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Please note as Volcano Club zines are highly collectable, not all issues are available for purchase. 

Gatekeepers and Murals

My dad sent me this link about the gatekeeper, Pak Asih, of Mount Merapi and his father the previous gatekeeper of Merapi, who had died in the volcanoes last eruption. And I remembered that I knew about this and had written about it but then I found out it was two years ago which pretty much blew my mind as it seems crazy that I've been writing this shit for over two years. I know if I look down the side of my blog I can see the dates but I don't really pay any attention to that. Obviously Volcano Club dates back to 1995 it's just the blog that was created two years ago. I don't know if it's good that I've been doing this so long or that it's how I should mark the time passing.

The gatekeepers funeral

Anyway it's actually a really interesting programme, I particularly like the bit where he says 'I'm uneducated why would I want to go anywhere else', which makes a lot of sense. Then talking about his daughters and how he wants more for them - to be educated and travel. I'm not really sure if this is progress being gatekeeper to a volcano must be very fulfilling and they must have a deep connection with the volcano - I believe him when he says the government gets it wrong. It's all too easy for to dismiss the knowledge of local people as unscientific however the accumulated experience of centuries must have some truth. The role of these gatekeepers to live by the volcano and observing it maybe is as good research and warning system as anything else available.

On more trivial volcano news I have a big space on my wall that I want to paint a mural on - obviously my initial thoughts have all been volcanic. Is this a good idea? Is any mural ever a good idea? I really don't want anything twee so whatever I do has to be actually good. So maybe some kinda volcanic landscape, I've been  looking at 36 Views of Mount Fuji so I'm thinking along those lines, but maybe it'll just look crap and I don't want it to look like I'm trying to do a Japanese painting cos that will look crap. So any advice would be greatly received.

Also you can still buy copies of my zine here

Patterns

I got sent this lovely volcano pattern today from my friend Katy who has these blogs.

I know the angle is too steep on the yellow cano and it's supposed to be Krakatoa, I'm not sure about the bear population in Indonesia either, although I'm never one to quibble over these appearance of bears. The picture is from this tumblr which is lovely and has some other really good patterns. It's originally from this website which like everything great is Swedish.

Eruption

 Here is a nice big volcano painting I have just finished and some other stuff that I have photographed in slightly better quality.

Mount Fuji Scape

Here is a picture of Mount Fuji, I want to position it somewhere in the flat so it looks like a fake window so I can pretend I live in Japan. The little things in the forest are ghosts, I wanted to have people committing suicide but apparently that is distasteful- luckily the forest was rumoured to be haunted by ghosts as well as being the 2nd most popular suicide location.

Semiconductor

Last Wednesday I went to the Semiconductor exhibition at FACT in Liverpool, semiconductor are a Brighton based duo who do volcanic video installations, needless to say I have been wanting to go to one of their exhibitions for a while. They did a residency in Ecuador studying volcanoes and also the practices involved in studying volcanoes, the methods used and the people who do it. The videos from Ecuador really showed how much the volcano is part of daily life, workers were playing football in the foreground of the volcano and there were also pictures of it drawn onto the windows. There were also images of volcanoes in beautifully untouched landscapes which gave a sense of timelessness and absence of the man made which was juxtaposed with images inside laboratories reminding me how modern science compels us to understand and research everything. While I do find beauty in scientific findings there is also great beauty in mystery and bizzare yet logical interpretations of it. Other videos were the formation of crystals which were created from sounds, this is so like Bjork's single, which isn't a criticism as similar things often happened around the same time like convergent evolution which is one of the coolest things in the world. And I if could convergently evolve to be like Bjork I'd be pretty happy. 

While Bjork and convergent evolution are of course incredibly relevant, they weren't actually what the exhibition was about. There was however a room which looked like a junkyard of discarded TVs which showed archive videos of people studying volcanoes. Again one on hand it showed how much a volcano becomes part of life, while monitoring people were eating sandwiches and drinking coffee, but it also showed the wide range of completely mental ways people study volcanoes such as running up to lava lakes with massive sticks and ramming them in and then using whatever is on the end of the stick to light cigarettes. But I can really understand how people do become that obsessive (especially about volcanoes) and I always love to see it probably because I can see myself becoming one of them. There was also a room where you could make your own volcano, by make I mean pour some bicarb, vinegar and washing up liquid down a papier mache volcano, but it was amazing. Sadly it has now finished so you can't go and make your own volcano but I suppose you could actually make your own volcano.

