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In the Tracks of Hercules
Selection Committee
Anne Cluysenaar was born in Brussels, graduating from Trinity College, Dublin, in French and English literature. During a long academic career in Manchester, Aberdeen, Lancaster, Birmingham, Sheffield and Cardiff, she has set up creative writing courses in universities and polytechnics and regularly taken poetry workshops in schools. Anne recently retired from teaching creative writing at the University of Wales, Cardiff, but continues to take writing workshops and to give readings. She is a fellow of the Welsh Academy and is listed as one of its Writers on Tour. She has written song libretti, text for an opera by Geoffrey Palmer and verse text for a millennium son-et-lumiere, Echoes in the Stones, twice performed at Tintern Abbey. She has just finished writing a son-et-lumiere for Caldicot Castle (summer 2004) which contains an adaptation of Le Chevalier au Cygne in assonantal laisses. Her selected poems Timeslips (1997) includes a twenty-two poem sequence dedicated to the metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan. She has also edited, with an introduction, The Selected Poems of Henry Vaughan and her poems have been included in many anthologies, the most recent being Making Worlds. At the centre of Anne�s next collection will be poems exploring the relationship of scientific to spiritual insight through the life and work of the great Usk-born naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer with Darwin of natural selection. She edits poetry for the yearly journal Scintilla. An entry of her work appears in The Oxford Companion to English Literature (6th edition). �In reading The Labours of Hercules, I especially value the insistence throughout on experience rather than dogma or authority, on instinct being transformed into intuition and on the complex nature of 'success' and 'failure' - how both may come together: failure enriching success and success masking failure. Coming closer to writing as the means, I like the idea of working with imagery because my experience as a poet and editor tells me that a poem is a mode of discovery greatly helped by the way images can spontaneously take over from predetermined opinion and show us the deeper nature of our minds.� (Anne Cluysenaar)
Trevor Leese studied Sculpture and Ceramic Design at Stoke-on-Trent College of Art. He began his career as a sculptor for Royal Doulton China and has worked for other well known pottery manufactures as both a shape and surface pattern designer for tableware, giftware, sculpture and tiles. He had his own pottery, gallery and farm museum in North Wales, and has had many sculptural commissions including work in gold, silver, and glass. His designs for ceramics, for jewellery and his own sculptural pottery have been exhibited widely in Europe, America and elsewhere.
He was a senior lecturer in the Ceramics Design and Technology Department
at Staffordshire University, also Bath Academy of Art and Bristol
Polytechnic, a visiting lecturer at Cardiff Faculty of Art &
Design, and on Glass courses at Surrey and Staffordshire He has
run a number of seminars & short courses for modellers and mouldmakers
in ceramics and glass in Britain and Nigeria. He has also been an inventor, developing pottery and glass kilns and equipped for special applications, with a particular interest in the development of low and intermediate technology. He has always been involved in exhibition work, from large international exhibitions of ceramics, to exhibitions of artists and student�s work.
Angela Lemaire is a printmaker, painter and writer who has exhibited widely and whose artists books, prints and drawings can be found in private and public collections and libraries in the UK, Europe, Australia and the States. Much of this work is also held in archive in the National Library of Scotland. Her work has been reproduced in many publications. She has been working in collaboration with the internationally known Old Stile Press with whom three of her books have been published: The Pyed Pyper, after Richard Verstegan, with woodcut and linocut images, The Journey of Thomas the Rhymer, with wood engravings, and most recently, JOYS, passages from the works of Thomas Traherne with linocut borders, wood engravings, woodcuts and a selection of Traherne�s poetry and prose. She has written an illustrated Afterword in all three books. Angela has had many exhibitions in the UK and for the Labours of Hercules project plans to contribute a series of twelve brush paintings and a large woodcut incorporating all of the Labours. In a foreword to her exhibition David Burnett said of her: �as an artist Angela Lemaire sees intently, and what she sees she feels with every fibre of her being. She is, however, and above all a visionary�(who)�not only heals but transforms�. Her interest has been with developing metaphysical/spiritual ideas in art and writing, and for over 22 years she has been involved with the Arcane School, World Goodwill, the Edinburgh Unit of Service and Scotland Goodwill. She also works with Intuition in Service. �Pisander, the Greek epic poet, was the first to recognise a correspondence between the Labours of Hercules and the signs of the Zodiac. The labours and their manifold interpretations are said to represent the trials and tests of the spiritual path and, in this creative arts project, we will be restoring these images to a new wholeness and fresh vision by our group focus - for surely it is ourselves who are the hero who can render these ancient stories into "light-world language�. (Angela Lemaire).
