A new calendar celebrates Chichester and district as a paradise for the camera

Chichester's sloe fair as depicted in the calendar

Compiler Terry Timblick said: “Some of the photos may be familiar to Observer or West Sussex Gazette readers, not least during pandemic limitations, for our wonderful green spaces like the Bishop’s Palace Garden and Priory Park are unfailingly beautiful and acceptably playful any time, but I hope the pictures’ reshowing is justified.

“How favoured we are to have easy access to such constant delights as village ponds (West Ashling and Fishbourne), West Dean gardens and its detour-worthy arboretum, Arundel Castle and splendid flourishes of bluebells, tulips and alliums, for instance, and those ever-visitable destinations, Bosham and Boxgrove, each with distinctive appeal.”

Terry has been pleased – and a touch relieved – to bring photographic friends into the calendar picture: “I’ve lived in Chichester intermittently for 30 years but have no ‘city under white carpet’ examples so I’m delighted to have a lovely arboretum shot from David Wilson, a regular contributor to the handsome quarterly Newsletter of the Chichester Society (50 years old next year), illustrations reinforcing arguments in its vital vigilante role. The calendar’s October and December pictures are from another newsletter stalwart, Brian Henham, whose stock shows a dazzling flair for wildlife as seen in his various enterprises with this paper’s legendary columnist, the late Richard Williamson. For the calendar, though, Brian has two pix of special events.”

The calendar will be on sale (£10, pp£2) through local StC organiser [email protected] or 07765 048590 or Judy Clark 01243 787798 and Terry on [email protected] (01243 537812), both of whom will deliver free in Chichester area.

Also happening, Jane Fremantle is teaming up with Mike Walker, who taught fine art at the University of Chichester, to offer a pop-up exhibition of sculptures at Oxmarket Contemporary, Chichester (November 22-December 4).

As Jane says: “The American artist Ad Reinhardt once quipped that ‘sculpture is something you bump into when you back up to look at a painting,’ a remark which captures something of the uneasy relationship between the two forms.”At Oxmarket Contemporary painter Mike and sculptor Jane have put their work together in a way which aims to alter any preconception about how the two might go together.

“We’ll be putting my sculptures much closer to Mike’s paintings than you would normally expect,” explains Jane. “There’s a synchronicity of form between the sculptures and the paintings, a series of echoes, and we wanted viewers to see them simultaneously, so that you might almost forget about the boundaries between two and three dimensions.”

Jane has an MFA in sculpture from West Dean College.