We’re having a quiet homey weekend. In fact, the second one in a row. Paul is taking Monday and Tuesday off, so we have 4 days actually. We were all enthused to go somewhere out of town for that time but the weather forecast just wasn’t that great and we just decided to have a “staycation”.

We have come around to the realization that 2 years is going to be plenty of time to see the highlights and small spots of England, and we don’t have to be under pressure to go someplace significant every weekend or when Paul takes days off. I haven’t even been here two months and already feel that I have satiated my initial desires for sightseeing. We’ve got plenty of time to explore Europe as well.

A couple weeks ago we went into London for the first time during my stay here. First thing I had to do was go and say “hello” again to Whistlejacket in the National Gallery. I look at him every day in the poster I have on the wall in my studio at home, yet I learned once again there is just no comparison to seeing this life-sized painting in person. All printed reproductions fall completely flat. The lifelike shadings and highlights in the horse’s coat are just tremendous. Plus I was totally delighted to find that they had these sweet Whistlejacket bookmarks in the museum shop:

If anyone wants one of these, I’d be happy to pick them up next time I’m in the museum! (I confess I love museum shops almost more than I love the museums!)

We are learning that our local area is pretty great for a staycation. Lots of interesting places to check out within an hour’s drive or less. I have been amazed this past month at the number of drop-dead gorgeous small English towns that are just a few miles from here. Most of them are on the River Thames, which makes a large loop around Maidenhead. Here’s a page from the Thames Path website with great photos of these towns near us, like Henley and Marlow. Marlow is where our new tennis club is, on the grounds of an old Abbey right next to the river!

We just got a membership to the National Trust, so we’ll get free admission to all the properties and parks etc. that they manage. Yesterday I toured an estate house near Reading while Paul was at a tennis match over there. It is called Basildon Park.

It was not a huge house (compared to a massive one like Castle Howard) but a lovely example of a stately home; one that almost didn’t get rescued from decay and demolition! Its main claim to fame now is that they filmed many scenes in the most recent movie made of Pride and Prejudice, the one in 2004 starring Keira Knightly. So a lot of movie fans are visiting it. Must go see that movie, I guess!

Today on day 2 of the staycation, Paul and I and the Boyz went over to Cliveden, which is right next to Maidenhead on a cliff overlooking the Thames. It used to be the home of the USA’s Astor family. It is now used as an ultra-posh hotel so we couldn’t see much of the inside. But you can walk all over the estate with the dogs, right down to the riverbank. There were lovely woods and friendly horses in the pasture.

(I am teaching Kanab not to bark at horses, and today he did pretty well. There are 3 horses in the field nearest our house where we walk almost daily. Each day we work on not barking at them. By the way, one of them is a classic heavy English Cob, and I am now all stoked to do a sculpture of a horse like that big boy, in all his Roman-nosed roundness!)

I’m determined to get to as many places on the National Trust list as I can while here! I don’t think I will get tired of seeing the grounds and settings of these big estate houses. They often occupy the best lands in a given area with great vistas. At Basildon I was practically dying to sit down and do an oil painting right on the spot of the view from their back lawn!! It looked just like a Constable landscape. I wish I could take an oil painting course. In fact I even identified a local studio who offers two-day beginner workshops where you get introduced to techniques and how to go about building a painting. Just what I need. But… I keep telling myself I have so much else I want to accomplish artistically while here—none of which I have made much of a start on, there being so many other fun things to do at the moment—that I can NOT allow myself another artistic thing like landscape painting. Gaaaah!

Tomorrow we’ve booked tickets to the hottest new show in the West End, called War Horse. Everyone is raving about it. It takes place in World War I and the life size horses are played by these amazing sculptural puppets. I can’t wait to go. Check out this YouTube video clip. Horse lovers, you will be enthralled by these sculpture horses—I just can’t call them merely puppets. It gives me the shivers and I haven’t even gotten to the play yet.

