Photograph taken near West Milton in Dorset on 28 December, 2010.

Here’s a closer look.

Closer up view of object in the sky photographed near West Milton in Dorset on 28 December, 2010.

I have to say, I don’t think it’s a UFO – it must be the moon – but I’ve never seen it in quite this guise before.

By excellent, I mean almost gratuitously obsessed with quality, and with the means and the skill to produce superb results.

The first individuals that came to mind were the West Bexington chilli growers Michael and Joy Michaud, the Beaminster furniture maker John Makepeace, the Bridport tiler Tony Bird of ASB Tiling, the West Milton cider maker Nick Poole, and the Netherbury wildlife photographer Colin Varndell.

Then I got distracted, and forgot all about it, until Dorset Wildlife Trust sent me some images from their new 2011 calendar, all given by Colin Varndell, and all – you guessed it – excellent. Really tremendous. See:

Dormouse, hibernating: January's image on Dorset Wildlife Trust's new calendar Wildlife Encounters. Copyright Colin Varndell.

Nuthatch, February's image on Dorset Wildlife Trust's 2011 calendar. Copyright Colin Varndell.

Otter: Pictured for September 2011 on Dorset Wildlife Trust's new calendar Wildlife Encounters. Copyright Colin Varndell.

Mr Varndell is a long-standing member and supporter of Dorset Wildlife Trust. He said: “Dorset is one of the richest counties for wildlife in Britain. If it is to remain so, it is the responsibility of each and every one of us, as custodians of this natural heritage, to protect, preserve and improve it for future generations. We can all help to achieve this by supporting the Dorset Wildlife Trust.”

In other words, and entirely reasonably, given his own generosity in supplying pictures, he wants people to buy the Trust’s new calendar.

Myself, I think that’s an excellent idea.

The calendar is called Wildlife Encounters and it costs £5. It’s available from Dorset Wildlife Trust at www.dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/calendar or call 01305 264620.

It’s also stocked by most Dorset Tourist Information Centres, including Bridport, Dorchester, Shaftesbury, Wareham and Wimborne.

Walker Evans, Roadside Stand, Vicinity Birmingham, Alabama, 1936. Gelatin silver print from negative in the collection of the Library of Congress, Washington, LC-USF342-8253A

SO, WEST DORSET has a new artistic venue: Axen Farm outside Symondsbury.

Probably just two miles from Bridport town centre, but it feels startlingly like another world, as you suddenly rock up towards the end of a narrow track and find yourself faced with the northern side of Colmers Hill, with just a fleck of Bridport visible eastwards.

Dragonflies dart around the improvised car park and the shadows of clouds scud over the landscape.

Axen Farm was built almost exactly 100 years ago for the gamekeeper on the Colfox estate. The view through the big windows of the first room you go into is something you really should go to see for yourself. That’s all I’m going to say about it.

Axen Farm is the clustering-point of Burr Projects.

Burr as in the seeds or dry fruits of plants with little hooks (though burr is one of those words that also has many other appealing meanings – circle of light around moon or star, dialectal pronunciation, hard sandy Dorset limestone, etc).

The woman with the un-shake-offable liking for the word burr is Nancy Clemance, who moved to West Dorset last year and is a leading member of Bridport’s new Gig Rowing Club.

She’s also a freelance arts curator and she’s been mulling over Burr Projects for eight or nine years.

She said: “It’s about sticking to things, picking up things, that end up stuck to your jumper and won’t go away.

“It’s about picking different things up and putting them together.”

Ideas include Hutliving (about shepherds’ huts) and Carnie (about outdoor festivals).

Walker Evans, Graveyard, Houses, and Steel Mill, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, November 1935. Gelatin silver print from negative in the collection of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington DC, LC-USF342-1167A

But the first venture, now open until September 5, is an exhibition of around 40 black and white photographs taken by Walker Evans in the Deep South of the USA in 1935-36, during the Great Depression.

Evans was employed as an Information Specialist in President Franklin D Roosevelt’s Resettlement (later Farm Security) Administration. His job was to record the work of the FSA and document the lives of farmers and flood victims.

Evans travelled to Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina photographing sharecroppers’ homes, churches, graveyards, busy streets, shops, cafes, signs and billboards. He also took portraits.

Walker Evans, Allie Mae Burroughs, Wife of a Cotton Sharecropper, Hale County, Alabama, Summer 1936. Gelatin silver print from negative in the collection of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington DC, LC-USF342-8139A

The show is on tour from London’s Hayward Gallery. It’s accompanied by an exhibition book, with examples of Evans’ writing, interview excerpts and articles written by James Agee and Lincoln Kirstein. Ms Clemance also prepared material for the Axen Farm display with pupils from the Woodroffe School in Lyme Regis, Symondsbury teenagers, a professional photographer and a professional painter.

