BBC Radio Manchester Interview About The A Graceful Death Exhibition Friday

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the Jesus on the Tube image story and image
www.antoniarolls.blogspot.com for an account of an Artist and Mother in Bognor Regis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl44L6Izrd0 for a short film from the first weeks of creating the A Graceful Death exhibition by Bertram Somme

 

You are warmly invited to the A Graceful Death exhibition -

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St Nicholas Church, 408 Kingsway, Burnage, Manchester M19 1PL

From Saturday 19 February to Friday 25 February

In the Church

Opening Times

Sunday to Friday open from 12 - 1 pm and from 7 - 8pm

All other viewings happily supplied via appointment through Rachel on 0161 432 7009 

OPENING NIGHT SAT 19 FEB FROM 6PM - 9PM

CLOSING NIGHT PARTY FRIDAY 25 FEBRUARY FROM 7PM - 9PM

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 If you have a moment, listen to Heather Stott on BBC Radio Manchester this Friday 18 February between 10 and 10.30 am.  She will be asking me about the A Graceful Death exhibition and will be talking about what it all means.

Then you can hot foot it to the Opening Night, details above, from 6-9pm.

A new addition, "Joyce Bedford Waiting With Friends At ACelestial Bustop."  Joyce is second from the left. Acrylic on Wood.

I am packing up the car now, and travelling up tomorrow.  The A Graceful Death Team will be arriving at Rachel Mann's to set it all up, on Thursday and Friday.  They are Rachel herself, Me, and members of Rachel's congregation.  Then the photographer Eileen Rafferty will arrive with her camera, the film crew Neill Blume and his camera man Graham, Alan who is coming for moral support, and my son Costya who will help in his own thoughtful ways.

I hope you will come too.

Rev Rachel Mann Is Getting Ready For A Graceful Death Exhibition In Her Church

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the Jesus on the Tube image story and image
www.antoniarolls.blogspot.com for an account of an Artist and Mother in Bognor Regis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl44L6Izrd0 for a short film from the first weeks of creating the A Graceful Death exhibition by Bertram Somme

Rachel Mann, Music Lover, Poet, Maverick, Priest And Writer, Is Preparing Her Church For The 

 A Graceful Death Exhbition Next Week.

Alone.  A small painting of how I felt watching Steve slowly fade.  Acrylic on wood, approx 6"x 9"

You are all warmly invited to the exhibition.  It would be lovely to meet you, come along to the Opening Night on Saturday 19 Feb, 6-9pm.

Rev Rachel Mann has made her church ready for the paintings to be presented.

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St Nicholas Church, 408 Kingsway, Burnage, Manchester M19 1PL

From Saturday 19 February to Friday 25 February

In the Church

Opening Times

Sunday to Friday open from 12 - 1 pm and from 7 - 8pm

All other viewings happily supplied via appointment through Rachel on 0161 432 7009 

OPENING NIGHT SAT 19 FEB FROM 6PM - 9PM

CLOSING NIGHT PARTY FRIDAY 25 FEBRUARY FROM 7PM - 9PM

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Rev Rachel Mann is a passionate person.  She is a deep thinker, she is not afraid of the world, and has not only a calling to the Priesthood, but a powerful urge to live life. She is a wonderful writer, thinker and poet.  She has unusual musical tastes for a Vicar in that she loves and reviews Heavy Metal.  In fact, Rachel plays in her own Metal Band called Kingdom of the Blind and I have seen her - she is awesome! 

Despite ill health, Rachel's passion and love of Life gives me hope.  I take life for granted.  Rachel doesn't.  So when Rachel suggested the A Graceful Death exhibition be shown in her church, I knew that it would be good.  As a priest, she deals with the dying and the dead.  She counsels the bereaved, she sees how death affects her parishioners and she does not take such a subject lightly.  Rachel is an Artist too. She uses words and music as her medium and understands the importance of the power of creativity.  So I cannot turn up at her church with substandard paintings and substandard thinking.  She wouldn't stand for it.

I am looking forward to opening the exhibition next Saturday and I am so happy to have Rachel's support and help.  I look forward to meeting you all next week. 

Steve as Christ Head.  Oil on wood 24" x 24"

Filming of A Graceful Death Starts Today (And Other News)

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the Jesus on the Tube image story and image
www.antoniarolls.blogspot.com for an account of an Artist and Mother in Bognor Regis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl44L6Izrd0 for a short film from the first weeks of creating the A Graceful Death exhibition by Bertram Somme

Filming Starts Today And Other News

Preparations for the Manchester A Graceful Death exhibition are moving along. The  exhibition details are below -

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St Nicholas Church, 408 Kingsway, Burnage, Manchester M19 1PL

From Saturday 19 February to Friday 25 February

In the Church

Opening Times

Sunday to Friday open from 12 - 1 pm and from 7 - 8pm

All other viewings happily supplied via appointment through Rachel on 0161 432 7009 

OPENING NIGHT SAT 19 FEB FROM 6PM - 9PM

CLOSING NIGHT PARTY FRIDAY 25 FEBRUARY FROM 7PM - 9PM

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Today, Neill Blume comes with his camera and we start.  We have decided to make a film with two story arcs.  

