Here for Life: A Chapter & Stories

Four short stories and a novel chapter

Bridgton Reporter : Vol. 5, No. 27 May 15,1863

https://digitalmaine.com/bridgton_reporter/1202/thumbnail.jp

A critical survey of the materials and techniques of Charles Henry Sims RA (1873-1928) with special reference to egg tempera media and works of art on paper

This thesis collates and provides new knowledge about the working practices and dissemination of materials and techniques of a leading Edwardian painter. Charles Sims RA (1873-1928) represents a neglected body of British artists who were responding to and assimilating certain new tendencies within early modernism yet at the same time were conscious and respectful of traditional practices and training methods. The study makes consistent reference to the extensive studio archive at Northumbria University whose existence has provided a unique opportunity to map Sims’ own informal working notes and observations, against the retrospective account Picture Making (1934) by his son, and instrumental and technical analyses performed on some works. The significance of this specific period in relation to the development of new materials and techniques, and the role instruction manuals and teaching played in developing Sims' stylistic and at times thematic approaches to practice are also discussed. Of particular interest are those which focus on drawing, watercolour and egg tempera techniques, media which perfectly suited Sims' temperament and arguably featured in and formed his best works. The thesis also aims to compare Sims' working practices with those of his better known contemporaries such as Augustus John, Philip Wilson Steer, William Orpen (all from the Slade) as well as members of the Tempera Revival movement. by crossreferencing reports held in national and international collections with hitherto unseen material. As a consequence the research will have a much wider application beyond the field of conservation, and will illuminate early 20th century artistic inheritance and intent

The Practical Housewife

On loan from the Ballymore Estate, which is in Co. Wexford, lived in by Mary & Edward Donovan, Barrister at Law, the family also owned 24, Peter Street, Dublin in 1747. They had 21 children, sixteen lived and five died unbaptized. Perhaps, some of her daughters wrote down some of the recipes, as the family would have employed cooks down through the generations. See Donavan Manuscript http://arrow.dit.ie/gasbook

More&More: A Guide to a Harmonized System

More&More is an art and research project that explores the language and mechanics of global trade, container shipping, and the exchange of goods. It questions a mercantile structure that by necessity disallows the presence of ocean as a real space in order to flatten the world into a Pangaea of capital. The project is presented in two volumes, released in conjunction with an exhibition of Marina Zurkow’s work (with collaborators Sarah Rothberg, Surya Mattu, and others) at bitforms gallery in New York City in February 2016. This book, More&More (A Guide to the Harmonized System), is an experimental “brick” of a book that intervenes in the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (also known as the HS Code). The HS Code is the internationally accepted standard of product classification, which codifies the way nations conduct import/export. All legal trade products (and illegal ones that find loopholes) are shipped using this system. More&More (A Guide to the Harmonized System) lists the astonishing variety of items that are shipped around the world, and includes instructions for using the code to ship items (both legally and illegally). It also includes poetic, personal, and scholarly annotations by Stacy Alaimo, Heather Davis, Kathleen Forde, Dylan Gauthier, Elena Glasberg, Calliope Mathios, Steve Mentz, Astrida Neimanis, Chris Piuma, Elspeth Probyn, Sarah Rothberg, Phil Steinberg, Rita Wong, and Marina Zurkow. Its companion book, More&More (The Invisible Oceans), is a catalog of the exhibition, featuring many full-color images of the art on display (including video stills, bespoke bathing suits, and fungal sculptures), as well as an introduction by Marina Zurkow and a conversation between Zurkow and international curator Kathleen Forde

Things Hoped for, Things Unseen

Let me begin this critical introduction with what I hope is an explanation and not an unnecessary justification. Things Hoped For, Things Unseen is not a completed work of fiction yet--for the same reason that it is far longer than was required, it will become longer still. There are too many things that need to be made clearer. I do, however, believe that the story at present can stand on its own as a novella, even if that word is taken to imply less abou~ length than about the structural differences between short fiction and long fiction, the short story and the novel. As indicated, what remains to be done with the story is essentially elaboration and clarification of themes and images and meanings which already exist. And it is this same elaboration and clarification which I see as the substance of this critical introduction. The language of ends and means is in more subjective terms the language of what I meant and what I have so far said. At some point the discrepancy between the two, if it is significant enough, will preclude this piece of writing from standing on its own. That point--at which this introduction becomes simply what Oliver Wendell Holmes called "post-factor rationalization"- -occurs if at all when the suspension of disbelief ends; and there seems little reason not to apply such a literary concept to literary criticism. Meaning is no less present because it is not initially obvious, as literature has always recognized. But criticism (unlike literature) cannot create meaning where none existed before, and this principle is the touchstone, the definition of any critical suspension of disbelief. If you decide that you agree with this introduction, that you believe the story said what it meant, then these 181 pages, for lack of a better word, are a novella. I believe they are. But if not, if this introduction gives more weight to the writing than it can bear at this point, then Things Hoped For, Things Unseen is simply an unfinished, hopefully promising, work. And as Philip said, I can handle that.Englis

The Ramparts Sublime: A Novel

The prevailing concerns throughout this work of fiction are the questions of Who is family? and Where is home? It is a narrative which explores questions of identity in the context of modern American cultural mobility, wherein the boundaries of identity have been variously blurred, blended, and occupied by the forces of modernity and globalization. The narrative seeks to examine the usefulness of such boundaries within individual human relationships and, in particular, explores the potential for the blues as an art form to foster human relationships that are familial in nature, not in spite of its historical context but rather because of it. That the narrator himself is uncomfortably self-conscious of his own narration is representative of the novel's preoccupation with the problems of white discourse on race and cultural identity and the limits of language in general in attempts to explore and transcend such issues