Topocline by Paul Morrison

I was in Liverpool the other week and visited the Walker Art Gallery while there. In one of the galleries is this huge silhouette of a dandelion by Paul Morrison. It's been on display for a while - but i've not had my camera with me until now to get a shot of it.
Topocline was made in 2005 and is industrial powder coated aluminium and galvanised steel. 

Grayson Perry Dandelion

I went to see The Vanity of Small Differences at Manchester City Art Gallery the other week. It's an absolutely wonderful exhibition with 6 large tapestries by Grayson Perry. Inspired by William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress, the tapestries show the influence of class on aesthetic taste.
I noticed a rather beautiful dandelion on The Upper Class at Bay - shown at the front of the image above.

The show is no longer at Manchester Art Gallery, but has moved on to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery until May 11th - so you have plenty of time to go and see the the exhibition.

Dandelion Wine (sort of)

My friend sent me something from Canada for the Dandelion Archive a while ago - it's the label off a bottle of Argentinian wine she bought - she dropped it in the post to me with a note:

'I didn't notice the label until I was well into the bottle (hence the poor job cleaning and peeling it off ha, ha)'

Well, in the interests of the Dandelion Archive I think she's done a splendid job and the label is now catalogued and safely in the archive of all things dandelion related.

Dandelions and barbecues

Here is another really random use of a dandelion on a 5kg bag of Tesco's lumpwood charcoal for barbecues. I collected a piece of the bag from a friend last summer - it's a bit torn as they were about to throw it out. I like the way the image fades to smog at the top of the bag - lighter fuel and charcoal smoke induced no doubt. I can smell the under cooked, but burnt meat from here - ah, the smell of a lukewarm suburban summer evening - lovely.

Raffaello Sanzio's dandelion

Ages ago I went to Rome for a few days to visit galleries and museums and eat lovely food and drink great wine - a fab trip.
While there I visited the Galleria Borghese - an amazing museum with some of the world's most incredibly beautiful artworks, and it was while in the gallery i spotted a dandelion.
If you look very carefully it's in the bottom left corner - a tall dandelion with a head of seeds in a perfect globe - in this La Deposizione di Cristo painted in 1507 by Raffaello Sanzio. Standing on it's own on pretty bare ground i'm not sure what it symbolizes here - the transition of life from one state into another perhaps?