The first will be the creation of A Graceful Death - the story of how it began, and how it is still being created.  We will show how I manage the exhibition, how I take it to new venues, who I speak to, the nitty gritty of transporting the paintings and poetry, setting it all up and the process of inviting the public - or if it a private exhibition, inviting from a specially selected list.  All the publicity and the networking and the nuts and bolts behind the scenes will be charted.  Plus of course, Neill will interview members of the public who come and see the paintings.  He will talk to the families of those who have been painted for the exhibition, and what it means to take the decision to have a member of the family painted at the end of life.  There will undoubtedly be those who find the whole idea of A Graceful Death very difficult, and that will be important to chart.  Also taking part will be those who have helped in the making of the exhibition and who have hosted it.  What do they think of the exhibition now, after having agreed to host it?  

The second story arc will be the filming of those who are being painted for the exhibition.  Both those at the end of their lives, and those who I call Survivors.  Those of us who are left behind and somehow survive the grieving process.  We are very important people.  Life is still there for us, we have no choice but to go on living.  Before making a painting of someone for the exhibition, I go and meet them.  If possible we talk about what I am doing and what they want from it.  To spend time with the dying is sobering and humbling.  I cannot ever get used to it.  But I am compelled to honour this part of their lives, if I can.  And what they say can be so important.  When I went to speak to Peter Snell in his hospice, he was too ill to speak, and so his wife Anne spoke for me.  Peter didn't live to see the painting, but when he asked to be painted he was clear that he wanted his death to help others.  

Peter Snell and his wife Anne.  Oil on wood 24"x 24"

So today, we start the ball rolling.

Other News

The paintings are being delivered to Manchester to Rev Rachel Mann by the weekend.  They are coming from Dublin and are being couriered over by the kindness of an Irish business man who has put himself out to help.  I am going up this weekend to check them and to see if they have survived the journey. 

In the Spring, I am hoping to paint the portrait of an inspirational young man in his 40s, who is dying of MND.  He is a fabulous artist, a family man, and an all round normal human being.  He has agreed to a portrait, so Neill and I will go and meet him in April, and I look forward it.  I haven't met him, but from what little I know of him, he is witty and articulate.  Wonder if I will paint a wheel chair?  I have never painted a wheel chair before.  Got to understand how it works before I can paint it.  Another little job to do.  Once the meeting is finalised and I have his permission to publicise the painting, I will name him and introduce him to you.  He doesn't really need introducing - he is far more active than I am, he publicises MND and it's 

campaign for a cure.

 Back to the A Graceful Death in Manchester.  A painting of my darling partner as he waited in the hospice to die.  This is powerful and beautiful and terrible all at once.  This is the image that began the whole A Graceful Death exhibition.  It went to be part of an exhibition in Glasgow Cathedral a few weeks after Steve died, and the man who was curating in the Cathedral said of it,  "Ah.  A graceful death." which was how the exhibition I am now producing got it's title.  A big thank you to that inspired curator.

A Graceful Dying.  Waiting in the hospice, a few days to go.  Oil on wood, about 12" x 9"

Opening Night is on Saturday 19 February, at the church, from 6pm to 9pm.  See you all there.

BBC Radio Manchester Inverview In February About Exhibition

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the well known Jesus on the Tube image and story
www.antoniarolls.blogspot.com for an account of an Artist and Mother in Bognor Regis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl44L6Izrd0 for a short film by Bertram Somme of the very start of the A Graceful Death series of paintings

BBC Radio Manchester Interview Coming Up -

 

A Graceful Death Exhibition

St Nicholas Church

408 Kingsway 

Burnage

Manchester M19 1PL

Opening Night Saturday 19 February from 6-9pm

Closing Night Party Friday 25 February from 7-9pm

Open during the week daily from midday-1pm and from 7-8pm

And also by appointment on 0161 432 7009 with Rev Rachel Mann 

The preparations for A Graceful Death are in full swing and slowly things are happening.  To arrange this exhibition means that we all have to do hundreds of seemingly unconnected little things, and wonder how it will all come together.  And suddenly it does.  It comes together and we can see where it is going.

Today I spoke to a very nice man at BBC Radio Manchester.  He has arranged for me to speak to Heather Stott on Friday 18 February, somewhere between 10am and 10.30.  I am very happy about this,  Heather Stott sounds a lovely lady, and I hope A Graceful Death will come off well in the interview.

