A Chequerboard of Afternoons and Evenings

On Tuesday afternoon I went the unveiling of some new sculptures at the "Chess Square" at the end George Street in Hastings Old Town. They depict a sea-horse, an octopus wrestling with a chess rook, and a sea serpent, I think. I didn't notice anyone from the chess club there, but there were several Councillors, including Dom Sebatian who sometimes comes to our Humanist meetings. The chess pieces for use on the board painted on the ground are kept in a cupboard against the wall of Butler's Emporium, and the key can apparently be obtained from the West Hill Lift Office, further along George Street, for a returnable deposit. It might be an idea for the chess club to put on a demonstration now and again.

In the evening I went to the AGM of the Hastings Arts Forum. It's a surprisingly large organisation, since the quorum required was nearly 50. They met in one of the sections of the Azur restaurant on the lower promenade. I was there just to see the venue and to get a better idea of the people behind the venture, and its recent history of recovery from financial problems.

On Wednesday afternoon I managed to arrange for a man from Sussex Bin Cleaning to come and clean our bins which were in a disgusting state. I found the company on the web, at the suggestion of my landlord, Mr Griffiths, since the Hastings Council do not provide a bin-cleaning service and indeed could not suggest anyone to do the work. He will be coming monthly to keep the bins clean from now on.

On Thursday afternoon Mr Griffiths arrived and took away most of the rubbish that had accumulated on the old sofa that had been dumped in front of the flats. I'm wondering what to do to stop more stuff being dumped there. Some plants in pots perhaps? The Council will remove fly-tipping but only of it is on public land, so perhaps that means redumping it on the pavement, although if you are seen doing that presumably there is a fine, so you can't win either way.

Mathematical Art: A Chessboard Mosaic

Over the bank holiday weekend I spent some time drawing and colouring the pattern shown here. It is a "Chessboard Mosaic" of the type I described in The Games and Puzzles Journal (Vol.1 No.4, March-April 1988, p.64) but on a larger scale. Varied patterns of this type can be formed by first numbering the cells of a chessboard 1 to 64 in some fashion. This example is derived from the numbering of the first Magic Knight's Tour, discovered by William Beverley in 1848. It is a 64 by 64 matrix; when numbered 1 to 64 along the top and left edges, a mark in the square where the r row meets the s column indicates that a piece can move from cell r to cell s. In this example the dark cells indicate rook moves, the yellow cells bishop moves and the red cells knight moves. The pattern is symmetric about the principal diagonal since these moves are all reversible. The rook move pattern is symmetric about the secondary diagonal, but the knight and bishop patterns deviate slightly from this symmetry, due to the nature of the Beverley numbering. The red railway-line pattern down the main diagonal is the result of using a knight's tour numbering, since r is always connected to r+1 by a knight move. The apparent figure "8"s on the main diagonal derive from several zigzag pattern of knight moves in the tour wheren the first and third and second and fourth cells are in the same rank or file and thus connected by a rook move. I'm wondering whether I should exhibit this at the Art Forum; apparently any member can exhibit one item free; but is it really Art?

Edit: I've replaced the original image by an enhanced version, since it came out too gray. The background I used was in fact a sheet of white card.

An Afternoon Walk

This afternoon I took a walk along to the Arts Forum to have another look at the exhibition of paintings by Katherine Reekie "Artists on the Beach" which feature images based on well known works by famous painters like Matisse and Picasso, and sculptors like Moore and Gormley, against a background of Hastings images. It's quite a fun idea.

I went on to walk to the Garden Centre along the Bexhill Road to see if they have anything in the way of a compost bin. They only had two old ones with bits missing. I'm thinking of installing a bin by the front garden so that I can dig up all the weeds and compost them. It's getting rather overgrown.

I carried on walking to the Glyne Gap and then back to Hastings along the beach path. At the old bathing pool site I noticed that the seagulls seemed to have some small shellfish that they were dropping from a height to crack open, or else they were practising with pebbles. Further along the promenade a black-headed gull was flying along the surf line and repeatedly landing on the sea only to immediately rise again. Presumably it was catching something to eat.

Finally I went into a supermarket to top up a few things for my own larder. I ought to be getting out more regularly for exercise, but seem to be leaving it for days and then taking it all in one go.

Art Appreciation

Since the Hastings Humanists have been meeting at the Arts Forum where paintings and other art works are on show, I have been taking more interest in art. The exhibitions there are changed every couple of weeks. There is quite a range of different types of artwork on show.

Last week's exhibition was mainly of oil and acrylic paintings by a Canadian artist, showing colourful landscape scenes. However only one of them appealed to me to the extent of thinking it might be good to have on the walls of my flat. While clearly being a representation of sea and cliffs, it was also clearly an abstract pattern. I've come to the conclusion that this it what appeals to me more than either fully representational art or completely abstract.

The exhibition this week, in both Arts Forum galleries, is of very abstract work that I'm afraid has no appeal for me at all. It seems to me that the artists have spent more time on thinking up fanciful titles for their work than actually producing them.

On Thursday, when I went to look at the History House in Hastings Old Town, as a possible future venue for Hastings Humanists, I also chanced to see that there was an exhibition on at the Bourne Hall nearby. Most of the pictures there were merely representational. There was one of the head of a panther peering out of darkness that combined real and abstract in the way described above.

I'm tempted to start buying some paintings for my flat, though I'm not supposed to make any holes in the walls, so there might be a problem in displaying them. Also the prices can be quite high, but on the other hand good art should remain quite saleable, so perhaps it is not too great an extravagance.