Anders Lid�n is a visual artist who was born in 1941 in H�rn�sand, in the north of Sweden and now lives in H�rn�sand and in Paris. He studied Art, Literature and Aesthetics at the Universities of Uppsala and Amsterdam (1960-67) and at the Sorbonne and the Institut d'Art et d'Arch�ologie, Paris (1967-68). He has given numerous one-man exhibitions in museums in Sweden, Israel and Poland with upcoming personal shows in Hanoi, Vietnam and Warsaw. Anders has taken part in Group Exhibitions in Austria, Canada, China, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Scotland and South Africa, and most recently in the Beijing International Art Biennale, Peking, China and Forum Konkrete Kunst, Erfurt, Germany. He was curator for The One Dimension, an international art exhibition showing influences from mathematical and geometrical principles in contemporary art at the County Museum of V�sternorrland, Sweden (1999). Anders Lid�n's work can be seen on display at Norrk�pings Museum; Landskrona Museum; Sundsvalls Museum; Uppsala Konstmuseum; Statens Konstr�d; Tonhallen in Sundsvall; Cathedral in H�rn�sand; County Residence in H�rn�sand; - all in Sweden; Museum of Modern Art, H�nfeld, Germany; Muzeum Okregowe, Chelm, Poland; Museum of Contemporary Sculpture, Oronsko, Poland; National Museum of Art, Kaunas, Lithuania; Arte Struktura, Milano, Italy; Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, Austria; Stichting Mondriaanhuis, Amersfoort, The Netherlands; Forum Konkrete Kunst, Museum der K�nstler, Erfurt, Germany; Galeria Studio, Palace of Culture, Warsaw, Poland and in public commissions for frescoes in Sweden and Germany. He has published a thesis on Surrealism and "the Case" of Giorgio De Chirico (1971), articles and essays on art and literature, has translated French and English poetry into Swedish and given lectures on The Art of Seeing (London 1996), Aspects on Spirituality and Symbolism in Contemporary Art (Moscow 2000), The Experience of Colour, Oronsko (Poland 2001) and On Inspiration (Pultusk, Poland 2002).
Simon Marlow has expressed himself in many ways so far during his lifetime. He was brought up principally as a musician playing the piano and French horn. As a horn player he was a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. He studied music at Cambridge University, and then concentrated on performing as a pianist, establishing himself as an able accompanist and rather nervous soloist. This period was brought to a halt by developing a wrist condition which his doctor informed him meant that he was unlikely ever to play the piano again. Through the exploration of illness, what was then called 'alternative medicine', and healing he was introduced to the work of Alice Bailey, the Lucis Trust and especially the Arcane School. His involvement with this led to him to becoming a school student and latterly to working as manager of the Lucis Press in London for 10 years until 1997. During this period he became involved in the work of various groups, particularly Amnesty International and the Disarmament movement, and was elected as councillor several times in various levels of local government. All the while he was gradually re-establishing his piano-playing, and towards the middle of the 1990s recorded his first CD with the violist Ivo-Jan van der Werff. It became clear that the opportunity was again manifesting to pursue a musical path, which he now does with great pleasure and enthusiasm � as well as heart-ache when he feels he falls short of his ideals. �The 'Labours of Hercules' project is most timely. The recent history of humanity seems to me to have been characterised by the myth of Faust; we have sold our soul to the devil in order to gain every experience, pleasure and possession of knowledge and material goods. This is particularly the story of Western civilisation and the devil is now asking for payment! In contrast, the Labours of Hercules is the myth or signpost for present humanity � now the world disciple, as we are often told. The 'Labours of Hercules' project can really help to anchor this optimistic myth in human consciousness. This is its challenge and its value.� (Simon Marlow)
Michael Srigley was born on 20th Jan. 1932 in Kent, and spent the early years of his life in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, attending first a local school and, from his eleventh year, Wirral Grammar School. His favourite subjects were Latin, Greek and History. After an inglorious period of National Service in the R.A.F, he spent four years at Trinity College, Dublin and was involved in the College theatre while studying French and English. He published a slim volume of mainly derivative verse in 1956. He next moved to London, worked as a sub-editor for History Today and lived with friends among the Italians of Clerkenwell. After spending a year living in Ibiza, he moved, in due course, to Sweden and has lived there for many years in the university town of Uppsala, working at the Department of English. In 1985 Michael completed his doctoral thesis, entitled Images of Regeneration: A Study of Shakespeare�s �The Tempest� and its Cultural Background (Uppsala, 1985). Among other published works are The Mighty Maze: A Study of Pope�s �An Essay on Man� (Uppsala, 1994), The Probe of Doubt: Scepticism and Illusion in Shakespeare�s Plays (Uppsala, 2000) and a large number of literary articles, many for the Lucis Trust �Beacon� magazine. Concerning his beliefs and interests, he is a sceptical believer. The Bailey books have for long been an inspiration. He has a particular interest in the Renaissance, in symbolism, in the rich ambiguity of language. His heroes are Francis Bacon and Spinoza. �I am attracted to the project because it throws a light on the nature of the present world initiatory crisis through the medium of the arts.� (Michael Srigley)
Kerry Woodward received his Bachelor�s and Master�s degrees in music from Cardiff and London Universities and studied conducting at the Guildhall School of Music. He has been conductor of the BBC Singers, Netherlands Chamber Choir, Akron Symphony Orchestra in America and guest conductor with many international orchestras, choirs and ensembles. Earlier he was assistant to Pierre Boulez, Sir Colin Davies and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. In 1974, after his discovery in London and the making of a performing edition of the manuscript of the opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis, written by Viktor Ullmann in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, he began working as an international opera conductor and has given many performances in Europe and America . He has held academic posts in orchestral and choral conducting, opera and composition in the USA and Holland, been visiting teacher at various English, Polish, Latvian and Russian Music Academies and is currently at the Enschede Music Conservatory in Holland.
�I am thrilled by the potential
of a project which gives an opportunity to rediscover and transform
the wisdom and beauty of these interpretations into a distinctively
original group expression, perhaps never before seen, and sincerely
hope that, diving deep, we offer our unique gifts for the delight
and inspiration of us all.� (Kerry Woodward)
�A creative thinking will be apparent which will express itself in writing and in poetry; creative imagining will produce the new art, the new colours, the new architecture and the new culture; a creative responsiveness to the �music of the spheres� will bring forth the new music. All this will be in response to the creative organisation and the newly directed energies which are engaging the attention of the planetary Logos at this time.� (Alice A. Bailey: The Rays and the Initiations, p. 552)
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