A word from Alice - studio stories from Alice Draws the Line

I enjoy the fact that the forecast is undemonstrative. 

This in itself makes me smile and it’s why I called this body of work ‘Moderate or Good’- you don’t get wildly enthusiastic fanfare titles in the Shipping Forecast, just a calm, nod of the head type of equivalent.

I live in a landlocked county, I don’t sail or spend time at sea… but I really enjoy listening to The Shipping Forecast on Radio 4. 

During the pandemic I remember listening and thinking- this sounds like a forecast for this month/ day / period of time- if I left out the wind directions and some of the weather.

I started playing about with the idea of how the words could be used independently of the sea. The result was this tea towel design.

I like to whittle it down so that it no longer has the wind directions in nor wind speeds. I love the coastal stations and sea areas but like them in isolation from the rest of the forecast. I like to refine the forecast so much that it could be about my day, or week, or how someone’s year is going, or relationship, or parenting - anything. 

I like to re-define it so that there is a hint of humour there amongst the familiar words and phrases. Reimagining it as my own prose or almost poetry. Words that could be used as measures for our emotional state rather than the oceans that surround us.

Sometimes something will catch my eye, and that’s it I’m completely distracted and focussed only on that. This happened this week. You may remember me saying that I have apple trees in my garden? 

In the autumn there were so many apples that I had to keep clearing them from the lawn, and so I rolled them (as I if was playing lawn bowls) onto the ‘will-be-veg-patch/flower-bed’.

In the cold snap this week the birds (and a squirrel) have been loving the apples that remain. They are nice and soft, and are probably a bit like stewed apple now!

We are once again opening our studios for the first weekend in December for the Brampton Bryan Christmas Open Studios!

This year there will be a trail of 5 studios plus the wonderful Aardvark Books open over that weekend. 

10am-4pm and the village postcode is SY70DH.

As I walked to the kettle I noticed how the kitchen light caught the flowers I had ready and waiting to take to my friend. 

The lights shining on the flowers cast such a striking, clear shadow onto the floor. Before I even managed to finish making my tea I’d found two A3 sketchbooks and put them on the floor where the shadow fell.