There’s an obvious interest in seeing how Deep South Depression Era communities speak to West Dorset in 2010; a few of the images might almost have been taken in the spartan rooms of Axen Farm itself.

There’s also a subtler reason why Evans could be a brilliant starter for a new series of projects intended to be sticky.

There’s a superb account of Evans’ photographs in Geoff Dyer’s book The Ongoing Moment (Little, Brown 2005), concerning in particular the idea that places “have their own inbuilt capacity for memory”.

Dyer writes: “Connie, in D.H.Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, senses this on a walk through her husband’s ancestral home. ‘The place remembered,’ she exclaims, ‘still remembered’.

“This does not feel like a psychological projection on the part of the viewer but of a receptiveness to something abiding in the place itself.”    

“Evans believed these memories could be coaxed out and distilled by the camera.

“He could show memory in the process of formation and, by so doing, make it part of our memory.

“In this way we get a sense not just of the chronological passage of years but of psychological time.

Receptiveness to something abiding in the place itself is a quality that West Dorset can never get too much of…

Editor’s Note: Updated August 8 to reflect the start of the exhibition. For  details of opening times, and a useful map, click here for the Burr Projects blog.

NB Looking at the map before you set off is highly recommended.

Use of the car park costs £2. But as you’ll have gathered, I’d say it’s well worth it.

The last Labour Government gave Dorset and Devon county councils, plus numerous partners, £376,500 to explore how seaside communities might adapt to meet the challenges of coastal change.

Dorset and East Devon Coastal Change Pathfinder Project team members now want people to let them have photographs or written accounts of coastal erosion, flooding, storm events and changing coastal defences in Swanage, Ringstead, Preston Beach Road and Bowleze Coveway, Weymouth, Seatown, Charmouth, and Sidmouth and Pennington Point in East Devon.

1930s Scouts look out to sea, but it's the coastline stretching out west past Eype and Seatown that draws the modern eye.

A modern view from the same cliff path as above. Photograph by Stephen Williams, reused under Creative Commons Licence.

Contributions will be used to illustrate how the coast has changed in the past and provide the basis for visualisations of how it may change in the future.

Project coordinator Rupert Lloyd, said: “Perhaps you have a photograph showing how one of these areas looked in the past, or showing a major storm or landslip? Maybe you can provide a written account of how the coast has changed in these settlements?

“These personal accounts will be invaluable to the project and we would love to hear from you.”

Contributions can be submitted – up until the end of September – by email to a.potter@dorsetcc.gov.uk or by post to The Jurassic Coast Pathfinder Team, Environmental Directorate, Dorset County Council, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1XJ.

Pathfinder Team Note: If you would like your contribution returned please include your postal address. Please note that any information submitted may be used by the project in community engagement activities and future publications. All materials submitted should be copyright free. If you have any questions or require further information, please contact the project team on (01305) 225515.

Editor’s Note: The partners involved in the Dorset and East Devon Coastal Change Pathfinder Project are: Dorset County Council Devon County Council East Devon District Council, Purbeck District Council, West Dorset District Council and Weymouth and Portland Borough Council, parish and town councils, the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Team, Dorset Coast Forum, Devon Maritime Forum, Environment Agency. English Heritage, Natural England, National Trust, Dorset AONB Partnership, environmental groups and local civic societies, RSPB.

So, to celebrate the news that the Scout Association of Britain has taken on 16,500 fresh recruits since January last year, its biggest membership surge in four decades, here’s a small selection.

I’ve mostly chosen ones which also show interesting bits of Dorset in the background (between Seatown and Bridport). If you can provide more information about some of the people and places in these pictures, please get in touch. Lots of people would love to hear from you.

The back end of the car, the white fence posts, the shed, the luggage, the building all suggest this could be a station. But which one?

The beach at Eype.

Standing to attention by the flagpole. Note the brimmer hats.

A final quick point for now: I do have more photographs. If you’d like to see more put up on this site, please get in touch.

News that stays news

THE ARTIST John Skinner, when he lived in Bothenhampton, used to say to me: “Why can’t we have the kind of news which says: ‘Today John Skinner finished a xxxxing fantastic painting – and here it is’.

“That’s the kind of TV news I’d like to see.”

I used to agree with him, firstly because it was easier to, and secondly, because, actually, I did agree with him.

To have a sat truck parked outside an artist’s studio, and a live broadcast done with the paint still fresh – why not? Ignore the easy answers that come scorning  in (it would cost too much, not enough people would be interested, the painting might not be any good, bleugh, bleugh) and ask again – why not? Think how startling and pleasurable it could be.

“Literature is news that stays news,” wrote Ezra Pound.

Art is news that stays news, says I.

I doubt it will ever happen, of course, but just to raise the possibility is a useful thought-experiment.

