An exhibition of poetry and visual art at Mare Street London.


 Angel Andrea - charcoal drawing on cartridge, A1, Frances-Ann Norton


It is wonderful to be working with instagram@alicemaryjelaska once again in the Pop-up-space Hackney, Mare St, London. for an exhibition of visual art and poetry in February 2024. The theme was Tea and Friendship. 

Angel Tea

 

The pictures on my phone divide into days, events, trips, workshops.

Important, in-focus ones are instagrammed, facebooked and tweeted.  

What about the in-betweeny photos?

The ones that are unchosen, abstract, blurred, accidental handbag shots.

These need further study, they are more than they first appear, less than rejects.

They represent moments of autoethnographic honesty, unheard dialogue,

fear, tears, tech-impatience or pure love.

So interesting and to be banked for another day, a future art-investigation-project.

When I seek to unravel and analyse these images, make meaning out of them…

I see the visitation of the Angel of Communities,

in the corners and on the edges of random photos.

Angels are there,

wherever teenagers and grans hang out with cups of tea and Jaffa cakes.

..............

Dreaming Girl, Inks on Cartridge A3

Get Real Tea

 

The day is spent with friends and many cups of tea

whilst we navigate the messy and complex rhizomatic threads

of love, caring, work and health, that is our fifty-something lives.

There was much catching up and dialogue, advice and ministering to each other.

It is incredibly enjoyable but a tiring talking day.

 

As for me I am in the middle breaking free of my recent work-self.

Identity bound tightly with a job is not working anymore.

I want to be more of my authentic, be my real-self in every aspect of my life.

To break my masks and preconceptions of who I thought I would be.

Let adrift judgments and ill-fitting societal ideas about ambition, career, ego.

Enhance thinking/speaking/being/doing with love and kindness, right judgement and honesty.

Just be better.

Better being, better friending, better walking with others, better spiritual life.

............

Hospital Corridor, Oil on board, A3

Hospital Tea

 

The afternoon is spent luxuriously in a plastic chair, at Mum’s bedside in hospital.

She is dozy, pale, frowzy as I look down at the bed, the cellular blanket.

Her legs just like mine.

Generationally stocky. Yorkshire legs.

 

Drip and cannula, blood pressure cuff and cups of sweet tea.

On the ward dry-warm air wafts as nurses move purposefully and chat quietly.

I tune out. Who knows if this is normal?

We close the door on our side room and quiet envelops us.

And I close my eyes to pray.

 

This space has become a meditation.

The centre of a flower with petals closed around us.

A cocoon of blissful rest,  a four poster feather bed with the curtains drawn.

We are wrapped in peace and love.

 

One, two, three hours go by in quick succession.

I with my book, reading poem after poem.

Time runs without diversion of pebble, rock or stone,

like water through a sieve.

 

The nurse tells us we may go.

We feel no tie and are able to quickly change into our out-door clothing.

We head out feeling like escaped convicts,

hoping our luck will not run out before we make our get away.

Home for a cuppa.

 

 .............

Magic Studio Day, inks A3

Magic Studio Tea

 

My art studio is in a repurposed Catholic boxing and social club

that me and my school friends came to as teenagers.

It looks out over the constant noise and motion of a sea of cars on the York Road.

I am a Maximalist artist. Meaning that I am a collector and hoarder,

a holder and a keeper of the (often broken and discarded) ephemera of the past.

The small studio is a riot of colour and pattern, objects and images.

 

One of my paintings - Saint Pio for Tea (an image in gouache and inks)

is a dreamtime day-hop-leaping over necessity and doldrums,

to reach the colour fields and a tangle of interconnected objects.

Russian dolls, ancient cutlery, a box of tea-knives.

Bone China lustreware teacups thin as ice, statues of the Sacred Heart.

A 3D picture of Saint Pio saying mass, raise the Host – lower the Host.

 

Every day in my magic studio is a day full of purpose, creativity and resonance.

I use the objects to constructs vignettes, and make stories.

I imagine conversations and standoffs between fizzing pieces, set like chess game.

The board is my work-table, ready for action, challenge and fulfilment.

I capture corners and moments in paintings and photographs.

Magic studio is my muse. 

..............

Pelaw North Junction, Wikicommons. 


Train Tea/Conference Tea

 

A day in train transit, from Leeds to Sunderland.

A white horse folded in a field, while a brown and black one look at it.

Tips of purple chalk smudge above vivid green showing late spring blossoms.

Crops emerging in verdant yellow-green patches contrast with brown corduroy soil.

Rank upon rank of pylons, and overhead wires stretching back like a double mirror.

My spriggy pyjamas would be a welcome instead of these support tights and neat black dress.

Onto which I have managed to spill avocado, mint tea and a blat of tomato so far this morning.

 

The light at Pelaw and Fellgate is so bright its strobing through the trees, epilepsy inducing.

On Platform three, just past the equinox the light catches a man on the bench,

head bowed, in black skull cap, intent on paperwork as am I.

Next to him a young woman in pineapple hairdo and jeggings

is draped over her boyfriend, their embrace intertwined and equally studious.

Commuters pass, each catching the fading afternoon sun

with a halo of bright-light around each of their heads.

 

The days to come this summer are stretched out like a picnic blanket.

For an academic, it is time for the pleasure and chore of conferences.

Of going away and staying in hotels, of meeting with friends and colleagues.

Teaching put to one side, students gone home, the conferences dominate until they are done.

Preparation is writing and corrections and rewrites until the talk is polished.

 

Name tags pinned, talks engaged with, workshops attended, and soon the conference over.

During closing remarks, the last cups of tea are sipped by the delegates,

the last sheaves of conference papers are stowed in bags and briefcases,

the attendants collect the table glasses and tea-service-crockery.

When the final lipstick stains are wiped off the last conference tea-cups,

Then I can rest.

Then its holiday time.

 



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