For anyone interested in synchronicity this was an amazing day… Strange but true: ” A childhood mantra of the shipping news – and all is safe and well”.
First a private look and a secret uncovered at Dylan Thomas birth house, where the ugly and the lovely shaped his childhood view, then onto the opening of Civic 2014 and my Swansea peeps exhibition, at the Mission Gallery, where a few people shared their views with me:
The first saw Swansea as a divided City, the second enjoyed a colourful view of people passing by – dressed like a Dragon, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, and a man on a one wheel bike. These are characters that frequently pass-by her window on the way to the Mumbles shore. Finally ‘Angela’ the artist who will occupy the gallery space after me came to say hello; and what seemed so odd at the time was later to reveal a bit of magic in that day:
Her next art work was to be a great big Knitted piece, and she had just finished reading her last knitted piece in the voice of the shipping forecast:
‘ Lands End to St. David’s Head… 3 to 4…fair or good…becoming variable…’ I doubt she used those words, but certainly the tone – Strange but true!
Stranger still that one hour later I was in a North Gower house to do my first Swansea peep consultation. My subject was Kate and her Study window: I asked the significance of the map on the window. It was a map of the shipping forecast, and her father had drawn it, he recently passed away and this was her treasured item – As children when they were all just about to sit down for tea, the shipping forecast would come on….
“it made a real connection – I was a little girl in a safe family…. Listening to it I am really glad to be inside and safe”.
It’s been months since I heard the shipping forecast, and usually it would not interest me; then to hear it mentioned twice within one hour and in the context of peeps-windows – it caught my attention:
Two women connected by a one hour window in time and through a Swansea peep at windows. Angela wants to engage people through the art of knitting, and whilst getting people to pick up the thread that went before, the threads of story are connected. Kate has experienced loss and looking back to a place and time when she felt safe and well; she now wants to learn to thread together the knitting that she has made that came from garments worn by her mother and her grandmother.
Is this coincidence or is it synchronicity? Are we three following storylines that joined in this window of time? And should Angela and Kate meet to join these threads?
I think so! What do you think?
CIVIC 