This is the final photo from the Kettle's Yard post, of course. What on earth made me start playing with it in this particular way, I've no idea. But I like the result. The best impulses often come from somewhere indefinable and in no way conscious.
Kettle's Yard is, paradoxically, both an intense experience of presence (this very moment's light, through a window or reflected in a mirror, on picture, sculpture, furniture or carpet placed with infinite skill and care) and a direct link to the past.
It's a link to my own past, arriving as a student in Cambridge in 1972, the last year that Jim and Helen Ede were still living there and welcoming students and the public to view their art collection in their own home (and did I appreciate the full wonder of this then? Alas, no. But I did visit). And it's a link to a farther off past, to the 1920s and 30s, when Jim Ede was a curator and friend of many of the artists whose work he began to acquire - being there brings them, and their time, close.
2 comments:
Somehow I missed your last KY post; I envy you having been there when it was really their home, but I think it still keeps much of the atmosphere.
That young woman has much presence, doesn't she?
Lucy, I honestly can't remember what it was like in any detail in 1972-3 - so long ago and my perceptions so different then. But it's nice think of having been there before they left.
And thank you for inspiring me to visit again!
Stillness is powerful because so rare, I think.
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