Miro/Hepworth

Why does the sun always shine in Yorkshire? I don't know but it was blazing away last Saturday, making the grass look greener than it had in Manchester that morning. And yes that really is a Miro sculpture I see before me. The Yorkshire Sculpture Park looks fabulous on a bad day, and in the sun, viewing the current Juan Miro exhibition, if you half closed your eyes you could almost imagine being somewhere several degrees of longitude further south, the scent of wild thyme on the breeze, azure waves breaking on white sand ...
Well, almost.
I was at the YSP courteousy of Blog North, a new network of bloggers organised by Creative Tourist and Culture Vulture. Blogging consists of sitting on your own in a room staring at a screen, so it was a pleasure and delight to walk about in the fresh air, look at some of the finest 3-D objects created in the twentieth century and meet real people. (Yes, I clearly should get out a bit more.)
We hopped on a bus to the amazing Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield, where I desperately wanted to stroke the sculptures, so curvy and smooth and priceless, but for some reason they were under perspex. How's this for a quote from Barbara Hepworth though:

"I the sculptor am the landscape, I am the form and I am the hollow, the thrust and the contour."

I could have spent a lot longer at the Hepworth Gallery, and it's worth visiting for the stunning views from the gallery windows alone. This visit was all about me, but I couldn't help noticing a fun-looking playground outside and the fact that next weekend (19th-20th May) there are all manner of free and family-friendly events taking place, as the gallery celebrates its first birthday. And I'd recommend the YSP as a great place to take the kids if they need to let off steam in the great outdoors.

All that gorgeous art was a perfect cultural reviver before the start of the Prestwich Book Festival. One of the multitude of bloggers I met was the lovely and talented Kate Feld, who will be appearing at the Church Inn in Prestwich tomorrow Thursday, 17th June at 8pm. Don't miss her!