For those of you wondering how it’s going with my earthenware Caprice, here is a photo of what he looks like now:

He is sporting a new mane and tail. Now I just have to clean up all the seams etc. When I let it dry out it should be fairly portable by car to a kiln. It will be fascinating to see if it survives firing into bisque. I picked up two gallons of earthenware slip a few weeks ago. I am ready to try pouring a mold all by myself after I’ve done all I can with this piece.

Two weeks ago I drove over to the Welsh borders to visit Donna Chaney, who as most of you know has been keeping all my sculptures’ molds for ceramics production. And making china horses out of them for me. Donna lives on this drop-dead gorgeous farm up on a hill with panoramic views of the valley below from all her studio windows. I forgot to take photos of the day because it was kind of rushed. I have promised to go back and demonstrate some china painting techniques for her and her staff, so I will be sure to take photos when I go next, probably in late August.

Annnnd, (drumroll please…) Here are my ceramics molds, now in the garage of our house here in Maidenhead:

Those of you who know me well, know that this is a pretty big-deal moment. I’ve been agonizing for several years now about those molds and how to get them home to the USA. Now, I know they will go home in the shipping crate with our personal goods in 2011—paid for by Paul’s company! !

Our one-car garage is too narrow for our car to fit in—you can’t open the doors!—and we use it for a storage space instead. Perfect for all this plaster! This isn’t even ALL the molds. At Donna’s we were busy pouring molds and talking and then realized we were running out of time so we had to quickly load the car up. When I got home and unloaded and really looked at what I had, I realized that all the Boreas molds aren’t there—the largest and most massive sets! And I have two good complete sets of those. Plus the Halfling Boreas and the Boreas head molds got left, too.

The Caprice horse sculpture has 9 separate molds. That set is the group closest to the camera in the center of the photo. (The 2 big molds to the right after the group of smaller ones are Streetwise molds.) There are separate little square multi-part plaster molds for the head, each ear, all 4 legs, the main body, and the tail. Some molds have just 2 parts and some have several. Caprice’s body has 4 mold pieces you pull away from the cast greenware part. When I get around to buying my first bucket of slip and next pour a horse, I’ll show you one mold in “exploded” view.

It takes about 2 1/2 hours one way to drive to Donna’s. I arrived about 10:30 am and I had to leave by about 2pm. So I got a whirlwind lesson in making and pouring earthenware slip in one of my mold sets. We chose to use the Caprice set, because it is almost played out (the mold now has a lot of pinhole air bubbles which show up as little pimples in the cast and have to be smoothed out). That is a perfect one to practice on because I won’t be wasting good casts and wearing down a good mold (while I screw up)! Donna’s mold maker and caster, Mark, also was kind enough to make me a “damp box” in a big flat storage bin I brought. A damp box is simply a box with a couple inches of mold plaster poured in the bottom. You use this for storage of your greenware parts and the water-infused plaster will keep them from drying out.

Here are all 9 pieces of an earthenware Caprice, in the damp box:

They’ve been sitting in there for 2 weeks. I’ve been too chicken to take the plunge and start to stick the pieces together. Especially because when I took the main body out of its mold, I gripped it a tiny bit too tightly and dented it!! (I forgot it would be delicate being that large and hollow.) Fortunately I was able to re-shape it right away, but how the heck am I going to hold onto it AND stick everything on, YIKES!

Well today I decided it was time to take the bull by the horns and try to assemble the beast. I set up my little work station on the coffee table in the living room, so that I could also watch the Wimbledon tennis matches on the telly (tee hee). It is a little too close to inquisitive dog-nose level but OK for now. I have to organize my work space out in the dining room eventually.

And Alert The Media: Karen Can Assemble Greenware! !
Here is my little work area (plus KitKat providing encouragement) and ONE LEG ON:

I know many of you follow the work of our USA ceramic horse makers like Joan Berkwitz and Lesli Kathman and Lynn Fraley, so you are familiar with how for the most part (until recently anyway) their goal has been to cast horses that come out of one mold as a complete horse. Which is an amazing thing, truly. My horses were all cast in the UK tradition of bone china where they just reduce the sculpture down to pieces and mold each piece separately, knowing that the casting craftsperson will just have to stick all the pieces together. This process does give the sculptor far more liberty to sculpt as they will. Because if you’re trying to have a horse come out all in one piece, that means you generally can’t have turned heads or anything tricky like manes and tails going every which way. If you think about it, you’ll notice that many china horses are just moving straight, for the same reason. Not so with this method, you can just about sculpt anything and it comes down to how many pieces one is willing to stick together! (And up till now I was paying someone else to do all this work, so I could sculpt with abandon, ha ha. Well the mudhen has come home to ROOST, Karen!)

