Telepathy with Aliens

Lois has returned from a week at The Glass Hub (www.theglasshub.co.uk). In the car, along with a week's laundry and the camping kit was a large cardboard box containing the pieces she made.

Aside from the main purpose of the week, I think Lois made telepathic connection with some aliens from outer space who obviously wished to get across something of what they look like.

The result is a collection of pieces that I'm sure are trying to send messages to me.

I cannot claim to be an artist, but I do have a vivid imagination. This usually makes itself felt through writing fiction, short stories and novels with the occasional poem. I was a hobby potter for thirty years, until the arthritis in my wrists and fingers made writing more fun than pottery. Lois, on the other hand, really is an artist. I cannot escape art, we go to galleries and exhibitions and are surrounded at home by pictures, art works in glass, a few sculptures and what's left of my pots.

From this experience I have come to my own taxonomy of art. Until now I have always thought that there were fundamentally two kinds of art; extroverted and introverted. Some art works have a presence, dominating the space around them, others seem to draw the mind inwards, sucking attention into themselves in the best cases but often somehow diminishing their impact.

Some introverted pieces are amazing, particularly some works in glass. They pull your eye into the piece almost defying you to leave, risking your imagination being trapped inside the work forever.

I prefer the extroverted pieces, the ones that hold their own in the world, that insist on being noticed, Rodin's Burghers of Calais or Rowan Gillespie's Famine Memorial would be good examples, or on a smaller scale Lucie Rie's pottery.

So what has that got to do with Aliens? When I look at the four pieces that Lois made last week I see figures with a story aching to be told. Unfortunately the story seems to be in a language that no one knows.

How did these crazy pieces of glass come to be made? Lois can't seem to say what they are. Telepathic signals from Aliens in outer space may be one explanation; how else would creatures so different from ourselves get their message across?

There is a fifth figure missing from this collection. Why is it missing? Because Lois could not describe it, either in words or with her hands. This was clearly a creature so mysterious that its shape could not be created in three dimensions. A creature that can only be seen in the imagination may be a third type in my art taxonomy. I now think that art forms, like people perhaps, come in three kinds, extroverts, introverts and weirdos.