Save £5

For now though, in the pre-utopian meantime, we have this: a new exhibition called Portrait of the Artist – with accompanying book – opening at Bridport Arts Centre on April 17. It’s a group exhibition of 25 painters and sculptors meant to shine a ray of light on the Bridport art scene that’s developed over the last 30 years or so.

Idea: Kit Glaisyer

Photographs: George Wright

Interviews & words: Lu Orza

Lu’s statement: “For me this has been a fascinating process. Some of the artists opened up on a very personal level about their lives, while others concentrated on their work. What is noticeable is, there is no Bridport School; artists aren’t trying to do the same type of thing. They are very much individualistic in their approach to their art. The exciting thing about Bridport is that the art that’s happening here is so incredibly diverse.”

Painter Kit Glaisyer’s statement: “Artists are attracted to Bridport because this is a place where they feel they can be themselves and where individuality is actively encouraged. This makes it the perfect place for idealists, non-conformists, dreamers and all those who are inspired to follow their own paths.

“Lu Orza has dug beneath the surface to find the deeper intentions of the artists.

“What she reveals can be quite edgy and challenging, which is refreshing. She has avoided the temptation of the easy cliché in her writing.

“And George Wright has beautifully captured the romance and the drama of creative people and artists, there’s a theatrical element to his work that illustrates the adventure of being an artist. He has produced a stunning series of photographs that clearly evoke the excitement we all feel about the artists working in and around Bridport.”

Exhibition: Saturday 17 April to 10 May, open Tuesdays to Saturdays, 10-4pm daily @ Bridport Arts Centre (01308 424204) www.bridport-arts.com

Book: Portrait of the Artist, with introduction by artist John Hubbard, launched 7pm on 17.4.10 at reduced price of £14.95. Then available for £19.95. www.portraitoftheartist.co.uk

See you there!

The kiln itself is surrounded by gigantic quantities of wood. Different sorts and different sizes burn in different ways, and at different rates, and this helps to produce the variety of finishes that you see on Tim’s pots. I keep one of his weighty bowls on the windowsill right by me where I type and I love its starry black-brown finish, its randomly pitted caramelisation.

Anyway, I’m not going to reproduce the photograph here because the book it’s in costs £50 and I haven’t got permission to use it BUT there are exclusive extracts from Jasper Conran’s Country, with pictures by Andrew Montomery, on The Daily Telegraph’s website and you can see Mr Hurn by clicking on this link. 

“I’m keeping to a tradition of English pottery that’s been going on for generations,” Tim says. “I think there’s a certain romance in the process.”

If you want to see what he means, you could also watch this fiery film, made in the 21st century but suffused with history.

Look at this for example:

This is one of a series of night-time photographs taken around Bridport with the comment: “i really like town at this time of year, its so cold and bleak but this makes for nice urban landscapes with only a few cars around. at night i really notice the lights around town, i like all the oranges, yellows and harsh whites”

At the foot of the blog, the photographer explains that he’s compiling a visual diary of his year between finishing A-levels and starting university. Hence also this:

“this photo is about buses, and how long i spend on them because i haven’t got a car; they can take you to nice places though, to meet nice people and they are good for thinking about stuff”

Normally I just put links to other sites or blogs down at the side of this one; I’m highlighting this one because it doesn’t look like it’s had all that many viewers so far and it deserves more. Have a look. You’ll enjoy it!

http://andinmyhandsacamera.blogspot.com

What I can’t work out, from looking at the wall,  is where this mock sign is supposed to be. It looks tantalisingly like West Bay, but could it be Lyme Regis? A strange question, I know, but I am genuinely curious…

I think it’s one of the best pictures of Colmers Hill – if not the best – that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen plenty.  Dozens of artists and photographers have had a crack at capturing the essence of Colmers Hill, but, in my not so humble opinion, they’ve nearly all failed, perhaps because they’ve concentrated too much on matters of technique. Gone too much for some kind of fancy individualised vision, without enough sense of how people generally experience Colmers Hill, from the middle of Bridport (say), as a presence looming up at the end of street, unusual but reassuring. 

Bearded Git has got the shape of Colmers Hill, or Pudding Basin Hill as it’s also known: I’m thinking of the poem about climbing up Pudding Basin Hill by the former millionaire car-park attendant Maurice Barnes, in his book A Poet Walks…

Bearded Git has also got the atmosphere of it, the way it sometimes stands out with its bristly ridge and tufty tree-topped crown, but also the way it sometimes just seems to lurk slightly beyond ordinary life. It’s almost in Bearded Git’s picture as if it’s veiled.

I’m conscious of the fact that I haven’t expressed myself very well, but that’s further confirmation of what I’ve been saying: Colmers Hill is tremendously hard to portray. That’s one of the reasons why so many people are so fascinated by it.

One final thing: Bearded Git says he took his picture from East Cliff above West Bay. “It’s a crop from a frame that I took with the D50 + 70-300mm zoom, then mangled with Photoshop.”