But I digress. To stick all these pieces together, I have to first open up the leg holes in the main body so that the hollow parts of each leg will open into the body:

I am relieved to discover that the main body has firmed up a lot since the day I pulled it from the mold when it was so soft. It is still malleable but stiff enough to hold without too much worry about collapsing! Now I paint some slip “glue” onto a limb (it’s the same earthenware clay we cast with, just made into a more paste-like consistency), and stick that piece onto the horse.

I realize that this is a real testament to the high skill of the mold-maker (in this case it was Mark Farmer) because these pieces match up almost perfectly!! The slip-glue fills in the gaps and because greenware at this stage is still damp it is flexible, and it is SO easy to manipulate and sculpt. I used the same tools I like to use while sculpting, paintbrushes and a few flat sculpting tools, to smooth and sculpt the area around the join. There will be a lot of work later, when the horse is assembled, in smoothing out all the mold lines and resculpting in details lost in handling or where the pieces come together.

Here is Caprice with 4 legs on:

I am amazed at how accurately the legs went on. It just took a little repositioning to get them straight and true to the original sculpture. Woo hoo!

At this point I get a little bold and decide to rush head-first into my first Clay Body Customizing! (That is the name our pioneer in all this, Joanie Berkwitz, coined: any cast ceramic that has been altered from the original casting out of the molds.) I straightened out Caprice’s left ear!!

My camera decided to focus on the couch rather than the horse head, but you get the idea. Normally that left ear is turned sideways and down. Wheee!

Finally, here is the Caprice all assembled, except for the tail:

I decided to stop here and take a BIG breather. Because now I am determined to resculpt the tail and attach it differently. I need to carefully think through how I want do that. Then I still have to clean up the whole piece and remove all the mold lines etc. But to get to this place only took about 45 minutes, I am amazed. And it is FUN! Very appealing to the sculptor in me because working with the cast parts feels so familiar to sculpting technique.

Unless I make a clumsy mistake before I finish it (like, trip over a dog with it in my hands — a classic and typical Karen Moment) so far I feel confident that even this one will be worth firing to bisque! And that would be totally totally sweet, because Caprice was my first sculpture ever to be produced in ceramic… it would be so fitting that the first one I create in ceramic with my own two hands should be a Caprice. Especially as the molds are so nearly at the end of their life.

This is Wimbledon tennis season, the holy grail for any tennis fan. For years we’d been dreaming about making a trip to England to see it. We arrived here too late to get in the lottery for tickets (back in December), so the only way were were going to do it now was to join the famous “Queue” and do Wimbledon on the cheap!

We left the house at 5am, in order to be first in line at one of the few close-in parking lots. We looked into taking the train but it was actually cheaper to drive, even at the price of 25 pounds for the car park. At about 6:30 am we arrived at our place in The Queue, the immense line for grounds tickets each day:

We were given a card with a number that showed our place in line. We had numbers 2024 and 2025. That meant there were over 2,000 people already in line! Hundreds of people camp overnight there because each day there are only several hundred tickets made available for seats in the actual stadium courts (where all the big names play). The basic Grounds ticket just got us onto the grounds and the lesser courts. Sometimes people wait all morning in this line and still don’t get in!! So we were glad we got there really early just to be sure.

Still in the line, but about 3 1/2 hours later:

We are almost there!! The turnstiles are just beyond the end of the long roof in the center of the photo.