I took a mad notion to ask someone I know who has come through the grieving process, if I could paint her and have it all done by 17 February.  This very admirable lady lives in Ireland, and I would have to work fast and over the internet to do the portrait in time.  However, if she agrees, it will be worth it.  Her story should be on the blog here one day.  

So this is a small blog to update you all on the progress of the exhibition being set up and sorted out, for Manchester.  Next weekend, I go to stay with Rachel and receive the paintings which are being driven all the way from Dublin directly to Manchester by an extremely modest and kind man, who has offered to do this to help support the A Graceful Death exhibition.  I have not seen the paintings for a couple of months, so it will be great to see them again.

I look forward to seeing you all there on Saturday 19 February from 6 - 9pm too.  Or at any time during the week by appointment with Rachel, or at the Friday Closing Party on 25 February from 7 - 9pm.

A Graceful Death In Manchester, Filming And Exhibiting

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for my other website
www.antoniarolls.blogspot.com for an account of an Artist and Mother in Bognor Regis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl44L6Izrd0 for a short video account of AGD at the very beginning by Bertram Somme

A Graceful Death In Manchester, Both Exhibition And Filming In Process

St Nicholas Church, 408 Kingsway, Burnage, Manchester M19 1PL

From Saturday 19 February to Friday 25 February

In the Church

Opening Times

Sunday to Friday open from 12 - 1 pm and from 7 - 8pm

All other viewings happily supplied via appointment through Rachel on 0161 432 7009 

OPENING NIGHT SAT 19 FEB FROM 6PM - 9PM

CLOSING NIGHT PARTY FRIDAY 25 FEBRUARY FROM 7PM - 9PM

 

With huge thanks to the Reverend Rachel Mann for this showing of A Graceful Death in Manchester.  Rachel has offered her church, St Nicholas in Burnage, for the paintings and poetry to be shown for a week.  The  details are above, and everyone is welcome.  There is the Opening Night Party and the Closing Night Party to which you are warmly invited.

It will be the first time A Graceful Death is shown in a church.  The paintings are full of love and compassion, which will be enhanced by the atmosphere of a church.  Many of us feel there is a spiritual dimension to our experience of bereavement, and many believe that our dying loved ones go straight into the presence of God.  Showing the paintings and poetry inside a church, where they are visible during services and to the public during the times the church is open, gives a comforting extra dimension to the effect of the A Graceful Death exhibition.

Dying and Death in Religious Art is an old theme.  There are many very moving paintings and sculptures of the crucifixion of Christ.  There are representations of the deposition - Christ taken down from the cross and held in his grieving mother's arms - and there are paintings of the entombment of Christ.  For example, look at Matthias Grunewald's disturbing Crucifixion 1510-1515, from the Eisenheim Altarpiece.  How painful and distressing is that?  As a child of about 6, I was shown a Giovanni Bellini deposition of Christ, which seems to be called Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels - except that the figure on the left is definitely his mother.  This painting changed my life.  I had only seen pretty pictures before and the power of this painting made me aware, in my little mind, that life was bigger than I had thought.  It has remained one of my most wonderful childhood memories.  And see Mantegna's Entombment of Christ, in the Brera Gallery in Milan, for a stark image of a dead body.  Painted in around 1500, it is a very stark image.

At this exhibition, Neill will begin his filming of the documentary of A Graceful Death, and will be quietly showing the paintings in situ, the reactions of those who are seeing them, and how the whole A Graceful Death works.  

Eileen Rafferty, my dear photographer friend, will be photographing the entire exhibition experience too.  We are writing a book on the paintings and on the story behind it.  Eileen will be photographing Neill filming, at some point too, which will be interesting.

Please come to see the exhibition.  It is profoundly moving and profoundly hopeful.  It is loving and it is raw.  Come and join us at the Opening and the Closing Night Parties.  I look forward to meeting you all.

A Graceful Death Film. The Beginning

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the Jesus on the Tube image and its story
www.antoniarolls.blogspot.com for an account of an Artist and Mother in Bognor Regis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl44L6Izrd0 for a small video of the beginnings of the AGD exhibition by Betram Somme

The Film Of A Graceful Death And What It Means

I have teamed up with a film maker to make a documentary film of A Graceful Death. 

The effect of the exhibition has been far reaching.  I have met and spoken with the most wonderful people while doing the A Graceful Death;  I have read some moving and deeply felt poetry, read some excellent writings, and had the honour of painting brave people at the end of their lives.  Creating an exhibition on such a subject as the End of Life and using Art to explore it can become utterly consuming, and I find it difficult to do all of it myself.  I long to talk to people about what is happening with the exhibition, I want to hear what the feedback is, I always want to hear what those who have a story to tell tell me, and I am moved and humbled to paint people who are at the ends of their lives - and I have to promote the exhibition, find the venues, raise the funds to go there and put it on - it is hard work to maintain and to do it all well.  

