BABE '13 and the Daily Twit

The morning of the trip dawned bright and clear, 'Hurrah! shouted' woodpeckers, when the cat woke her at 5 am. 'No school today!' Seizing the moment and the cat, she stuffed the furry bundle down inside the duvet. The bundle began coughing.
'Have it your way' she grunted, and posted the bundle onto the floor.
At 6 am she got up to feed the bundle with the most unappetising smelling pellets ever invented, and barred the door against him.

It was about noon by the time her jolly party arrived at Cam and Dursley station to catch the Bristol train. The teenage girls were in high spirits, and the mothers/token auntie figures were not doing badly, either. One of them was driving her shiny new black Land Rover. The other was wearing her new cardie.

...to cut a long story short, we went to Bristol Artists Books Event ( BABE) 2013 at the Arnolfini arts centre on Bristol's harbourside. It was a massive exhibition over several floors, with around 80 exhibitors. Some of the studios were exceedingly dark, like the one featured here, and as I was coming in from blinding sunlight, I had a great urge to adjust my non-existent sunglasses. This is the stall of the Daily Twit newspaper/zine, and I featured it because part of my homework is to take different shots in various scene modes. This is the 'indoor' mode, I think it's ok-ish, though there is a bit of motion blur because of the slow shutter speed. I also liked the ship with paper sails, and the elegant wife of the Twit, who was on his lunch break.

Over 80 stalls ... where to begin? I decided to take the tour led by the head of the artists' books collection at Winchester college of Art, as she had scouted around that morning and hand picked a variety of different artists to showcase. We visited around 10 stalls, and the ones that my mind keeps returning to are the 'books based on walks' by David Faithfull, who has a studio in Edinburgh and another on Mull, and exhibited a variety of walk-work specific to the islands of Jura and Mull. Since we can see the mountains of Mull from my mother's kitchen window, I was not surprised it resonated with me.

Another strange find was the exhibition by artist Imi Maufe based on her residency in 2011 on board Swan, a ship that was part of the Tall Ships flotilla. Part of her work involved jettisoning wooden postcards from the ship every day, photographing their dispatch, and monitoring those returned to Shetland Arts (of the 42 dispatched, 8 made it back, with the locations of finds recorded. One had ended up in North Norway, inside the arctic circle). Did I mention that she was on board this tiny ship with 8 teenagers, and only one other adult? The very least I could do was buy one of her books.

Too much to tell you about all our finds, but we all loved the visit; being out of the valleys and in the Big City, and getting our culture fix. I'm even thinking of going to a similar event in Brighton. Have also remembered that there'll be a Tall Ships festival at G.oucester docks (Britain's most inland port, linked to the Severn via the Gloucester and Sharpness canal) next month. Ahoy there, me hearties!

PS The 'Street' is indoors today.

PPS This blipping lark is really changing my life. If I hadn't needed a blip at the end of March, I wouldn't have gone to the Impress festival in Stroud, so I wouldn't have met Maxine Relton, nor gone to her next exhibition; therefore I never would have picked up a slip of paper that happened to mention BABE, which just happened to be coming up in a city near me...

PPPS Poem based on my day at BABE. Hate to say it, but the poetry is getting WORSE as the poetry challenge progresses.