When we got in to the Wimbledon grounds, we had to wait yet another half hour or so, before they opened access to all the tennis courts. At that time, we fast-walked over (nobody was allowed to run, it was all very orderly and civilised!) to Court 3, which was the best court that had unreserved seats you didn’t have to buy a ticket for:

We got really good seats, about 4 rows up from the court. This was only the 2nd day of the 2-week Wimbledon tournament, and the grass on all the courts was pretty well untouched so far and looked just lovely! (We told ourselves we have to find a tennis club that has grass courts, just to see what it is like to play on them.) We had to wait about another hour for the play to begin at 12 noon. We saw the #4 women’s seed and a few men’s matches (including Lleyton Hewitt and Tommy Haas) here.

After a couple hours of that, we got up and wandered around. There were 18 tennis courts and all had matches going on. We watched some men’s doubles, and then made our way up to the top of the hill above the center, called “Murray Mount” this year:

They name this hill with its picnic lawn after whichever British player is the new Great White Hope for winning Wimbledon. A Brit hasn’t won it since the 1930s or something like that. Previously it was called Henman Hill (for Tim Henman), and now it is named after Andy Murray, who actually has a pretty decent chance to win it this year. Grounds ticket holders sit there and watch the matches going on in Centre Court on the big screen TV.

At the top of Murray Mount, you could see the skyline of London, oooh aaah!

I have not yet been in to London, can you believe it?? We are having such fun learning our own local area out here in the “country” (as a Londoner we met in the stands called it) that we haven’t got round to London’s vast offerings. Plus we’re kind of saving things like the museums to do this winter when the weather outside is bad!

Late in the day, they have this program where anyone holding a ticket to one of the stadium courts can turn their tickets in as they leave for the day. The staff then turns them around and re-tickets those seats to sell to grounds ticket people who are willing to wait in yet another line, for just 5 pounds. We were winding down from interesting matches to watch at about 4 pm, so we decided what the heck let’s go stand in the line.

Andy Murray was playing his first match so the Mount was packed with people and Centre Court was also packed. They told us the hope of getting a ticket was slim because so many locals would want to see Andy. His matches will be THE hot ticket for the whole time as long he lasts. But wonder of wonders, at about 5:30 the line started to move and WE GOT CENTRE COURT TICKETS!! And even more fortunately, the Andy match was only in the 2nd set because he was playing a young American who was actually making him work! We ran down, and then we could NOT believe the amazing seats we were given. They were only about 10 rows up from the court, on the side!! Heaven! Two seats in that area for the whole day would have been hundreds of pounds at least.

Here’s a photo of the brand new close-able roof of Centre Court. The day was stunning and not a cloud in the sky however. Weather-wise, it was like we were back in Boulder!

Here you can see how close our seats were to the court:

It was just amazing to be there. The acoustics must have been super because when everyone quieted down during play, you could hear the players talk—it was that intimate. John MacEnroe was doing the play commenting for the BBC in the press box. (When we got home we watched video highlights of the match to see if we got on camera, but we didn’t.) 😦

Below, a very giddy Paul:

This was a dream come true for him since he first picked up a racquet. Even moreso than I, who never played tennis until I met Paul—and then I caught the tennis bug from him. (Before then, I couldn’t imagine anything more stupendously boring than watching tennis. I think you do have to play it to really appreciate it.)

In all we got to be in Centre Court about an hour and a half I think. We were completely thrilled! And the guys sitting next to us (in their business suits—it was quite the formal crowd) must have seen how elated we were—like little kids—because on the way out one of them gave me his official program, a big glossy book you have to pay for. We left feeling like our day was more than we could have ever wished for!

My thanks to all my “horsey” friends for putting up with this posting—our family and tennis friends will understand at least!!

Today marks the beginning of my 3rd week of life in the UK. I kept meaning to keep up with this blog better but wow the time passed quickly and then the longer it went the harder it would be to write about everything and I ended up putting it off each day!! But I’m writing this as much for a record I can come back to and read when I’m age 90 as for any other reason, therefore write I must!

In sum, I LOVE being here. Paul and I agree this was just the change we needed, at the right time in our lives. And we managed to pull it off without too many glitches overall. The house is perfect and comfortable, and the neighborhood is great.

