Day 9 of the One Beautiful World Arts Festival

Day 9 of the One Beautiful World Art Trail included an Art Trail in Wickford and Runwell that took in the photographic exhibition at the Salvation Army, Jackie Burns’ Space Art at St Andrew’s, Tim Harrold’s assemblages at St Catherine’s and paintings by Pam Jones at St Mary’s.

Jackie Burns painted live at St Andrew's Church throughout the day and Mike Fogg gave a talk on Composition in Photography at The Salvation Army.

Jackie E. Burns is a Fellow of the International Association of Astronomical Artists and seeks to foster the inquisitive joy of art and astronomy while inspiring people to the awe and beauty of space and astronomy. Her One Beautiful World exhibition of space art by Jackie E. Burns is at St Andrew's until 23 July 2023.

In his 'Composition in Photography' Mike Fogg said that when you “take a photograph” you are really creating a work of art! Many of the same principles that apply to artists apply to photographers. Mike used examples of his own “good” and “bad” photographs to highlight a number of easy to grasp techniques which allowed participants to improve their own photographs. In both 2019 and 2021 Mike won international photography competitions with his images.

The One Beautiful World photographic exhibition included photographs by Mike Fogg and Terry Joyce of the Essex based Compass Photography Group, whose approach is summed up in a quote attributed to Matt Hardy, a Dorset based photographer: “Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing beauty is what separates a snapshot from a photograph.”

A selection of paintings by local artist Pamela Jones could be viewed in St Mary’s while 'The Art of the Diorama' by Tim Harrold was at St Catherine’s Church. Tim is exhibiting a selection of dioramas constructed over the past decade, some of which have never been seen publicly before, and some entirely new ones. He see these miniature ‘worlds in boxes’ as visual parables, lost objects with forgotten stories found and reimagined into new tales of meaning and significance. Tim Harrold is an artist who works with bric à brac, flotsam and jetsam, the discarded or misplaced along the journey of life. He finds lost objects and gives them new meaning through his three-dimensional assemblage style which brings together found and sourced elements into visual parables. Alongside this exhibition is a Coronation display created by the Mothers Union for Wickford and Runwell called The Way to the Coronation.

The day ended with the One Beautiful World poetry reading with Tim Harrold and Jonathan Evens. Tim Harrold is a poet who creates images of profound challenge and change, of pause and process, of chrysalis and catalyst. His most recent publication is ‘Verses versus Viruses’. Jonathan Evens is a creative writer whose poems and stories have been published by Amethyst Review, International Times and Stride Magazine.

Among the poems read by Tim were 'Urchin Church' and 'The Seasons They Are A-Shifting'. He also read from 'Verses versus Viruses', a collection of 28 ‘crafted prophetic’ poems written during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. They chart a personal voyage through that spring and a response to the shifting spiritual atmosphere over that period. What emerged are images of profound challenge and change, of pause and process, of chrysalis and catalyst. In these poems, things are reimagined and realigned, recalibrated and reset, revived and refreshed.

Among the poems read by Jonathan were 'attend, attend', 'Dylan Thomas was more at home with Blake and Vaughan than Marx and Proust', and 'Windows into the divine'. He also read two poems which are shortly to be published. The first is a poem about Julian of Norwich which will be published this month as part of an anthology of poems (All Shall Be Well) celebrating the 650th anniversary of Julian's shewings. This poem is based on a large painting 'The Revelations of Julian of Norwich' by Australian artist Alan Oldfield which is to be found at the Belsey Bridge Conference Centre in Ditchingham, Norfolk. The second which is inspired by St Mary's Runwell is to be published by Amethyst Review on 22 May 2023. The poem entitled 'Runwell' describes the church and its surroundings, while also summarising its history and taking the nearby Running Well (from which Runwell's name may derive) as its refrain.