Myths Magic Mayhem

Want to go on a zombie walk? Learn about illustrating children’s books? Hear tales from around the world? Go to a comic book workshop? All this and more is on offer from Wednesday through to Sunday.

This week is the start of the first Cardiff Children's LiteratureFestival.

Information about the programme and how and where to buy tickets are available from the Festival website.

You can keep up with their activities by following @CDFKidsLitFest on Twitter. 

Sessions from experts encouraging adults to both read and write children's books run alongside appearances from famous authors & illustrators for children of all ages.There will also be plenty of FREE activities to get involved in including a Roald Dahl themed Treasure Hunt, craft sessions in the Cardiff Story and a hunt for Wally and Wenda.

Cardiff University is hosting some of the events, and in Cardiff UniversityLibrary Special Collections (SCOLAR) they are putting on an exhibition celebrating the history of children's literature, from the 17th century up to the 20th century.  They are looking at the chronological development of children's literature by highlighting several themes such as books for education and fantasy literature.

The Library has gathered items from SCOLAR's collections, including the Children's Literature Collection which can be seen in part in the glass cases at the entrance to SCOLAR, and from the modern children's literature collection held in the main part of the library.  Items from the modern collection are also being utilised in a display on level 1 of the library (ASSL), where readers can vote for their favourite children's novel.The exhibition is available online and at the Arts and Social Sciences Library, Colum Road  from March-May 2013

Cardiff Metropolitan University undergraduate students may access Cardiff University Collections through a reciprocal scheme. Postgraduates through SCONUL Access. See details here

 

 

 

 

secrets in books

old bookmarks left in secondhand volumes

Wayne Gooderham buys secondhand books as they are cheaper than new ones. They also give him an added pleasure. For many years he has been collecting the inscriptions he finds within these bargain books.  In fact he got so keen to collect more inscriptions that he now uses a network of friendly booksellers who alert him to particularly good ones when they come into their hands.Wayne  blogs with images of the inscriptions here

an Example

To Robert, on his crucial 30th birthday -

hoping for a safe and speedy emergence from adolescence

1/9/1955

Frank & Jackie

One of his network of bookseller helpers from Skoob Books  suggested to Wayne that he might be interested to see the collection of interesting things found left inside their second hand books. In their out of town warehouse Wayne was given permission to photograph some of Skoob Books' marvellously named 'Wall of Found' and you can read about them and see examples in another Guardian article by Wayne here

Cardiff University lunchtime workshops-wonderful old books

The Special Collections at Cardiff University (SCOLAR) are a treasure trove worth exploring and  . this year, SCOLAR is offering a pilot series of lunchtime workshops where you can do just that!
http://scolarcardiff.wordpress.com/
 SCOLAR holds much illustrated material  including literary, scientific, medical, and women’s periodicals and miscellanies, newspapers, children’s literature, art and architecture, novel, plays and poetry, travel literature, ballads and almanacs, and prints, posters and propaganda.
There is a  workshop on women’s studies Decmebeer 6th or 7th, with sessions on historical travel literature and World War One sources in the spring. The workshops are intended to raise awareness of the breadth of material available to support research in these areas, and as a general introduction to using Special Collections and Archives.

"The workshop on women’s history sources will be led by Assistant Archivist, Alison Harvey. Topics will include: biography; children’s literature; conduct/advice manuals; crime; diaries and autobiographies; education; fashion; health and medicine; international affairs; journals and magazines; literature and journalism; music; newspapers; politics, suffrage and the labour movement; travel; University history; witchcraft; and women’s societies". What a great menu!!

Workshops will be held in Special Collections and Archives, on the lower ground floor of the Arts and Social Studies Library, Corbett Road, Cardiff. The women’s history workshop is scheduled for 12-1pm on Thursday 6 December, and will be repeated at 1-2pm on Friday 7 December.

Workshops are open to all, but places are limited, so if you would like to attend either session, you will need to email HarveyAE@cf.ac.uk, stating your preferred time.

Every Picture tells a story: Girl Reading

Girl Reading by Katie Ward comprises seven linked stories set over a period of over 700 years, from 1333 to 2060. Each is an imagined story behind a painting, photo or sculpture. The subject is always  a  girl, or young woman reading. The pictures are not shown in the book so I have given you the links below.
The stories are also concerned with the changing position of women and the choices they have had during those hundreds of years

 

Here are the artworks

 

Simone Martini, Annunciation, 1333 (Uffizi) (painting available from Bridgeman Education in Cardiff Met Electronic Library)
Pieter Janssens Elinga, Woman Reading, 1668–70 (Alte Pinakotek, Munich)
Angelica Kauffman, Portrait of a Lady, circa 1775 (Tate Gallery-or if at cardiff Met use the link from the Cardiff Met Electronic Library)
Horatio Nelson King, Giulia Grisi, 1860s National Portrait Gallery
Julia Margaret Cameron, Portrait of a Sybil (Mary Emily (‘May’) Prinsep), 1870 National Portrait Gallery
Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell (née Stephen), circa 1916–17 (National Portrait Gallery)
Heinrich Vogeler, Martha Vogeler, circa 1905
Théodore Roussel, The Reading Girl, 1886-87 ((Tate Gallery-use the link from the Cardiff Met Electronic Library)
Women and Girls Reading Flickr Group
William Wetmore Story, The Libyan Sibyl, 1861–68 Smithsonian American Art Museum
Kimbei Kusakabe, Woman Writing with Brush, 1890s Old Photos of Japan
Correggio’s Mary Magdalene, which was lost during the Second World War, but was much emulated, for example: Cristofano Allori, Penitent Mary Magdalene, circa 1600 Pitti Palace

To celebrate the Olympic year of 2012, a temporary building a one-bedroom boat, the Roi des Belges, by David Kohn Architects in collaboration with Fiona Banner has been installed on the roof above the Queen Elizabeth Hall.The building was picked as the winner in an open competition run by Living Architecture and Artangel, in association with the Southbank Centre
The riverboat building was inspired by the riverboat, the Roi des Belges, captained by Joseph Conrad whilst in the Congo in 1890, a journey echoed in his most famous work Heart of Darkness.

