Clare Gaylard Glass 

Some of my 'Lilac Wine' and my 'Coast' lampwork has joined the inspiring range of art at 'Rekindle' an exhibition that will run through December 2015. Heather is a skilled and imaginative framer as well as a gallery manager, so 2D work can be framed on the premises.

The Bees have moved on to the Aldeburgh Gallery until December 2nd. At the opening event yesterday everyone was transfixed by a vast, double rainbow opposite us over the sea.

People often ask if my ivory glass is 'real ivory', it has a beautiful, random, grain and reacts to certain other colours in an organic way. It is also a 'soft' glass and lends itself to sculpting. These masks led off from my vivid 'Mars' theme as I came across some very serene, ivory masks from Benin. I'm always happy to take my 'Africa Adorned' book down from the shelf, (sadly now out of print) it is overflowing with stunning photographs of adornment across the continent.

'I lost myself on a cool damp night
Gave myself in that misty light
Was hypnotized by a strange delight
Under a lilac tree
I made wine from the lilac tree
Put my heart in its recipe
It makes me see what I want to see...
And be what I want to be....'

That would be 'Short Stories' told in glass and textiles by Clare Gaylard and Jayne Stansfeld. At The Quay Gallery, Snape Maltings. Beyond us, the Henry Moore statue, then the Benjamin Britten concert hall, and an orchestra warming up as I left tonight. Beyond that, the river widens and there is a long, low, line of fen, reeds and a vast expanse of sky. In its own way as lovely as any place I have been in.

So in a positive welter of nudes at the Palais Royal in Paris I came across a female glass worker in sensible working clothes. Oblivious to the onlooker and pretty pleased with that thing she just made, I'd love to know how she evaded the overwhelming theme of female wardrobe malfunction.

I saw Artemis at the Louvre too, proudly holding her owl, and it took me straight back to Dr Seuss. 

A last moment, budget, barely-planned weekend in Paris and we found (on arriving) we were staying on the same street as the thing I wanted most to see. I particularly love Moreau's sketches and unfinished paintings and came here last as a student, his life-long home, a vast, tranquil town-house lined with paintings, sketches and objects-vertu. His clearly wasn't a rags-to-riches story.....

The French Symbolist era, plenty of doomed charm and fabulous story-telling. Moreau had a tendency to over-work and over-refine, so I find his best peices are held or left at a state of semi-abstract suggestion. There are a lot rather limp Pre-Raphaelite drawings on the ground floor, the fun starts when you get up to the stunning family rooms then the vast, atalier rooms upstairs.

The Quay Gallery, Snape Maltings 10am-4pm. Exhibition and work for sale, we are both inspired by narrative and storytelling, Jayne through textles of all kinds, for myself glass, drawing and painting.

I met this statue first without realising it, as an art student enjoying the polemic craziness of the Futurist Manifesto: 'We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of danger and of temerity.' Marinetti went on to declare: ' ....a roaring car that seems to be driving under shrapnel, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.' Then I saw photos and knew her as 'Nike' or 'Winged Victory' for some years before I connected the references.

An art exhibition on the 5th&6th of August in aid of this lovely 14th century church in Great Glemham, forty-eight local artists and a wide range of media including my glass. There is the recently opened Crown Inn for excellent food and if you are not heading for the coast, Framlingham Castle and Shawsgate Vineyard a few moments drive away.

We went to see Greek Treasures from the Louvre when it visited Singapore in 2008 (I think) some experiences take a long time to filter through!

I have wanted to get close to this for some years. Gormley's  Angel of the North. We've seen a lot of the wings so I'm looking at a less aspirational (but crucial) alternative part. It feels just as good as it looks.

We saw the James Turrell exhibition at Houghton House on the weekend. The main illumination didn't start until dusk, despite a blue moon and a summer evening it was cold so we just watched (rather than recorded) the tranquil play of light and colour. So I offer a fountain of water and fire from the walled garden by Jeppe Hein. Noisy, pungent and strangely enjoyable.

'.....Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.'

Yeats, feeling his age, the whole poem needs to be read or you might come away with an idea of Hans Christian Anderson's 'Nightingale' rather than a lovely concept of inspiration and artistry transcending death and corporeal reality. I started work on Byzantine inspired rings and stories last year and then had the chance to visit Istanbul in April, the ancient gold and glory of Hagia Sofia is still fresh in my mind.

Late birthday jaunt, tickets for one of the last red-eye slots (2:15am) for the girls and I, and a willing night-driver. We set out at 10pm last night and got home at 6am, I don't think I've ever left an exhibition with so many backward glances. We cleared our cameras/phones and had sketchbooks ready but neither was permitted. Actually it made the whole experience all the more immersive and fragile, the sense of having to drink everything in.

I'm still too blown away to have anything critical to say, it was the most hypnotic and seductive invitation into an artists vision I've experienced, light, sound and performance elements alongside a truly magnificent array of costumes. There was a feeling of triumphant crescendo in the choreography of the exhibition, despite the sense of loss. Plus all the unsurpassed architecture of tailoring, diversity of materials, subversive humour and boundless vision. The exhibition runs until 2nd August 2015.

These sturdy, Prague, muses and alarmed owl seem to be caught in a unique moment. I'm reminded of an art-gallery quote from Charlotte Bronte's Villette: '......She ought likewise to have worn decent garments; a gown covering her properly, which was not the case: out of abundance of material - seven-and-twenty yards, I should say, of drapery - she managed to make inefficient raiment.'

Just back from four days in Prague, birthday expedition for our middle child, just turned sixteen. What a lovely city.

...is the name of this caryatid/totem. My tasteful eldest daughter shakes her head and says I am incorrigible.