Norwich

Top: Bernard Reynolds. Head.
Lower: Joanna Reynolds, Goddess in garden

I spent most of Sunday in Norwich, following an evening at a wedding-party for a friend who is finally marrying at fifty-plus.

I've not been to Norwich many times before, as it's a long way both from Bristol and Teesside, and there's not much around it. However, the city itself is lively, with some beautiful quaint streets and historic areas. Joanna, my cousin, lives there and showed me around the prettiest areas including the ancient Castle Mound. Her father was a sculptor who was locally well-known, and one of his bronzes is located upon the Mound. It's a strange, modernistic piece which looks vaguely parrot-like and partly like a medieval helmet.

Jo is also a sculptress, whose work makes me feel inadequate and uncreative. Her best pieces, I feel, are the Goddess series which she created a few years ago: ceramic ovoids with a serene beauty yet recognisably humanoid. They're the sort of form which ought to found in prehistoric sites, but never are. There's an element of a Minoan Venus and of arrowheads about them, that looks distinctly prehistoric and Freudian, appealing to my most basic aesthetic senses. They're lovely.

:)