating, to the left with beer glass

¡Raise your glasses, once more! And sing some more about the woods and the meadows, the wind and the darkness, the heathland, the shepherd and a rural idyll that never really was but still warms our hearts.

Oh, and then something really strange was taking place. At the far end, my other granddad sat. Only, he died seven years ago. And nonetheless, one of my dad's former bosses looks soo like him, it's uncanny. Only later my dad told me that his boss' gran was a cousin of my granddad's gran. Well... family... everywhere
Well... Opa Uelzen... he's (not) the one in the middle of this picture.



Albert Koenig: that's tomorrow's programme - in practice, if not in blog.

I found something

today... while walking up the hill to work I came across this... walked back and picked it up.



How lucky is that?

A rusty old key. Just there on the pavement. While I was looking at that little spot of cobalt paint that splashed onto my trainers a few weeks back.

Have some biscuits for christmas...

... and Oma Eschede's* Kolutschen would be an excellent choice.

Well, there was a plan to take a picture of the full tin,
but by the time I got round to it,
only these three were left...

They are part of my first memories of making Christmas biscuits. My mum, my little brother and myself in our old house's kitchen had set up an elaborate division of labour: first, Torben and I would have to attempt to roll the perfect round globes which wouldn't fall apart - difficult one, that one. Then we would argue a bit of who would have to baste them in egg white (not much fun) and who would be allowed to roll them in sugar after (much more fun).

Because he was younger, he wasn't allowed to carry out the more delicate task of poking little moulds into them (of course this isn't part of my memories but vividly in his; and probably one of the few disadvantages of being younger - which is of course my vivid memory ;)), the final task would be to fill the little moulds - like bird nests with jelly.

These were my mum's mother's Kolutschen - simple short crust dough with sugar and jam - unbeaten for Christmas sweetness. Strangely enough, these are biscuits I have still to make myself but without fail they would be in one of my mum's biscuit tins, as they are indeed this year.

Here's the recipe

Kolutschen

250 g sugar
150 g butter
1 pack of vanilla sugar
3 egg yolk
400 g flour

Whisk butter for 15 mins, add sugar, yolks and flour, form globes (about 2 cm diameter) , roll in egg white, then in sugar, use one of those squeeze things to making meringue (well: in German it's Fingerhut) to make a mould which you then fill with a bit of jelly (like the redcurrant one here).

Bake for about 10 mins in oven of 180 degree C (fan-assisted).

Here's another gem from my mum's cook book. It's not so much the recipe - I don't think she ever made that After Eight Cake, but it's my other granny's handwriting... and from the titling by me it must be about 20 years old...




* well, naming grandparents in my parents' house happened according to location, so we had Oma and Opa Eschede and Oma and Opa Uelzen ... and as a geographer I would learn some 20 years later that space and place mattered ...

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... and I got it...

... my wish. Not on Sunday but today: a glorious chilly day with winter sun from 8.30 to 3.30 and time to wear gloves. Makes me think that I should wish for more things.

You can see that this is heading to a lazy post. The remaining Eardley stuff is too much to write up just now, but will follow soon.

So: a bit more on the weather: it's not looking too bad... more frost for the weekend as the BBC site tells me and only one (in numbers: 1) day of rain inbetween:


But to finish with something more artsy: There are still a few Paying it forwards to give away... I've started to makes some small collages from these architectural, cutsy fishing village sketches for the PIF, so, just leave a comment if you're tempted :)

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Paying it forward

Water spray and a low sun, Detail
Mixed media collage on paper

One of my friends had started the year by pinning up a note above her desk - written on it were three words: Neugier, Großzügigkeit, und Gelassenheit - curiosity, generosity, and something where translation doesn't work that well: my online dictionary tells me that Gelassenheit is calmness or composure - but that it too calm and composed - I think it requires a good portion of laidbackness in with it.

I'm usually hesitant when it comes to virtue. - My friends and colleagues will laugh: seeing that my main work project is about civility (and it doesn't get more problematically virtuous than that).

But never mind, Irene's collection of goods things to remember is the opening to my contribution to a bit of random generosity. Over the past few weeks (which have been those were I didn't really look much at other people's blogs because there were too many other things to do), a long and winded paying it forward trail made it through many artists' blogs.

The idea behind it is that you give something away on the basis of the recipients promising to do something for the next round of people... paying it forward and passing it on. It is up there with those projects where books are left on park benches or small pieces of art distributed across places for people to find and enjoy.

When trailing the current PIF, I am now looking forward to received a piece of art from Lindsay at Non-linear arts who's been doing a whole series of water-themes landscape explorations in oil pastel and acrylics, exploring abstraction and composition within these. She has also a number of really sponteneous and fresh water colour sketches.

The rules for the PIF are something along the lines that the first three to leave a comment on this post will receive something on the basis that they will reciprocate the same on their blogs with their artwork.