Even more wonderful, I’ve learned that England is insanely great if you are a dog owner!! Unlike Boulder, who has an oppressive must-be-on-leash-or-big-fine law, there is no such thing here. And I checked all the local and regional municipal websites about it just to be sure because I couldn’t believe it. It seems that common sense and common courtesy regarding your dogs is the rule. There are also laws that landowners must allow public footpaths on their property, and because of that, fabulous walks with your dogs are everywhere. Here is our closest footpath:

This farm is less than a quarter mile from our “housing estate”, and it leads to a public bridle path (complete with actual horses and riders, OMG!!), with this genuine Tudor-era house on the property:

It is just heaven to walk or go running with the Boyz here. We are out there every day. There is even a stream with a pool where KitKat can do his swimming, water-dog that he is!

Across the street from our front door is this little round park. It must be the “Green” from our street address “Heynes Green”, which rings this park:

This photo is looking back at our house across the park (2nd roof from left). It has a playground for kids but is pretty much just grass, which is also super for the dogs to run around in. We discovered that we have English Hedgehogs! Kanab has spotted two of them in the backyard and in this park in the evenings. They just roll up in a ball and hope we go away! (We do.)

The village where we live has a lot of housing that I’m guessing has probably all been built in the last 30 years, so it’s not any sort of “twee” classic picturesque English village. It’s pretty modern and full of families with kids walking to the local schools in the morning. But… the housing styles still look clearly Brit. Which is nice because it constantly reminds me I’m in a new country. Here and there in town also are much older homes and cottages which the newer stuff must have grown up around over the years. We have a little shopping centre within 10 minutes walk, with a little grocery, news shop, hardware, and two restaurants. Here is one typical street we walk on to get to the shopping centre where I buy the newspaper every day:

And here is our “local”, the closest pub to our house:

Maidenhead is pretty modern too, with a busy High Street shopping district. Readers of this blog will know how Significant it is that I have located the McDonald’s on the High Street:

Maidenhead is right on the Thames River, and has a gorgeous river frontage, including a busy lock. We celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary on June 4th at a restaurant on the river, thrilled beyond belief that we are here!

I am happy to report, that driving was not the Big Freak-Out I thought it was going to be. After one practice session with Paul one evening, I was driving on my own. The very worst thing is the narrow town streets, no shoulder at all, with parked cars on them. So you have to swerve into oncoming traffic’s lane. And those on the side who have to swerve, don’t seem to yield to you if you’re coming in the un-blocked lane! Crazy!! That is unnerving for a timid driver, especially since the #1 problem in learning the new car is that I have trouble gauging how far the left side of the car is from things over there. I’m sure it was like that when learning to drive in the US 30 years ago… but I don’t remember it! Overall I feel pretty confident about driving. I’ve driven solo quite a few places already including the 2 1/2 hour drive one-way, to Donna Chaney’s farm and studio over in Herefordshire on the Welsh border. I did that yesterday. More on that—and my start down the ceramics slip-casting path—in an upcoming post!

We’ve been putting our weekends to good tourist-use already. We started with a few cathedral towns: Canterbury and Winchester. We have “bagged” quite a few other UK cathedrals on our previous trips here, but these were two Musts on the list for sure. I love the story of St Thomas Becket and how great to finally see “his” cathedral. I think Winchester won the architecture beauty contest of the two. Here are two interior shots, one of each, Canterbury first and then Winchester:

I am visually enthralled over and over with arches and ceilings in these massive ancient cathedrals all over the UK and Europe, doesn’t matter the style or era, I can’t get enough of the seeing of them. I keep taking photos like this, and always end up being disappointed that they can’t show the compelling shape and feel of the spaces created, as seen in person.

On the day we went to Canterbury we also drove a little further north to two little seaside towns on the Thames Estuary, so I got a little peak at the water:

I’m dying to see the coastlines and the beaches here. We have booked a week in a cottage on the coast of Cornwall (at the very tip, near Land’s End) in mid-August. They say there are beaches there where you can play with your dogs. I can’t wait to see if I can get them to swim in the ocean. They’ll be in for a surprise when they try to drink the water, at least!

