Angus McPhee, Outsider Artist
Stunning, I am reminded of John Clare's famous walk home.
You must watch this video
http://www.ambaile.org.uk/en/item/item_videofilm.jsp?item_id=16677
And check out this blog
http://angusmcphee.blogspot.com/2010/09/angus-mcphee-weaver-of-grass.html
Angus McPhee wove hundreds of garments and objects out of grass in the 50 years he was a mute, shell-shocked WW2 soldier at a mental institution at Inverness. After 50 years, they let him go home, to the isles, South Uist, where he died in a nursing home in 1997.
The psychiatrist Joyce Laing found hundreds of these garments stored in the bushes at the hospital at Inverness.
When all the garden waste was collected, they would announce there would be a bonfire on the first fine late afternoon. Staff and some of the patients would assemble, as all groups of people do, to watch a bonfire. Angus also attended. Much of the flames, sparks and crackling would have been his woven garments. Angus never commented. He stood and watched.
http://www.ambaile.org.uk/en/item/item_narrative.jsp?item_id=16916
I Am
I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.
-- John Clare
This entry was originally posted at http://purejuice.dreamwidth.org/1624993.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
You must watch this video
http://www.ambaile.org.uk/en/item/item_videofilm.jsp?item_id=16677
And check out this blog
http://angusmcphee.blogspot.com/2010/09/angus-mcphee-weaver-of-grass.html
Angus McPhee wove hundreds of garments and objects out of grass in the 50 years he was a mute, shell-shocked WW2 soldier at a mental institution at Inverness. After 50 years, they let him go home, to the isles, South Uist, where he died in a nursing home in 1997.
The psychiatrist Joyce Laing found hundreds of these garments stored in the bushes at the hospital at Inverness.
When all the garden waste was collected, they would announce there would be a bonfire on the first fine late afternoon. Staff and some of the patients would assemble, as all groups of people do, to watch a bonfire. Angus also attended. Much of the flames, sparks and crackling would have been his woven garments. Angus never commented. He stood and watched.
http://www.ambaile.org.uk/en/item/item_narrative.jsp?item_id=16916
I Am
I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.
-- John Clare
This entry was originally posted at http://purejuice.dreamwidth.org/1624993.html. Please comment there using OpenID.