Volcano leaflets

I was given two amazing leaflets at the weekend; the first of which is from Scotland. My aunt went to the Shetland Islands recently- she sent me that picture of the odd volcano monument thing on a beach. Part of the Shetlands were formed by a volcano (Eshraness) - back in the old times when the UK was part of pangaea and close to the equator. This has given the islands amazing and dramatic landscapes, although I've never actually been there so I'm just guessing from the leaflet which guide you through some volcano trails taking you to a magma chamber and beaches where you can find volcanic rock. Even though it's highly illegal Kate stole me some of the volcanic rock which is very light and aerated, you can see it in the photo below. So in addition to wanting to go to all Hebridean islands I now also want to go to the Shetlands.

If you're thinking that all this seems a bit implausible then the second volcano leaflet is far more accurate. My brother is a TEFL teacher- which means he teaches English as a foreign language as opposed to teaching frying pans how to be non-stick. For a lesson his students had to create an island (if this seems like an odd task, he has also made them play Bargain Hunt) and the centre of one of the islands had a volcano. I think it was perhaps bad town planning that the mall was positioned next to a volcano; but it is amazing how much the map looks like a map of Hawaii's volcanoes.

Finally in Volcano news people have decided that volcanoes are so fantastic that they will create artificial ones to solve all the worlds problems. And I'm also finally going to go to this exhibition in Liverpool. I'm sure it'll be fantastic and I will write a full review.

Stamps and Not Stamps.

This time last year I wrote a post about all the volcano related things at Green Man Festival, after my return this year I only saw one volcano related thing at the entire festival- WTF? This was during the singalongwickerman screening, which is where you watch The Wicker Man but you get hymn books, sweets and learn the dance to the maypole song. So anyway Lord Summerisle says his grandfather settled on the Scottish island because of its rich volcanic soils, he then set up a lifestyle of paganism and debauchery (which has always looked like a lot of fun). I'll stop writing about The Wicker Man as it's not really relevant but I have also received more evidence of Scottish volcanoes; which are from my mother and her sister- too freaky to be a coincidence?! 

My Mummy's Stamp Design. I now have England and Scotland so it would be great if someone wants to make a Wales or Ireland stamp or wants to contribute any other stamps. Please email me some, I'm too lazy to make my own zines.

My Aunt found this on a beach on Shetland Islands.

In non Scottish Volcano news - I know it's hard to believe there could be some. 

Here is Isaac's volcano stamp- it's based on a book cover apparently.

I have also been asked if this scenario is possible. While it is not something that one would find in the wild, I say that it would be possible to create using a towel, lots of petals and a very powerful hair dryer. Alternatively you could use photoshop, although as we know - Photoshopping adverts is bad!

I think that's all my volcanic news for now, but there's exciting stuff in the magma chamber (or pipeline for non-volcano geeks). I have read this through but I'm very tired so would like to apologise in advance to my editor and readers. 

First Volcano Stamp

The creator says 

'Volcanic activity in England 
No. 1 Bradgate Park, Leicestershire'. The Precambrian rocks there are 
over 500 million years old.

 Isaac is still pissing about with his but it looks like that'll be ready soon too.

Design a Volcano Stamp!

For the new zine which will be travel based I am going to include some volcano stamps. I have previously written about real volcano stamps here. But I thought it would be cool for people to design volcano stamps. I would put this out as a competition and offer to make the best one but the royal mail ones are shit as you have to have a real stamp next to it and they are all gross so that seems a bit pointless but if you do want to make stamps  here is how. Also doing a competition would promote elitism which at Volcano Club we are against.
Here are my first two stamp designs.

Hopefully you will be suitably inspired to make a volcano stamp if so email to me at augusta.ward@hotmail.co.uk. Just remember that stamps are only about 2.5cm tall so don't write really tiny text on it or anything. If you have anything else to contribute to the travel based issue then email that to me. 

Girls + Zines

As I live in Manchester, I'm not really a big fan of promoting London based things but my friend is putting on an exhibition at Tatty Devine called Girls + Zines. Which rather obviously is full of zines made by girls, being a girl who makes zines, Volcano Club is in the exhibition well anyway I think it is but I haven't been yet, I hope I can make it as it looks pretty great. In an interview with Dazed Digital Barbara said Volcano Club is ace too – it's a really nerdy zine about everything volcano related. This may not sound like amazing praise but I think until this point VCs best feedback was "it looks like the type of thing a serial killer would do in Morse" I might start collecting all these quotes, maybe that'll be the zine I make when I really run out of ideas. 

From Barbara via Hastings, who knew there was such volcanicity in East Sussex. 