We drove north of London last weekend, to search out a church where one of my ancestors on my Mother’s side of the family was once the Rector in the 1600’s. It is called St Mary of the Virgin, in Walkern, Hertfordshire. The Gorsuch family tree traces back to here. I put my photos of this place on a webpage for my family. But here it is if you want to look: St Mary Walkern.

After Walkern we drove over to Cambridge and walked all around there on a busy Saturday. None of the Colleges were open to visitors I think because the term was over for the summer and celebrations etc. were being prepared. There were a number of art and farmer’s markets in town and a fair called “Gown and Country”.

We have been so lucky so far with the weather. We’ve had sunny days all 3 weekends, and I’ve been able to get out and explore my local area by bike and on foot during the week. This weekend I think we’ll take the train into London. This year is the 500th anniversary of King Henry VIII’s accession to the throne, and many places associated with his reign have special events and exhibits going on all summer. Tomorrow they are staging a Tudor-era boat flotilla/pageant down the Thames from the Tower to Hampton Court Palace which would be fun to see. And the Tate Modern just opened a new exhibition on the Futurism Movement of the early 1900’s which is on my list of Must Do.

It is finally starting to sink in, reinforced by reading the London Times every day, that we are right next to such world-class culture and I mean to see and do EVERYTHING! Trying to decipher their politics and government is a serious work in progress… but apparently we have arrived in very interesting times politically!

This coming week the Wimbledon tennis tournament begins, something we’ve always wanted to go see. They have a tickets lottery every March which we missed, but you can stand in line every day for grounds tickets, so we’ll be trying that this week IF Paul can get a day off from work! (Better to do this on a weekday than a weekend.)

One thing I decided not to do, was attend the Royal Ascot races. That’s happening this week and we’re only about 20 minutes away. I could ride my bike there! But I’m not all that interested in horse racing… and I just couldn’t work out whether everyone really does have to wear dresses and a silly hat, or only those socialites in the posh stands! Anyway that’s one Brit tradition I guess I’ll pass on.

Well I’m sure there’s more I could write about but this is long enough for now!

Yes, we made it!!! Here we are seeing our new house for the first time. I’ve now been in the UK for just over 24 hours. Everything about our flight went smooth as glass. I sure wish the Boyz could talk because I’d like to know what it was like for them traveling as cargo. They came out of customs happy and perky with no adverse effects from the travel as far as I can tell. I was able to see their kennels load while waiting to board in the terminal:

I felt like crying seeing them go up the ramp like that—how I wished to be able to talk to my dogs to tell them what was going to happen and to not be afraid. But now they have this lovely yard to hang out in, and today we are enjoying sunny warm weather too.

Paul looks really really good (how glad I am to be reunited with him at last!) and I’m happy to say that he thinks his horrific work life will be getting better soon. The house is wonderful. It is smaller than I visualized but very well laid out and I actually like the compactness of it. For two people our house in Boulder is really kind of large! The immediate neighborhood is super quiet and very green! There are large mature trees at the back of our yard which completely screen us from the yards of the houses back there.

The three of us are pretty jetlagged. We all woke up at midnight last night and I wasn’t able to get back to sleep until the sun came up of course! I’m used to this feeling since we’ve traveled overseas a lot and it’ll take me about 3 nights to get back to normal. The thing I dislike the most is the way I feel “stupid”—my brain just doesn’t want to work!!

I envy the Boyz’ ability to just fall back to sleep even when they woke up last night with me; they’ve been sleeping a lot this morning as I unpack all the things I sent over in the crate a month ago. We took a little walk to check out the pretty park in front of the house and some of the neighborhood streets. The area looks delightfully British—just the housing styles alone let me know we’re not in “Kansas” any more. I am glad; I really wanted to feel like I had moved to a foreign place, not just another place that looked like USA suburbia! Because I’m still in “stupid” mode I need to be extra careful crossing the streets—the traffic is coming from the wrong directions, gaaack!!

Well, I need to get back to unpacking, and then go take a nap!