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Archive for February, 2023

Virginia Woolf installation by Norwegian artist opens @fgcu

Posted in 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, art, art exhibits, short stories, tagged , , , , on Saturday 25 February 2023| Leave a Comment »

Norwegian multidisciplinary artist Ane Thon Knutsen is at it again — at combining Virginia Woolf and the letterpress, that is.

This time, the Oslo Academy of the Arts professor has debuted her installation, “Printed Words: Adaptations of Virginia Woolf,” at University Archives and Special Collections at the Florida Gulf Coast University library.

The Feb. 23 opening reception introduced the installation, which will be on display from now through the 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf:
Virginia  Woolf and Ecologies, June 8-11. Registration opens in March.

In “Printed Works,” the self-taught typesetter who has exhibited other letterpress projects and installations related to Woolf, adapts a selection of Virginia Woolf’s self-published short stories.

“Knutsen’s artistic research aims to point out the influence typography, particularly typesetting, might have on the content of the text. It speaks to the power of designing and publishing one’s own work,” notes the FGCU Special Collections and Archives website.

Her first Woolf project: a book

In “A Printing Press of One’s Own,” which premiered at the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf” at the University of Reading, England, in 2017, Ane produced a hand-set volume that includes Ane’s personal essay about her experience finding a space of her own in which she could pursue her passion — typesetting.

Ane Thon Knutsen with her hand-printed volume introduced at the 2017 Woolf conference, “A Printing Press of One’s Own”

According to Ane, “The book is an essay referring to A Room of One’s Own (1929) by Virginia Woolf. The essay reflects upon women’s role in letterpress, and the importance of a room of one’s own in artistic practices.

“In this book I am investigating the first books printed by Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, both in practice and in the written ‘dialogue’ between Virginia Woolf and myself, as we are both self-taught typesetters.”

Her second: up on the walls

In the winter of 2019, Ane had a major installation of Woolf’s first short story, “The Mark on the Wall,” (1917) in Kunstnernes Hus, an art institution in the centre of Oslo.

As described by Nell Toemen, who visited the exhibit and shared her thoughts with Blogging Woolf, Woolf’s story was “handprinted on I don’t know how many papers, white and off-white, neatly arranged so as to fill all the walls. If you would walk the room in eleven rounds you would be able to read the whole story. Reading it this way is an absolutely different experience than reading the story in a book.”

Page 2 of the “On Being Ill” project

Her third: via Instagram

In March of 2020, as lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the globe, Ane used her printing press to print one sentence on one sheet of paper every day from “On Being Ill,“ Woolf’s 1930 essay.

She shared each page on Instagram and she shared her thoughts about the project with Blogging Woolf.

At the time, she said she was using her printing press to print one sentence on one sheet of paper every day from “On Being Ill” “until we can go back to normal. I hope I will not make it through, as we’re counting about 140 sentences, and the paper is restricted to leftovers from my stock.”

About Ane Thon Knutsen

Ane is internationally known for her letterpress-focused installations and artists’ books. The associate professor of graphic design at the Oslo Academy of the Arts has won numerous awards for her work. She owns and works from her private letterpress studio in Oslo.

 

 

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Podcast on the consolation of nature and Virginia Woolf

Posted in On Being Ill, podcast, tagged , , , , , on Tuesday 21 February 2023| Leave a Comment »

How can literature and nature console us? How can it give us courage and insight in difficult times?

Sally Bayley is an English Lecturer at Hertford College, Oxford, and a reader of Virginia Woolf’s diaries and journals. She lives on a boat, surrounded by nature.

In her podcast, “A Reading Life, a Writing Life,” she explores the sustenance that nature, along with reading and writing, provide. And her first episode shares wisdom from Virginia Woolf.

That episode connects to two pieces of Woolf’s writing — the short story “The Death of a Moth” (1941) and her 1926 essay “On Being Ill.”

Listen to Episode 1 now.

More Woolf podcasts

You can listen to another podcast connected to Woolf. More than a dozen episodes of The Virginia Woolf Podcast are available on the Literature Cambridge website.

This morning I was thinking, what makes a novel? Because Virginia Woolf in some ways doesn’t really write novels. She writes sets of propelling feelings, I think. She writes the inner world out, in all of its outbursts, in all of its prejudice. – Sally Bayley in Episode 1 of “A Reading Life, a Writing Life”

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Virginia Woolf’s Valentine’s Day dinner 99 years ago today

Posted in quotes, tagged , , on Tuesday 14 February 2023| Leave a Comment »

It’s Valentine’s Day. And in Virginia Woolf’s Diary: Volume 2, there is no entry for Feb. 14, 1923, 100 years ago today. So instead I have pulled a quote from her Feb. 14, 1922, diary, 99 years ago.