Biophilia

Isaac and I went to Bjork's Biophilia on Saturday which was as predicted absolutely amazing it was her last show in Manchester so the encore was slightly more 'hooligan' than all the other nights (which was a lot of fun). Biophilia is about the extremities of nature; from the cellular and microscopic to the galactic and planetary, I have always found these aspects of biology a lot more interesting than the organismal and ecological. But I think this is because I find comfort in the fact that we are insignificant; that life in both the tiny and massive scale is much more advanced and complicated than humanity. Because while we will eventually fade and disappear, life will exist in some tiny molecule and there will still be some habitat in space for it to survive in. In the words of Rick Blaine "it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world" I think that my childhood love of Casablanca has led to my bleak view of the world.

Anyway back to Bjork (I will need to do stuff to my mushroom ragout soon so tangents will be at a minimum), so many of the songs in biophilia were about my favourite things such as the moon, DNA, solstices and cells there was of course a song on plate tectonics. If only she had done a song on photosynthesis it would have been perfect. Every song had some video to accompany it which are all going to be iPad apps and I think the idea is that you can alter the song by playing with the app (which is pretty cool). The plate tectonics one showed magma moving around under the earth's surface and the breaks in continental plates; this was very useful for me as volcanoes tend to be formed around the spaces between these plates. The volcanic ring of fire marks the edge of a tectonic plate; I say it was useful for me as I find it very interesting but don't really know where the plates are and the video showed this. The song didn't have an eruption and seemed to be constantly building up to one but never quite reaching it and was more about the events leading up to it. There was a female Icelandic choir who were fantastic, the other best new songs were the moon one, crystalline and the virus one. However some slight critisms would be that it was half way between a concert and an art installation but not quite either therefore the delivery wasn't quite right so you couldn't really see the stage. Also pretty much all of her old songs sounded better than the new ones, Isaac was particularly happy as she did Mouth's Cradle which is his fav but I loved the time lapse fungi growth to Isobel. But it was absolutely amazing and I might have to buy an iPad so I can play with the Bjork apps.

Sorry this has been very rambling; maybe Casablanca isn't really that relevant so in the words of Bjork 'thank you' (really its funny when she says it as she has a great accent)

I'm sorry

For the lack of activity, it's not because I've lost my love for volcanoes or I've got nothing to say. But I have just moved and have no internet, plus everything is in boxes. Here are two lovely volcanic links while I don't have time to do a decent post.
I really need to go to this exhibition.

Ash pictures.

I'll write something amazing and inspiring soon plus I'm gonna make some blog changes so that's something to look forward to (if you are looking forward to it, I pity you)

Stamps

My Daddy sent me a picture of a volcano stamp which lead me to search for more images of volcano stamps. Which obviously there are countless of as so many countries have volcanoes and are such big features of their landscapes. I love the Lesotho stamp which has a lovely scientific diagram, Iceland and Japan being so great have countless volcano stamps.

 Sadly there doesn't seem to be enough to warrant having a volcano stamp album but maybe I can make some.

Tenuous Volcanoes

This is going to be one of those everything that I have seen recently that slightly reminds me of a volcano posts. So it could be crap, rambling and boring or really amazing and insightful. Firstly this blog is about a year old (it's useful when you have a similar birthday to your blog) so that's possibly good and worth celebrating.

Firstly I've got another track for the upcoming and coming volcano club CD, still waiting for Alice's specially commissioned piece (see interview in Love, Lust and Lava) this video was actually sent to me by her brother. That family are very into volcano music. If anyone has more suggestions for the compliation please let me know.

I saw the film Le Quatrro Volte over the weekend which was fantastic. The opening and closing scenes consisted off an earthy smoking mound, which was very reminiscent of a volcano with lots of lovely little fumeroles. This is how charcoal is made, I suppose volcanoes can also make charcoal . The film has no other volcano references just a lot of lovely goats, a nice old man and a great tree. But it did give me an idea of how to make a volcano like structure and some good winter fuel.

Finally the newly opened Turner Margate gallery actually only has one Turner painting, which is of a volcano, the same painting that inspired the Turner to Warhol exhibition. It's of the Caribbean volcano Soufriere Hills which erupts fairly frequently. I think they were probably planning on having more Turners there but then they saw the volcano and thought that nothing else would stand up in comparison (which is how I frequently feel).

As I predicted the ash cloud was fine and I'm definitely flying to Sweden, YAY!

Karacano

I got sent some exciting volcano art last week but due to easter festivities (mainly eating and getting sunburnt) I am only just getting round to posting it. It's a karaoke machine inside a volcano made by Jack Barraclough for an exhibition in Seoul. Here are some pictures and a link to the video that was played on a loop in the machine. video inside volcano

It's pretty great and I really need to make a papier-mache volcano.
Here's an easter riddle, Why is Jesus like a dormant volcano?

