Ron Summerfield dec'd

I remember vividly the day Ron Summerfield died (not least because of the mountain of work to which his death gave rise). Can it really be 25 years ago today? That's what the local paper tells me.

Its report is OK as far as it goes, but barely scratches at the surface of what Ron's legacy has achieved for Gloucestershire. Around £10m will now have been donated to local charitable causes by the Summerfield Trust, and the giving goes on.

I took the above photograph for a booklet published to commemorate the first 20 years of the Trust's existence. Alas, the gallery in question (at Pittville) is now closed: funding its refurbishment might be thought one of Summerfield's less successful efforts. But there's a long list of more lasting achievements. You keep coming across them in surprising places: this old graveyard (below) was, for instance, restored to community use with the help of a grant the Trust made, an oasis just off Cheltenham High Street.

Pittville pranks

I paid a second visit to the open west 2011 this morning, at our university's doomed Pittville Campus. On the way in, I noticed a broken pillar. Upon enquiry inside, I was told that the emergency services had been called out and that on arrival they had duly taped off the area around it.

In fact it turned out to be one of the prize-winning entries in the exhibition! And yes, its title is Broken Pillar. The artist (from Korea), Shan Hur, spotted the cantilevered entrance to the gallery area, and exactly matched the profile of the existing rear pillars in making two totally unnecessary new ones. (The left one - out of my picture - is intact.)

Within the foyer of the building, he has another work, a fake cash machine built into the wall. Again, it has taken many of us in (the students couldn't believe their luck!). Both these enjoyably unexpected exhibits seem entirely at home in a contemporary show of this kind, but "art"?

the open west 2011

I have this evening started a photography course at the University. I am hoping it will help me to get to grips with Photoshop better. There are 14 of us - I being clearly the oldest: I think I am going to enjoy it!

Arriving early at the Pittville Campus, I had a look round the open west, which is on in the Summerfireld Gallery till 5th March. I liked it when it began in 2009; much less so, last year's. This year however there is much to admire, including Jake Lever's amazing, suspended boat. I shall go back.

"In Transition"

Cheltenham Connect arranged a screening of "In Transition" this evening. A wonderfully positive film, about what - or rather who - makes up the fast-growing Transition Culture.

The film shows people of all ages doing their bit in samplings of 100 Transition communities world-wide. Alas, the audience in Bethesda Church was pretty uniformly made up of 50+s.

On Tuesday we went to the Open West show at Pittville. Last year was exhilarating: this year less so - too much of the "shock of the new" perhaps, such as this confection: named "Roll up a forest" I felt that its creator, Louise Sayarer, might have been better off donating both bikes and organic matter to Cheltenham Connect's Go Green group.

The art of the quartet

Cheltenham Music Festival is certainly celebrating quartets this year: eight ensembles from round the world are playing for us, and superannuated instruments that have no doubt made up string quartets in the past have been painted for a special exhibition - most of it to be seen in the Summerfield Gallery, part of the University of Gloucestershire's Pittville Campus in Albert Road - round the corner from the Pump Room where the musicians perform.

The brainchild of Festival Director Meurig Bowen, the decorated fiddles and cellos make an appropriate accompaniment for the hilarious Hoffnung cartoons, which form the main show in the Gallery. Some surprising artists have taken up the challenge, including our local MP, Martin Horwood. My illustration shows Bob Devereux's violin on the left, Peter Granville-Edmunds's next to it (his illustration compares the wrecked instrument with a bombed out facade in I think Dresden), and then Mila Judge-Furstova's splendidly adorned cello - even painted on the inside.

But Meurig has run into some flak from the The Strad - see his blog. An interesting question, whether or not painted violins are art! They will be auctioned for charity next year - which doesn't necessarily make them art of course. I would never buy one myself, but they are fun to see exhibited, especally alongside many hundreds of painted violin cutouts, on show in the centre of town in various locations - part of another of the Festival's enterprising education projects.

Yesterday Quatuor Diotima gave the UK premiere of Matthias Pintscher's Study IV for Treatise on the Veil, the most curious work I have heard for a long while: not a single note of music as we know it! In the composer's programme note, he writes intriguingly: "I often find myself wishing that I was able to draw directly onto the sound of the instruments like a painter."

Hoffnung at Pittville

Visiting galleries, I am inclined to be oppressed by the earnestness of the experience: public libraries no longer seem to require silence, so why should visitors to art galleries need to be so reverential?

What was lovely about popping into the Hoffnung exhibition yesterday (on at the University of Gloucestershire's Pittville Campus till 18th) was the chorus of chuckles that rippled round the room. I had always been rather sniffy about Gerard Hoffnung, but this show is a revelation, covering the huge range of his work from its earliest beginnings - his political cartoons flirting with danger, in pre-WW2 Germany.

Such richness of imagination! A treasure store not merely for the music-lover: go!

the open west 2009

Caroline and I have been up to the Summerfield Gallery this afternoon (at the University of Gloucestershire's Pittville Campus), to see part of a new show, called the open west 2009. It's rather good.

As wide a variety of contemporary art as you could wish to find is well shown in a wonderful space. And it's not just a case of never mind the quality: feel the width, as the finish of most of the work is excellent.

In the background of my snapshot you can see Soo Jung Choi's "Romeo and Juliet", a charming and thought-provoking essay on a familiar theme (acrylic on canvas). (Foreground: the exhibition's hard-working organisers, Sarah Goodwin and Lyn Cluer Coleman.)

"Romeo and Juliet" rubs shoulders with Clara Clark's "train", a large, noisy, primitive-looking sculpture ("chicken wire, paper, sawdust, wood, motor, pulley"); whilst around the corner you find Jessica Harrison's stomach-churning, almost pointilliste "Monster" ("fly legs on paper").

Yesterday, I visited the other venue where the show is up, Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum. What impressed me there was the lyricism of Anna Bush Crews' film "Seapot 24 (the spout)", and the extraordinary concentration of Thurle Wright's paper constructions. Not that I would want to buy one.

You can catch the open west 2009 anytime over the next five or so weeks. By the way, some male artists have been selected also!

What a rare joy to find such ambitious displays in Cheltenham!