Hullo! This month’s newsletter comes to you later than usual - last week we were in London for John Abell’s new exhibition and were delighted to meet lots of you at the preview!
You can check out his exhibition Cariadon Y Mynydd at Arusha Gallery, 6 Percy Street, London until the 29th March.
We spent some time with John last Friday exploring the paintings…
We cannot recommend the show enough. John makes super magic, visionary worlds, that have us dreaming of climbing Welsh mountains and immersing ourselves in springs!
EVENTS
Next month on April 14th you can find us at The Social with an incredible line up including pilgrimages around Britain with Oliver Smith, explorations of Dartmoor’s Tors with Sophie Pierce and Alex Murdin, conversation on making art in and with the landscape with Lorna Rees, and far out wildness with Pete Fowler. Tickets are available here.
Next up in May we will be headed to Dartmoor for the first ever Dartmoor Tors festival. Matthew will be speaking on the Saturday but there’s lots of other amazing stuff happening across the weekend…
You can nab a ticket here for the panel Matthew is speaking on.
Then a way a way a way in the distance (but probably not that far given how time creeps up!) Lally with be in conversation with Matthew about her book The Lost Folk at Hidden Notes Festival in Stroud. It’s one of our favourite festivals, super chilled, amazing music, amazing people, and always fantastic conversations. Tickets always sell out quickly, hence giving you all the early heads up! The full line-up is announced this Thursday. You can purchase tickets for the weekend here.
On that note, Lally will also be at End of the Road on Friday 29th August.
STONE OF THE MONTH: MARCH
This month we took a trip to Dorset and then drove a very strange and circuitous way back home. We took in several great churches along the way and then went to Scorhill Stone Circle. Neither of us had been before, and despite the very wiggly road to get there (hands up fellow travel sickness sufferers) we arrived safely and just as the sun was setting. It was incredibly magical, and really highlighted for us both (I think) why we started this club. Moments like this, getting purposefully lost on the way home, in search of a standing stone, are the reason for it all. Enjoying the journey. We filled this rather silly video….
and generally just enjoyed being amongst the stones. It was so peaceful and the light was utterly perfect.
MEMBERS NEWS:
A MESSAGE FROM A MEMBER IN NEED:
Hiya Stone Club! I am doing a wee bit of research and wondered if you could help? At primary school in the 1970's, I remember listening to an audio tape presentation of a dramatisation of the catastrophic sandstorm that would bury the Skara Brae village. I'm trying to find any details about the programme, the series or find anyone else's recollections of it. Would you be able to ask your members or suggest any routes I might follow. My recollection is that we heard it in one of the Scottish primary schools I attended between 1975 and 1982.
Thanks, Julie Gibbons, member no: 3792
Please reply to this email if you have any leads!
A BOOK BY A MEMBER:
Since seeing his first photographs of Stonehenge as a young boy living in northern California, Patrick has been fascinated by the standing stones of Europe. His first actual experience of walking among the stones did not occur until 1986, when he was in his mid 30's. Over the following years he continued to make return trips and his passion for them, and his desire to understand them, grew stronger with each visit.
Megalithic stone monuments are spread all over Europe, with a high concentration in Ireland and the UK. Although there are many theories as to who built them and why, and though archeologists have made many enticing discoveries which help explain when these monuments might have been built, along with their purposes, no-one really knows.
In 2009 Patrick decided it was time to try to really get close and personal with the stones, to find out what he could about them, as well as from them. So, he planned and undertook the first of what he called his "Stone Journeys." Over the next nine years he searched out and found over 150 different stone sites in six different countries, many of which he returned to on numerous occasions.
Throughout his travels he kept journals about his experiences and took photographs of the many stone sites he visited. This information and these images were then gathered together to create, Stone Journals.
It was Patrick's intent to involve the reader as much as possible and as you read the book you too become a participant in the journeys. The reader may find themselves walking among the imposing stones at Callanish on the Isle of Lewis, or being blown about in a storm on Dartmoor in a fruitless search for the Scorhill Stone Circle. You may climb to the top of Knocknarea to Maebe's Tomb in Ireland, or just sit on a massive fallen circle stone, staring up at the white clouds forming patterns over Long Meg and Her Daughters Stone Circle in Cumbria, England.
Along the way Patrick challenges the "rational mind" to open to possibilities they might not normally accept. Whether he is talking with locals, dowsing for energy lines, or conversing with a stone, the joy of this book is in the journey. And, as Patrick says, "There is much to be learned in the company of stones."
You can purchase the book here
Patrick Ford, member no: 3062
We recently did a small re-print of Antenna Book’s publication of Ithell Colquhoun’s strange dreamscape novel Destination Limbo, it includes secret societies, islands and more than a smattering of vampires. We’ve a few copies available still here.
FILM OF THE MONTH:
Is this BRILLIANT series, Into the Labyrinth, from the early 1980s. You can watch the full thing here:
That’s it for March folks! Do shout with event ideas, and as ever send us your adventures to stones - we love to see them.
Lally & Matthew x