Volcano of the Week #16- Paricutin

I have been looking at Mexican volcanoes recently mainly because my Daddy told about the artist Dr Atl who was a revolutionary in both the political and artistic sense. I'll write more on the subject soon, I'm sure, but I thought I'd first write about the volcano that has made them a prominent feature in Mexican culture. There is also literature on the subject such as Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, which is on my volcano reading list (I do have one). Paricutin is amazing as it emerged in 1941 as the farmer was plowing his fields and reached five stories high in a week. For the first year of it's life it grew rapidly in a pyroclastic phase (high speed gaseous eruptions). The volcano continued growing and erupting then stopped in 1952 at 424m high and has been dormant since; most cinder cones tend to only erupt once (mongenetic). As the trans-mexican belt is large there is frequent volcanism in the area, however it is the rapid growth of this volcano that is so iconic.

 Erupting

 Not erupting

Paricutin is one of the seven natural wonders of the world. (Wikipedia fact of the day is that there are also Seven Wonders of Wales which are all in North Wales so its not very comprehensive.) The Volcano buried nearby villages in ash and they had to be evacuated. While the volcano erupted without warning the relatively small size gave people warning to sort themselves out.  Despite the rapid growth of the volcano it caused few fatalities, the biggest loses were to crops and subsequently livestock but this effect was reduced due to the rich nature of volcanic soils. 

This website is devoted to Paricutin

Dr Atl painting

News Relating to Love, Lust and Lava, I have 20 copies left, let me know if you want one and I'm currently in the process of setting Thera aka Kolumbo with a very hot date!

Volcano of the Week #15 - Vesuvius

As stated before I will try and cover all the volcanoes you can vote for. Amazingly although I have written about Vesuvius before it has never been volcano of the week so I though I would rectify that. Vesuvius has also been on my mind this week as I have received a copy of the exhibition catalogue for the Volcano exhibition that I went to at Compton Verney last year in which Vesuvius was the most widely featured volcano. The catalogue was very kindly sent to me by the exhibition's curator for which I am very thankful.

Andy Warhol- Vesuvius

Vesuvius is such a well documented volcano that it is quite hard to write about, The chapter in the exhibition catalogue is called 'The Romance of Vesuvius' which is very apt and shows how the volcano (the 79AD eruption anyway) is swathed in stories and such a common reference. I'd say about 80% of references to volcanoes are to Vesuvius and the destructive event of 79AD is probably the one that most people of think of when they hear the word volcano. And it's hard to say why as many eruptions, Krakatoa, Laki, have been more powerful and others have been just as dramatic, Santorini which produced the same utter destruction to a civilisation as Vesuvius. It was thought that absolutely no life survived on the island of Krakatoa after the 1883 eruption. I suppose it's partly due to Italy being an important centre for artists which firstly gave it a reputation and the volcanoes popularity has grown. Which is why you find it in paintings by Warhol and in songs by Flaming Lips and Sufjan Stevens (I should probably make a volcano compilation CD) and in novels by Susan Sontang and Robert Harris. I think that for me Vesuvius is almost an embodiment of everything I love about volcanoes, the amount of myth and legend relating to it, the references in popular culture and art, and the geological features of the eruption. I do however think that the fascination with Vesuvius is a very Western thing, as Mount Fuji is an equally well documented and referenced, although doesn't have the same destructive history.

Some people hanging out by Vesuvius 

What I should probably say about Vesuvius is that in 79AD it produced a Plinian eruption (the term Plinian comes from Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger who died in and witnessed the eruption retrospectively) and buried the towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii which were discovered in 1599. The eruption preserved the towns remarkably well has given the town a ghostly and eerie feeling.

Modern Vesuvius

This has been quite a strange Volcano of the Week for which I apologise. In other volcano news I have done lots for the new zine and there will be a volcano round at my pub quiz on Tuesday, I'll let you know how it goes. 

Dormancy

Have been thinking a lot about lava lakes and dormant volcanoes recently, which is I think what inspired this painting.

And Happy Birthday Isaac!

Some people see Jesus in their toast...

A very strange thing happened to me yesterday when I walked through my bedroom door and was confronted with this sight; no it wasn't that a bomb had gone off or someone accidentally let a bull in or anything else hilarious alluding to my tidiness (tidiness is the word I mean)

But what I did find there was that the random bits of blue tac, foam and other stuff in my bed (where else would you keep it) had assembled itself into the shape of a volcano. How did it get there? What does it mean? Was it created by human hand? Is a sign from the earth that volcanology is my true calling in life? Or just a beautiful coincidence? Do I have borrowers living in my room? Is it a law of chaos theory that if somewhere is so messy, something will eventually arrange itself into the shape of a volcano? One thing I am sure of is that Isaac definitely didn't make it...