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.

My partner Jo and I with our two children (then 13 and 5) moved into the Barn in 1991 after 2 years living in a huge caravan, guiding and watching the building work
transforming the stones to become part of a living place for us and Jo’s mother.
– whilst I worked on 4 days during the weeks in the German School in London – until 2005

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

In 2024 our son with his wife and their two children (then 8 and 4)
moved into the lower part of the barn and extended what was originally a Granny Annex into the place they needed. Their renovation, used the help and designs of my other daughter, also an architect.

Looking at our Barn from the outside, on a dark evening the building and adjacent sheds looked like a well lit…

ADVENT CALENDAR.

I took photos of every window from the outside, with the idea to cut doors into the prints and 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.

To create a calendar I needed a change of scene and the start of A NEW BACKDROP, in this case turning the old one around, and the back to starting from scratch again .

From the very beginning the centre barn room had everything we needed for a living space, but it also suggested a studio and the daily feeling of being

PART OF A STAGE PERFORMANCE

I invited my son with his two children Molly 4 and Finlay 8 to work on this ADVENT CALENDAR until Christmas.

He agreed to come after their supper at 5.30, for half an hour, in the Barn room, and to fill the back of last year’s hangings with their drawings, prints and coloured tapes (and to get bonus sweets at the end).

Later, my other grandchildren joined in and added their designs to the final advent days.

This PHOTO shows Jo’s new pottery before I cut the doors for a card design

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

1st Dec

A first result.

2nd Dec
The unfinished extension.

3rd Dec

A view into the kitchen of the Lower Barn.

4th Dec

View into the “Mega Shed” workshop.

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.

MY BIRTHDAY

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’.

20th Dec A photo of our other
Grandchildren in their house in Frome has been sent and
a card designed in anticipation

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

21nd Dec The new reception and dining room in the Lower Barn with added new design work by Ella and Freya

22nd Dec And a new designs for the pottery by Freya and Ella

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.

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

Finlay and Molly on the trampoline.
Advent, this waiting with anticipation,
is over.
Our 4 cousins and grandchildren are not babies anymore.
They are our motor. They get us going.