Help!

As part of module 13 [!?!] of my course, ‘Professional Practice’, I have to set up a website – although we have been strongly encouraged to use Wordpress in lieu of a ‘proper’ website host.

So I have.

http://celiadarbyshire.wordpress.com/

If you go over there you will find that it is pretty empty – and it’s taken me a couple of hours to get that far. I did briefly have a Wordpress blog – because I use Windows Live, I got  a Live blog, which I used for private rantings. When Live decided not to offer blogs any more I ended up with a Wordpress one, which I found so complicated I closed it.

But like elephants, Wordpress never forgets, and persuading it that I wanted a brand-new, squeaky clean blog, untainted by its predecessor, choosing a theme in line with my rants in college about legibility, and working out how to get images into the side bar, has taxed my befuddled brain.

Now I have decided to carry out a little market research. When you visit an artist’s website, what do you like to see/read? What sort of information do you like? Any suggestions for ‘must includes’ any criticisms of what I’ve done so far? [Be gentle with me, please!] i will be adding some photos of work – I may even have done so by the time you get over there.

Thanks in advance.

No help needed with the second part of this post. Last night W. and I went out [Cheeses go out at night, shock horror!] to the Cathedral Open Evening. Busy, but interesting.

In January all the chairs are removed from the Nave, and you can get an impression of how it might have looked before such modern concessions to comfort were introduced. Rather wonderful – and probably even better by candlelight .

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the Cathedral craftsmen were showing their skills.

 

And there were textiles – I bet the whole of Winchester could hear W’s groan…

 

This is a 19th C altar frontal I had the pleasure of seeing under repair some years ago. I lost the multitude of photos I took then, in a Picasa crash, so it was lovely to see it again, albeit rather unsympathetically displayed. I did know who made it – a vicar’s wife in Hampshire – and if anyone is interested in her name I can have a look in my magnum opus, where the information is recorded. I think.

This is not a 19th C altarpiece: I'd be happy to take a fairly large bet that it is by Jane Lemon and the Sarum group, but of course the labels were few and uninformative.

These are the vestments on display – the red one was designed  by Ninian Comper and made by the Sisters of Bethany, and the multicoloured one was made by Lucy Goffin, but memory fails me on the others.

Then we lit a candle – we always light a candle -

 

 

 

 

 

and came home.