My friend Neill Blume is a film maker.  His response to the paintings was immediate and emotional, and he was very sure of how the film should be made.  I am in good hands with him, and he understands how sensitive - and how fantastic - this subject is.  We will introduce the story of A Graceful Death, and then film the preparation for an exhibition.  The actual exhibition will be an important feature, we will be able to interview those who wish to talk, about their reactions and their thoughts on the various subjects that it raises, about how it is to die, and what their story is.  Others who have had significant roles in making the A Graceful Death work will also be interviewed.  

The film is intended to carry the message of the exhibition further, to audiences that will not be able to come and see the paintings, but who have shared this experience of death and dying, bereavement and loss, love and hope.  We hope the film will be shown in as many places as possible, and will also accompany the paintings to each and every exhibition and talk and discussion of and about A Graceful Death.

Neill is a very sensitive and talented man, an artist through and through.  He is a thoughtful fellow, and has twenty or so years of film making for corporate and private clients.  We are thrilled and excited to be doing this film, but, terribly nervous too.  It is a big theme, a big undertaking, and it has to be done well.  Brilliantly, in fact.

  Part of the process is that we have to raise the money to make it.  We have begun to put that in motion, and will be fund raising in all sorts of ways soon.  We have talked to a couple of helpful and experienced fund raisers in the arts, and will be making a short promotional video next week with which to start our campaign.  Bearing in mind that this project is now all of two weeks old, we are inspired but have a long, long way to go.

A Graceful Death goes next to Manchester, the exhibition will be starting on the 19 February, in St Nicholas Church, Burnage.  The next blog entry will be about that.  Keep your diaries free, and come to the opening night at St Nicholas on that Saturday, 19 February.  Details in the next entry, within a couple of days.

Of course, when we have done the first promotional video, we will put it up here and you can all see it.  And donate.  You know you want to.

Until then - onwards and upwards.

Wise Words And A Graceful Dying From Canada.

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for my other website
www.antoniarolls.blogspot.com for an account of an Artist and Mother in Bognor Regis

Wise Words and A Graceful Dying in Canada

My Dublin Hosts had an email from their family friend, Isabel, in Canada, on being invited to the exhibition of A Graceful Death in Dublin.  It would have been very amazing if this friend could have come, as she lives so far away.  This is her reply, and I have her permission to include it, because I think she absolutely got the whole idea of the exhibition.   I thought Isabel's reply was incredibly insightful and thoughtful.  Here it is.  Thank you Isabel.  And thank you Brian, who gave his permission for us to know about how his wife died her graceful death.  A quick note - I am known as Toni to some, Antonia to others.  Toni in this account, is me.

"Wow, I wish I was there.  It is rare in my experience for people to address death openly, acceptingly.  But art is such a wonderful venue for difficult subjects;  I'm certain your exhibition will be so much more than just an "art show".  I'd love to be a fly on the wall...

Even as I check out her blog, view some of her paintings, I think of the only person I know personally who has been open, vulnerable and somehow inclusive in how he's dealt with death.  And I feel compelled to tell you; oddly, because of Toni's paintings and your hosting of her works.  My friend Brian's wife died from a quickly metastizing throat cancer that felled her within three months.  He brought her home when they knew the time was close.  She lived in a hospital bed that they set up in her room.  On the day of her death, knowing her time was obviously rapidly approaching, he put her in her favourite dress, played her favourite music, and her family was all there, surrounding her.  They all said goodbye, they all talked with her, laughed and wept at her bedside until she finally slipped away.  I was moved by the way she ended her life, with dignity and love, despite her pain and difficulty in leaving her children, her step-children, her husband, her life.  He shares that information willingly;  while not at peace with her end, he embraces it wholly.  I've come closer to acceptance of "the end", in his relating of her story, of her death.

Because death seems to be treated so mystically by religion and society, or brutally by the media, or without a thought (in denial) by people like me, the living, it's something special to see a person's life's end portrayed so gently, so clearly and transparently, and with a certain rawness, a reality, that I for one don't usually see.  what appears potentially to have originated from a need to express one's grief (by Toni), seems to have become a gift, not only from the artist to the viewer, but also from the dying to the living.  That these people are willing to share such vulnerability at such a time...to remove the taboo, to create something transcendental from such a painful experience;  that's an awe-inspiring gift.  I hope the gift was somehow returned to the givers, those that allowed themselves to be observed in their final hours.  And to Toni, who portrays them in their "graceful death".

This, all this, from the simple viewing of an artist's blog because of your most appreciated (but unfortately declined!) invitation.  I wonder what kind of cathartic sharing will occur at your exhibition...I expect it will have been a very moving weekend."

Isabel, and Brian, thank you.  I hope we meet again one day.