Yet - Tina Mammoser had a nice addition to this, and I think that rules are usually there to be changed: she stated explicitly that the PIF would also work if you (a) didn't have artwork to pass on or (b) didn't have a blog to do so.

So, here's my attempt to get my non-blogging but reading friends to leave comments: The first six to leave a comment on this post will receive some original work from me in the post - and it doesn't matter if you have a blog to pass the PIF on, but pass it on anyway and in other ways.

Thinking back about the three terms at the beginning - generosity, laidback calmness and curiosity - I reckon that the curiosity was indeed my own creation in my friend's list. And, in fact, thinking of the English saying of how curiosity kills the cat, I have to smile to myself and decide to be even more curious ;)

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Finally: website live

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Torben!
The website is fully (as in 99%) up and running and my brother will be glad to hear that in future he won't get irritated phone calls from me, unjustifiedly questioning his programming skills. - But who would have thought how much skype in the background messes with my internet!

Anyway: in time for the art sale for which I have to drop of the paintings tomorrow evening, www.ghelms.com is alive and kicking. It took me a time to upload the mixed media work and sketches but I hope I've picked some good ones.

Please have a look - and please, again, crit and comments are really apreciated - both in terms of functionality and artwork.

Here is a look of the first page:

Movement and stillness

Cloud above the hut

This post has been lingering with intent in my draft folder since mid-summer. Written in part as response to my visit to Germany in July, it was initially called Familiar Criticism. Yet, as part of last week's visit to Germany I thought it was time to post and to rename.

Much of my cloud studies were done in haste: noting down quickly the fast movement of clouds, sun and shade above the roofs opposite my flat. Because of its nearness and small window to the sky, the formations changed even more rapidly than the usual West Coast breeze makes them change in any case. Often, it took me three rapid sketches to get to a some of the patterning that I was after. Similarly, when painting outside in summer in the Highlands - the key was to get down quickly that what was going to change even more quickly: sun/shade and clouds - the impressions rather than the structures.

The challenge of working fast is one that I enjoyed very much. And it is here that the familiar criticism comes into play: it's the experiences, knowledge and along with them assumption of one's personality and character traits that are being applied to something new - in this case, my paintings. So, following a couple of days teasing of how fast (and in my family that also means: impatient) I was, it started to grate... the stories of me going through five paintings in kindergarten stopped being funny. Excessive sensibilities on my part? I'm not too sure.

And it was this tension between movement, speed and stillness that I got reminded of when walking last Friday through an autumnal countryside. In particular: how slow the sky was moving... there was a huge sky - views up to the horizon line and everywhere I looked movement was slow, almost difficult to figure out: clouds remained almost stationary, shade fell in the same spots for long times.

Of course, the clouds were moving, but much slower than what I got used to. Now: the big question is whether I would draw them any slower than I got used to? Well, I need to try that out the next time. Again, though it was an insight into the responsive way of doing art - so much of my sky studies resulted from the position to paint chosen, the materials chosen and the speed with which clouds tend to move across Glasgow.

Bubbling above the surface

Website blurb... help needed

... not often that I post twice a day, but tonight I finally made myself write through the two missing pages for the website: the intro page and the about me - can't imagine why I was procrastinating over these two ;).
In any case... I thought I may get some comments from you if I post them here. Please have a read and I'd gladly receive any comments... in particular if it sound too weird and laboured!
These will be really the only two pages with much text on them, the rest will be rather plain pages with picture with a bit of info each.

Many thanks!


Homepage


About me blurb - this is anything like a resume/cv/artist statement, but I felt I need to have something to put in there first :)

Thanks again!

'All good things...

... come in threes' sounds a bit too much like a literal translation from German into English. But never mind that, here's the third post while in Germany.


Am Abend (Windows to the Sky #22)
Pastel on Colorfix board, 35x25 cm

This is the view from my parents' backyard. And it is also the reason why we ended up in this remote village at all. My dad was based at this telecommunication transmitter from the early 1980s onwards and would drive past the derelict farmhouse to and from work everyday. During those years, my brother and I would listen to a lot of stories on how great life on a farm with a large garden, animals etc would be like.
A few years later, the move was announced, and without knowing where we'd go, I exclaimed: 'Moving's fine with me as long as it's anywhere but Bokel' - the remote village, surrounded by heathland, dark pinewoods and the subject of a couple of scary stories was a place that I didn't fancy at all.
It didn't help: our house in the outskirts of a small town was sold and the farmhouse bought, my brother and I changed schools and left friends, and it took a good wee while to settle. Eventually, imaginary scary stories were replaced with the day-to-day scarieness that is rural teenage life.

Here are a few prep sketches:


Neopastel II, marker pen on paper, 21x14cm


Neopastel II, marker pen on paper, 21x14cm