Cee Neuner: This week my black and white challenge topic is Carvings, sculptures and Statues. I hope you have FUN with this challenge.
Contemporary Ceramics Centre, Great Russell Street, London
Garden Ornament on my porch
Tag: Bloomsbury
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Challenge coming to you via Debbie Smyth’s fantastic blog, Travel with Intent.
Self and the managing editor of Miami University Press, Amy Toland, somehow manage to meet up in London every May/June (with the exception of the lockdown years: 2020 and 2021).
Look at our BIG BIG smiles! And why shouldn’t we be smiling? It was June, and we were standing in front of the London Review Cakeshop in Bloomsbury! YAY for the memories!
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So happy whenever she can joing the PPAC Challenge.
This week, the theme is circles.
This is the display window of the London Review Bookshop in Bloomsbury:
And here’s a Raphael, from the blockbuster exhibit held at the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square. Even though self went bright and early, half an hour before opening time, the line just to get in was already humongous.
‘Twas a great show. Self was so lucky to have caught it, her last week in England.
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Shatter the windows. Tumble down the wall.
Sleep under a curtain in the swimming pool
and shelter in the old gymnasium.
After the talks, the shying and denial,
War has come again. War: the word’s a bomb.on everyone’s lips: The service men and women,
up in the capital for the campaign
might kip out in an open corridor.
War in the A.R.P. and letter-writing;
War for the volunteers and ground staff. Warin the cafeterias’ military operations:
in the gas shortage, the meat shortage — the rations
of everything but what the club’s now for:
War in the frantic games — the singing and dancing
from dusk till daybreak. War in the ‘R and R’.Leontia Flynn was the Seamus Heaney Poet in Residence at The Bloomsbury. Her poetry collection Profit and Loss (2011) was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize.
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Self just returned from a loooong trip overseas: Northern Ireland, London, and Oxford. It was her first overseas trip in three years.
In 2020, The Penn Club closed its doors forever, ending 100 years in its Bloomsbury location. Self mourned! This building was her home-away-from-home whenever she was in London. A haven. Just off Russell Square.
As soon as she got to London, in early May, she rushed to Bedford Place. She found that the building remained unchanged: the red door even seemed freshly painted. She walked right up to the door and peered through the glass: she saw the narrow lobby, the stairs leading to the upper floors.
She took a picture of the main entrance: who knows if it will still be there, the next time she’s in London:
Posting this for Clare’s Cosmos’ Share Your Desktop Challenge.
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Posting for the “I’m a Fan Of” Challenge hosted by Jez.
I love reading books and reading about books. Some of my favorite places in the whole world are bookstores. Here are a couple of photos from my most recent trip:
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There were a lot of circles and curves today: self went to the British Museum and dropped by the London Review Bookshop.
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When you see the shadows, you will also see the light.
Rick Ohnsman
More from P. A. Moed about Prompt # 198: Light and Shadow:
- This week, we’re exploring the interplay of light and shadow–at different times of the day, in different seasons, under natural light, in artificial light. Choose whatever conditions you like. It’s totally up to you. You may also want to process your images in black and white to highlight the light and shadows.
Self is traveling. Her “light and shadow” photos were all taken in Bloomsbury, where she stayed last week:
Self’s Room, The Bloomsbury Hotel 
The British Museum 
The Coral Room of The Bloomsbury Hotel -
Self is out and about in the streets of London. So many things to see! Posting for Travel with Intent’s One Word Sunday challenge.
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This is self’s post for Debbie Smyth’s Six Word Saturday challenge.
Self started going to London regularly in 2015. She visited every year and stayed at The Penn Club on Bedford Place, in Bloomsbury. The Penn Club became her home away from home, a place where she formed fast friendships. In 2020, the pandemic killed it. Most of its patrons were elderly. She hopes they didn’t get covid, but she suspects many of them did. After a hundred years in Bloomsbury, The Penn Club closed its doors, permanently.
Now, self is back in London. She couldn’t imagine staying anywhere else but in Bloomsbury. Another of her favorites, a French restaurant on Hanway Place, had closed. She spent days walking up and down Great Russell Street, dropping by the British Museum, seeing their special exhibits (Right now the special exhibit’s about Stonehenge), dropping by the London Review Bookshop.
An architectural firm used to be next door to the bookshop, but the large windows through which self had peeked many and many a time to watch people industriously working at giant drafting boards were boarded up. She was so relieved to see the Contemporary Ceramics gallery on Great Russell Street was still there! She wandered in. Several other people were there — most young. Wonder of wonders, they were buying!
Self wanted to buy a piece, too. But she is traveling, and her bag is already quite heavy. In fact, the airline slapped a HEAVY BAG sticker on it, when she checked in at Belfast on her flight to Heathrow. But if people are buying fine ceramics, the gallery will make it.
The ceramic artist whose works are on exhibit is Ruth King. Her works stay up until May 21. Here’s a quote from the flyer the gallery gave out:
- Ruth’s sculptural forms and vessels are fashioned from soft sheets of clay cut and assembled to wrap and define a space. The surface is then enriched by the passage of salt vapours in the firing reacting to each twist and turn of the form adding colour, texture and articulation.
Kanlaon 