Balancing words and images

At the beginning of October I arranged a workshop at the Art Gallery based around the Adrian Gray "Balance" Exhibition. The group worked with Linda Robinson co-author of  Words and Pictures: Photography with a Pen Poetry with a Camera . Below as promised are some of the words inspired by the session. Thanks to the Gallery staff for their help in making the workshop possible.

Stone Sculptures

A life in balance

Are they trying to improve on nature?

Seeking a moment of equipoise,

Feeling the pull of the earth.

and saying “what the hell”
Seeking to make a mystery or magical moment.

Brings a whole new meaning to the word “Rocker”

 

Balancing Stones

I walked the beaches of Hartlepool:

Seaton Carew and the headland.

Seeking rocks for symmetry, balance and equilibrium.

Both natural and of human origin.

And all I found were covered in weed,

Slimy weed, that defies adhesion.

Human waste and industries poisonous pollution.

Green and black and yuck.

If I intend to find a point of balance

I need a wire brush or sandpaper,

To make them clean or pure.

Brian Geddes

All in the Mind

Stone 

on

Stone

in a frozen teeter

Poised

but a reluctant grain,

a scintilla shifts

a grind

as

          plates

                   shift

And new striations

Crack

          On Crack

across the face

Aeons of 

compressed energy

Spurt

From an id

Of repression

  

In the Zen Garden

One white stone on another 

Each stone a promise

Each stone a prayer

Each a memory

Like stones on a Jewish grave

Some stand upright, hard, resistant

Some ground to fragments

          like crushed bones

Some stones like pebbles

Hard, turned 

In

on themselves

Stones as many as the scattered

between

the sweated iron tracks.

Japanese general

Sitting in your Zen garden

Did you meditate this?

Tony Hey

Stoned

In a pink fizz sky

Precariously poised,

A lemon slice.

Contradiction 

Monolithic balance

in solid stone

Strength and weakness

combined.

Denise Sparrowhawk