In it, she does not mention Valentine’s Day, but she does share a bit of detail about her dinner at Hogarth House, their home in Richmond from 1915-1924.

We dine over the fire. L. has his tray on a little stool. We are as comfortable as cottagers (looked at through the window) . . . Diary: Volume 2, pg. 161.

The fireplace in the dining room at Monk’s House, the Woolf’s summer home in Sussex from 1919 until their deaths.

 

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How the Virginia Woolf community can aid Turkey

Posted in Woolf societies, Woolfians Connect, tagged , , , , , on Monday 13 February 2023| Leave a Comment »

Virginia Woolf asked questions of the moment: How can we prevent war? What does a woman need to be able to write fiction? Now, with the death toll from the Feb. 6 earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria currently at 36,000 and climbing, the Woolf community asks the question of this moment: How can we help?

Ben Hagen, president of the International Virginia Woolf Society, reached out to Mine Özyurt Kılıç of Turkey, who is involved in the formation of the non-profit Virginia Woolf Studies in Turkey Initiative, to ask just that question.

She shared information provided by two colleagues, and we have copied it below. It includes frightening facts about the 7.8-magnitude devastating quake, along with information about how to help.

Facts about the earthquake

  • The earthquake that hit the region was equal to 130 atomic bombs.
  • It hit 10 major cities in Türkiye and Syria.
  • Nearly 7,000 buildings have been confirmed to have collapsed.
  • The area affected by the Turkish/Syrian earthquake is the size of the entire United Kingdom.
  • There has never been another earthquake that affected such a large area in history.
  • The biggest reason for the destruction is that the earthquake was very close to the surface and therefore the damage to infrastructure such as roads, bridges and airports is very high.

How we can help

According to Mine’s colleagues, the best way to support people in the devastated areas is to donate to the following organizations:

AHBAP is a Turkish organization that describes itself as a “cooperation movement that works with value systems based on solidarity, sharing, and belonging.” The network provides “all kinds of aid” to those in need, including cash transfers and in-kind support. Through their support, they seek “to create contemporary and sustainable networks of cooperation and solidarity” that use new models that ensure they “protect local cultures.” Donations can be sent through their website as well. The organization has also created and will update a list of community centers and businesses that have opened their doors to those seeking refuge.

AFAD is Türkiye’s official disaster and emergency management authority.
This website has some useful information as well: https://www.afetbilgi.com/. Be sure to click on the small box in the middle near the top to choose your language preference.

Please share this information with your personal and academic circles/groups/networks as much as possible to help the victims! Please raise awareness on social media!

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Virginia Woolf wrote of spring, moods 100 years ago today

Posted in diaries, quotes, Reading the Skies in Virginia Woolf, tagged , , , , on Friday 10 February 2023| 2 Comments »

In my little corner of Ohio, it is unseasonably warm today. And while I haven’t walked around my garden to see what spring blossoms might be coming up early, I did peruse Virginia Woolf’s diary entry made one hundred years ago today. In it, she does something like that.

On Feb. 10, 1923, while living in Richmond, Woolf wrote a long diary entry. On that day, she included her observations of the first signs of spring and the weather as she walked to the local cemetery, along with details of her recently developed daily schedule:

The spring the spring, I sing in imitation of Wagner, & saw a gorze bush set with soft yellow buds. Then we got into the Park, where the rain drove dogs & humans home, & so back on the stroke of three. It is now our plan (a day old) to walk from 2 to 3; print from 3 to 5; delay our tea; & so make headway. – Diary: Volume 2, pg. 233.

She also relates an earlier conversation with Mary* in which she discussed her mood that winter, which she thought had been affected by the genre of writing in which she had been involved:

But I suppose I talked most, & about myself. How I’d been depressed since Jan. 3rd. We ran it to earth, I think, by discovering that I began journalism on that day. Last Thursday, I think, I returned to fiction, to the instant nourishment & well being of my entire day. – Diary: Volume 2, pg. 234.

*Mary is not identified in this entry in Volume 2 of the diary, although she is likely Mary Hutchinson, as Alice Lowe mentions in the comments below.

Early spring blooms picked and arranged by my granddaughter when she was just 10.

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