There is a deck, a crow's nest, a cabinet of visual curios - and a bed which slides on rails to make the most of the view over London: a panorama that stretches from Big Ben to St Paul's cathedral. An octagonal library with a curated selection of books and with twin desks looking out across the river enables visitors to use the Room as a studio space.

A range of writers, musicians and artists have been invited to stay in A Room for London, using their time there to create new works or performances. During the year the room  will transmit a programme of writing, performance and music.

Podcasts of the music, text and artworks are available to view from here
Fiona Banner’s work for the Room was  a film of a one-off performance of Orson Welles' unmade film Heart of Darkness The screenplay was performed in its entirety on board the Roi des Belges by the actor Brian Cox and is available on the website here until June 30^th

Maurice Sendak

"Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche, died on Tuesday". This statement opens a very full article about Sendak  and his work  published in the New York Times . It goes on "Roundly praised, intermittently censored and occasionally eaten, Mr. Sendak’s books were essential ingredients of childhood for the generation born after 1960 or thereabouts, and in turn for their children. He was known in particular for more than a dozen picture books he wrote and illustrated himself, most famously “Where the Wild Things Are,” which was simultaneously genre-breaking and career-making when it was published by Harper & Row in 1963".

“Dear Mr. Sendak,” read a letter to Sendak  from an 8-year-old boy. “How much does it cost to get to where the wild things are? If it is not expensive, my sister and I would like to spend the summer there.”

Sendak’s work was the subject of critical studies and major exhibitions; in the second half of his career, he was also renowned as a designer of theatrical sets. He also illustrated other authors, including Hans Christian Andersen, Leo Tolstoy, Herman Melville, William Blake and Isaac Bashevis Singer.

His last story was about an orphaned pig who had never had a birthday party.

Open Educational Resources at UAL and MIT

There are many free resources on the Internet, we know this;  the ones known as  Open  Educational Resources: (OER's) comprise educational material that can be freely used by anyone without any copyright restrictions. An OER can be anything from a streamed video like this one showing the sand casting process to this link to an entire course on Anthropology

The sandcasting video, is from Process Arts, managed by Chris Follows at University of the Arts London (UAL)  c.follows@arts.ac.uk

Process Arts  focuses on "making" in art and design . This  site shows  insights into the acts of making and encourages users to share knowledge and experience online. You can  go there to explore  traditional and contemporary creative technical processes , and see work and the processes involved in its making online through  video, text, image and sound .

sample stills sequence

here are the most viewed items from Process Arts. Look to the right of the page for a full list of Resources

Interesting courses including bibliographies, online texts and images etc  are available from the MIT site where the Anthropology course linked above was taken from. Courses include many other subject areas of interest such as media studies, history, literature, music and theatre arts, women's and gender studies. MIT is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose mission  is "to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century".

The Arts Desk

Anish Kapoor’s Leviathan, a commission for the Monumenta series at the Paris Grand Palais

Here's a great newletter to keep you up with a wide range of items on what's new and good in the media and the arts . Here you will find theatre and film reviews, features on matters of interest such as  'Is Classical music relevant?'or a list of this year's Festivals , and CD, DVD and book reviews and interviews with people from the arts and a comprehensive listing of whats on in cinemas, theatres, galleries and concert halls. Sign up and get a weekly round up of all this in your inbox. As well as seeing  the very latest in the arts you can also view the archives of the newsletter. To subscribe look for the box on the right hand side of this page halfway down

For those who are interested in Russian art and history

The Society for Co-operation in Russian and Soviet Studies (SCRSS) promotes knowledge of the culture, language and history of Russia and the former Soviet Union through its activities and unique library and archive. Their Centre is in London on the Brixton Road .The Library  is a collection of over 35,000 books, journals and pamphlets in English and Russian relating to Russia and the former Soviet Union  covering  its literature, theatre, music, dance, history, art and architecture. There is also a photo library of  60,000 photographs, slides and realia covering all aspects of social and cultural life in Russia and the former Soviet Union from pre-1917 to the present, of interest to picture researchers, set dressers, designers and drama students.
Go to their website to read the fascnating history of the Centre and how to visit-go perhaps on April 14th when they will have a special exhibition and celebration of Yuri Gagarin's flight into space. First time visitors must make an appointment and there are charges for using the library, events (they screen films from the 30's-70's) cost £5

For those who like to read-Granta magazine online

 Since 1979 Granta has published many of the world’s finest writers tackling some of the world’s most important subjects, from intimate human experiences to the large public and political events that have shaped our lives. Its contributors have included Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Saul Bellow, Peter Carey, Raymond Carver, Angela Carter, Bruce Chatwin, James Fenton, Richard Ford, Martha Gellhorn, Nadine Gordimer, Milan Kundera, Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jayne Anne Phillips, Salman Rushdie, George Steiner, Graham Swift, Paul Theroux, Edmund White, Jeanette Winterson and Tobias Wolff.

Every issue since 1979 is still in print and can be bought from the online shop.
Granta.com publishes a wealth of material that you won’t find in the print magazine – including video interviews, brand-new short stories and essays, audio recordings from our events and photography slideshows. You can sign up to their monthly newsletter – or follow them on Twitter or Facebook.