Wednesday 16 September 2009

Arts in Homes

Visited the Wirksworth festival on Saturday with Julie, this is Arts and Crafts festival with the emphasis on Art.

Ariving late morning we were greeted by an elderly gentleman who was serving two other people as we arrived at his table and exclaimed you will have to wait a moment I have a rush on, and he meant it, was flustered by having to serve 2 people.

We then proceeded to wonder around Wirksworth following the trail guide, which took us to the town hall, parish rooms, shops, cafĂ©’s, churches and most oddly peoples living rooms, kitchen and gardens, where their artistic goods were on display. All the houses where signed with numbers and marked with purple and white balloons, so you did not wonder uninvited in to strangers living rooms, some even opened up their toilets to the public.

The art was interesting consisting of sculpture, painting, photographs, fabric, sewing ironwork etc, but mostly not the sort of stuff I would buy mainly due to its cost, but some cases too surreal, uninspiring or just too big for a normal sized house, saying that the majority was good.

[View below looking out over Wirksworth from one of the trail sites]


By the time we had walked the hilly streets visiting two thirds the exhibitors we were both numb to seeing any more, so left around 5pm after homemade cake from the church.

I’m told by a fellow at worker the evening was extremely busy has the bands and performance artist took the streets in number to entertain the crowds, and people did not close their front rooms to art inspectors until late into the night.

On Sunday I was invited out by Ste and Deb photo below to have lunch and tea with them and visit a massive Garden, craft, outdoor wear centre with them. The centre was a disappointment as it seemed to have changed hand since they had last visited and the craft area was filled with other high street traders such as the Works, Yeoman’s, plus pet products and some other clothing brands you see everywhere. My friends did not have a good word to say about the place especially the coffee shop which was now serving in cardboard cups rather than nice china cups.



Just outside the centre we went to the farm shop which was up to scratch and I bought some Banana and Pistachio Ice cream for us to eat when we got back to their house, it went down a treat after the lovely Tai green curry Deb made for tea, after I turned my nose up at a Indian curry.

A good weekend overall out and about.