'Then to the rolling Heav'n itself I cried' (1942) 

A new title for an old picture

I have had various requests for 'new' prints of old Hannah Frank pictures during the year, and decided to get a set of them done recently. But what I didn't think would happen would be that Auntie Hannah would come up with a new title for one of the pictures! What happened was that when I showed her the proofs of the one she'd done in 1942, to which we had given the uninspiring title of 'two figures' in the book, she immediately remembered the verse from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam which had inspired the drawing:

Then to the rolling Heav'n itself I cried, Asking,
"What Lamp had Destiny to guide"
Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?" And--
"A blind Understanding!" Heav'n replied.

Here is the picture....

Bopo goes to Glasgow

Bopo Phillips, Lancaster University MA Consultant to the Hannah Frank Project, with Hannah Frank, Glasgow, November 2004.

november news

Lots of news since my last update.

I've just received the video of the booklaunch from my videoing friend who's done a beautiful edit on it. It made me cry, to see Auntie Hannah declaiming her poem, Faerie ... "I stood me there in tall trees' shade".... Phil has cut in some footage of her original drawings and artefacts in her room (which Ed Horwich photographed last year), and it finishes with a longshot on her selfportrait in 1925, when she was 17.... a lovely evocative piece of video.

We've just been offered an original Hannah Frank from an owner who has nowhere to put it - this is great news! the website is obviously doing its job.

But the biggest news is that we've been joined by Bopo Phillips, who's doing an MA (Consultancy) at Lancaster University, and she's going to be spending two days a week for the next six months, working on helping to make Hannah Frank a household name along with the Jack Vettrianos of this world.... we're going up to introduce Bopo to Auntie Hannah this weekend. Bopo is already licking me into shape (have a look at the improved website with info about costs of sculpture recasts, for example!) and I've been doing lots of filing and sorting this week ready for our next meeting.

In the meantime, here is a task for you all. Please go to your local LIBRARY, and ask for a copy of 'Hannah Frank, A Glasgow Artist: Drawings and Sculpture' - edited by Fiona Frank, published by the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre, ISBN 0951320556

And email me when you've done it, and let me know WHERE! (fionafrank@hannahfrank.org.uk)

thanks so much....

a la prochaine!

Fiona