Owen Boyle, Lightkeeper - Saint Just-in-Penwith Parish Church

 “St. Just alias Justini, being the very West Poynte of Cornewayle, where St. Just ys no thing, but a Paroch Chyrch … divers sparkeled Howses…”. 

In the windows of the parish church in St.Just is the story of Owen Boyle who died at 18-1/2.  He was the lightkeeper at the Longships Lighthouse.

Some how this story affected Sarah and I a lot and I can’t get Owen out of my mind.

When I was playing with typography I like the idea of the n falling away from the Owe in the name Owen (like it was drowning).

 I got inspired by the way the waves were rendered in this part of the stain glass window in the church.

I made some sketches changing the shape into a circle.

I worked a bit on tracing paper to design a linoleum block.

Here is how it printed.

Here's a final piece for Owen using the wave design.  The text is the same text from the stain glasses windows in the parish church in St. Just-in-Penwith repeated several times.

I like this border too.  I haven't done anything with them yet but maybe I will.

These are beautiful yellow roses. 

I love this net of prayer - how perfect for a church by the sea.  I need to figure out how to do something with this the net.  Maybe it can become a coordinate if I make this into a collection in the future.

Here is a mixed media piece I made for Owen.

Penny’s Daffodils

"In the contemplation of Nature we are perpetually renewed, our sense of mystery and our imagination is kept alive, and rightly understood, it gives us the power to project into a plastic medium some universal or abstract vision of beauty." - Barbara Hepworth, 1936

Penny left us these beautiful daffodils that she bought from the honor system stand/kiosk/tiny structure that is on the way to St. Just.  I don’t know how daffodils are blooming this time of year.  I finally drew them while everyone was sleeping New Years morning.

 

Night at the Lost Gardens of Heligan

"All my early memories are of forms and shapes, and textures.  Moving through and over the West Riding landscape with my father in his car, the hills were sculptures; the roads defined the form.  Above all, there was the sensation of moving physically over the contours of fullnesses and concavities, through the hollows and over peaks - feeling, touching, seeing through mind and hand and eye.  This sensation has never left me.  I, the sculptor,  am the landscape.  I am form and I am the hollow, the thrust and the contour."

 

Brisons Veor- Sankofa Symbol

"The Sankofa represents the importance of learning from the past." 

- The National Museum of African American History and Culture

The Sankofa symbol is an important symbol to African-Americans.  It comes from the twi language and means to go back and fetch it.  Sankofa is often associated with the proverb, “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi," which translates as: "It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten."  It seems to me it also relates to the Cornish idea of reclaiming the Cornish language and identity.

I have worked with the Sankofa symbol before.  But after I started drawing the swallows I started thinking about it again.  Here are some sketches of mine playing with the Sankofa symbol 

I cleaned it up and used some tracing paper to make it symmetrical.

Then I carved in into a linoleum block.  This first one is relating to the bird form.

This 2nd one I want to take the traditional symbol and make it interlock showing the connecting between the past and the present.  My friend Sarah says this makes it look more Celtic.  It wasn't the intention but that's ok

I’m trying to use the local colors but in the prints they feel a bit 70s. 

This design feels a bit Pennsylvania Dutch/Amish to me.

I love how this piece turned out.