Advent Calendar

For Christmas 2023, 2024 and 2025 I created displays of family photos, friends and guests on wall hangings in our Barn.
It showed changes of this place over the years with the people living in it.

From the very beginning the central Barn Room had everything we needed for a living space and for extended family gatherings but also suggested a studio and the daily feeling of being in a living theatre, like

(P)ART OF A STAGE PERFORMANCE

I decided to start a NEW BACKDROP,

in this case turning the old one around, and using the empty backs.

In November 2025, looking at our Barn from the outside on a dark evening the building and adjacent sheds looked like a well lit.

ADVENT CALENDAR

If you would like to know what happens behind these widows I will get you in touch with all the people and our five grandchildren.

I start with telling you something about this photo I took In 1987, when Jo and I on a misty and wet day entered what became OUR Barn.

On the first floor, we came across this completely dark room. I liked it, and casually said, I see this as my future Studio.

But also I loved the golden sand stone walls that reminded me of a church in Italy called Fossa Nova = Born out of a ditch.

What got us to this place near the Welsh Border ? Searching for a new start, we were stepping into the Unknown.

Just to remind you, my Website is designed to show products and workshops. Both intertwine. I like to be an artist and a teacher, therefore have you in mind as my reader.

And … I like to create a story.

Seeing this photo of the dark Barn Fron Uchaf NOW again made me think about what happened to Jo and me in 1975 and how it inspired us to wanting to start yet again in 1987:
In 1975 after Jo had come across an empty double house in Bethnal Green in London, locked with iron bars and covered in black soot inside, we turned that place with 2 other film makers
into the FOUR CORNERS Film workshop.

What a deja vu!!!
Therefore, before working on a 2025 Advent Calender, I give you a historical discourse of this barn as if you enter an old castle with its own history.

At Easter 1987 this building was not even on the market.

I instantly loved the iron based colour of the stones.

Jo’s sister Sarah on her first visit to the Barn in 1988, assessing the structure.
She and her husband, then living and working in Liverpool as architects, advised and helped us in every way possible to turn this Barn into Our new base.

The problem was that we had to drill for water. That took 3 months and 3 tries before, from 40 meter down, water emerged.

In 1991 as a family of four, Jo and I, with our son (then 11) and our daughter (3), moved UP to the Barn, but for 2 years lived in a huge caravan, guiding and watching the building work transforming the “golden” stones to become a living place for us and for Jo’s mother, whilst I, during the week, taught in the International German School in London, living in bed sits.

Jo and Sarah inside the caravan.

My German daughter Cora (then 20) stayed with us to help with the stone work before going back to Bremen to do an apprenticeship as a roofer.

Cora and her husband Paul, both as architects and builders in their own right, renovated the upper end of the barn into their living space and moved in, in 2013, with their daughter Tilda, born in 2009.

In 2024 our son Bob ,with his wife Tracy and their two children Finlay (then 8) and Molly (4), arrived.
They moved into the Lower part of the barn and extended what was originally the “Granny Annex” into their place. The renovations happened with the help and designs of our daughter Louise, also an architect. She lives and works, with her husband Gabe and their two daughters, in Frome. In 2025 Ella was 8 and Freya 5.

I took photos of every window from the outside with the idea to cut doors into the prints and to create
white spaces for any creative act by the children.
For me, the whole idea of Advent is to counter misery in the hope of fulfillment and fun.

The ADVENT CALENDAR

I invited my son with his two children Molly and Finlay to work on this ADVENT CALENDAR until Christmas.

They came at 5.30pm after their supper to fill the empty backs of last year’s hangings with their drawings, prints and coloured tapes, and were given bonus sweets at the end.

Later, my other grandchildren, Ella, Freya and Tilda also joined in and added their designs.

This PHOTO shows Jo’s new pottery before I cut the doors for card designs.

We glued ‘the art’ into the empty spaces or into one of the doors.

1st Dec
a first result

2nd Dec
The unfinished extension and the emerging card.

3rd Dec

Tracy in the kitchen in the Lower Barn and Molly’s ‘WINDOW’.

4th Dec

View into the “Mega Shed” including Finlay’s fluorescent colour design.

5th Dec

The Barn, first floor and, below, the Upper Barn.

6th Dec

Tilda’s room and the colours she used to die her hair.

7th Dec

Bonny dog looking into a “mirror” lake and Molly’s use of a block print.

8th Dec

Finlay’s room, slightly above the main Barn corridor, and Finlay discovering the use of fluorescent tape that glows in the dark.

9th Dec

A View into my Studio from the outside and Finlay’s tape. In order to experience the effect we had to use a torch and to turn all lights off. Molly’s creature wears glasses. She wants it to see it.

10th Dec

A view into the living room of the Lower Barn.

These are MY BIRTHDAY cards.

11th Dec

A door on either side of my Studio at night.
The doors reveal a Christmas Tree on the left and a pink snowman on the right.

12th Dec

A view through my window to pages of my book made for children, showing drawings protected with a vinyl cover in order to draw on top, plus Finlay’s ‘good Laughs’ and Molly’s cut-out of a frog.

13th Dec

‘The Megashed’ with Finlay’s strange drilling figuration.

14th Dec

The window through the wardrobe to the entrance on the other side, at the middle of the barn.

15th Dec The balcony with no railing yet, but the upper part of the Lower Barn with rooms for the children and the parents + fluorescent tape!

16th Dec This divides the barn into 2, the Upper and the Lower Barn + Finlay crosses our part out ?
Molly celebrates hers?

17th Dec Jo in her new pottery +
Molly’s idea of her resting in the sun.

18th Dec A look into the garden room + the decor that might fit a duvet.

19th Dec Molly’s Christmas Tree in the middle of
‘the wash house’.

19th Dec Molly’s Christmas Tree in the middle of
‘the wash house’.

And here they are, the Grandchildren FREYA and ELLA arrived for Christmas

Louise and Gabe sent a photo from their house in Frome – grandchildren Ella and Freya designed the card.

21nd Dec Their card for Bob and Tracy’s new dining room…

22nd Dec …and another for Jo’s Pottery.

23rd Dec Molly’s massage near the loo; “Can’t wait any longer”

24th Dec The woodshed , inside is Paul’s TELESCOPE, set up to create visuals from a far distance that we can’t see +
turned here into a Christmas card.

Now this Advent Calendar has reached its highest point of success.

My daughter Cora created a show outside in this chicken hut left in the grass.

Embarrassing to say, I don’t like Christmas and festive days,

but always let myself be involved.

Am I simply too cowardly to opt out?
… and then “make good” in my own way,
with this ADVENT CALENDAR ?
And that even if it makes me feel secondary or superfluous and not much help for the concerns around me?
I don’t want to be a spoilsport or a loner. In other words, it is ME who is easily somewhat dissatisfied about everything,
and the same about Christmas.
I then navigate an emotional balancing act!!!

If YOU feel similar and want to participate to talk about these feelings, I’m interested to do so. Just that. Talk about it.
Of course, I understand when you say:

“Don’t take yourself so seriously.” Do I ?

I am in two worlds.
Our grandchildren are not babies anymore. They quickly grow up.
But they continue to be our motor. They get us going.

Finlay and Molly on the trampoline. Advent, this waiting with anticipation,
is over.