Goose or pitcher?

Goose mistaken for a pitcher.....or is it the other way round? From a story of an old woman suspected of stealing milk; her goose is really a pitcher, magically transformed!

Listening to Lancashire Tales: A Day in the Park

We had a wonderful time last Sunday. The Rawtenstall Annual Fair at The Whitaker provided the perfect backdrop for an opportunity to share some traditional tales of Lancashire with a wider audience and spread the word that our exhibition will be launching here on the 4th October.

The phrase 'traditional tales' always seems to suggest something old fashioned and cosy, yet these tales are anything but.

Marjan, Chris and Patricia did a great job of drumming up interest. I told many of the tales that have become the inspiration for the artists' work. Talking cats, spectral hounds with blazing eyes, giant cows and enchanted fishermen were all in evidence on this sunny afternoon in the park.

But these weren't the only Lancashire stories shared that day. I'm making a short film with Graham Kay for the exhibition that will hopefully include new Lancashire tales that people are telling now. I asked for people to come and see me in between sessions if they had stories of their own to share. Three people were kind enough to come forward. There were time slip stories and ghostly presences out on the fells.

If you have any personal strange stories or experiences based in Lancashire that you think might be what I'm looking for, please get in touch. My email address is: jah@storywheel.co.uk  I'd be more than happy to meet up (and pay for coffee!) and chat if the story seems suitable and you would be happy for me to record you.

Jacqueline Harris

The Jug and the Sixpence

Image inspired by the 'Jug and the Sixpence' with the Blackbirds in the cornfield, the silver sixpence and the Harebell blue jug to be filled with milk. 

Dun Cow

Here is the Dun Cow of Parlick (a beautiful hill in the Forest of Bowland), after she has kicked the bucket. (that bucket will feature too, later). The idea was to make a cow that works both ways, however, I find this way up more interesting. Though she has a large frame, she is actually quite thin and bony.

skriker

More of a wax relief than a sculpture, I have been trying to make a nightmarish dog, such as the one called the Skriker,  that features in a story from the Forest of Bowland. It was a portend of death and it drove the man who met him in the depth of night quite mad. An earlier clay dog turned out just a bit too friendly!

milk white doe

The story entitled "Lady Sybil and the Milk-white Doe" from some wild moorland near Burnley makes me all happy to be working on this project. I never knew that occasionally fallow deer can be white. Can there be anything more magical than this? no wonder it inspired folk tales!

Ignore then the green wax; the plan is to cast it in bronze and give it a milkwhite patina. Then see if I can make it leap inside the diorama! This is the 3rd of 3 small wax deer, and the only one I am happy with. It's something to do with the wax - which has kept it's soft appearance - the proportions and the very lightness of the pose.

Spectral Cat

I have been working on small sculptures to become part of a series of dioramas. This is the Spectral Cat, based on a story from Leyland, in which an enormous cat moves a church-under-construction at night to a different location (which is why there is a stone under his paw). I love playing with the scale in this small format and stretching the anatomy so that the creature becomes weird and fabulous.

Exploring days out in Lancashire

Well today was the first for our adventures out into the landscape as a group to look at key places in some of our Lancashire Tales.

Christopher, Marjan and I, met up to explore Longridge Fells and the surrounding areas mainly the areas featured in the 'Skriker'.

We started around Stoneyhurst and Kemple End traveling and stopping along the way to take pictures for inspiration. Marjan was particularly interested in the bridges over the rivers Hodder and the Loud.

 Stopping along the way to explore the colours, structures and landscape.

 Dead boggart maybe? on the Lower Loud Bridge 

St Marys Church yard, Chipping.

Parlick Fell.

Images and post by Julie Miles.

Dildrum

A small wax sculpture of Dildrum, about to leap up the chimney to inherit his new role as King of the Cats.

Talking Cat

Meet Talking Cat, my first little sculpture inspired by the title story of a new project based on Lancashire Folk Tales.....The King of the Cats. 

The story originates from Burnley, and

" tells of a man who was sitting quietly reading by the fireside one night when an unknown cat came down the chimney and called out: “Tell Dildrum, Doldrum’s dead!”, before disappearing back up the chimney. A few minutes later the man’s wife came into the room, followed by their own cat, and the astonished man told her what had just happened. Hearing this, their own cat exclaimed: “Is Doldrum dead?” Then it rushed up the chimney, and was seen no more. (This was taken to mean that Doldrum had been king of catland and Dildrum his heir.)

Lancashire legends (1873)

My plan is to make small viewing boxes around the characters that are the most intreaging , so that visitors can look through a small window to enter an imaginary place. I would like to explore ways of interacting with the characters; turning or sliding them, changing the light onto the scene or introducing props. But first I want to explore the characters, animals mostly; their form, pose and expressive potential.

So here is the unknown cat delivering his message: "Doldrum is dead!"