#ann christopher

Jacob Epstein (US-UK, 1880-1959)

Rock Drill, 1913-15. 1974 reconstruction by Ken Cook and Ann Christopher. Plaster figure on top of an actual rock drill. Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery collection. [eucanthos’ red overlay Chemical Brothers cover]

Originally Rock Drill stood as a celebration of modern machinery and masculine virility. In 1940, however, recalling the horrors of the 2nd WW, Epstein reinterpreted the sculpture much more negatively (sold the drill and truncated the figure):

My ardour for machinery (short-lived) expended itself upon the purchase of an actual drill, second-hand, and upon it I made and mounted a machine-like robot, visored, menacing, and carrying within itself its progeny, protectively ensconced. Here is the armed sinister figure of today and tomorrow. No humanity, only the terrible Frankenstein's monster we have made ourselves into.

Rock Drill was created at the same time as Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel, 1913.

Although Epstein was not officially a member of the Vorticists, the full-figure sculpture has been hailed as the pinnacle of Vorticist art. 

In 2006, Tate Modern asked contemporary musicians to compose music about a piece of their choosing from the gallery's collection, under the project name Tate Tracks. The Chemical Brothers recorded "Rock Drill", inspired by the Torso

You know, I've yet to come across a sugar mama romance (there have been a few books I've read where the hero had a sugar mama in the past but they... were never really framed as healthy relationships which I feel is kind of telling).

There are a lot of historical romances with wealthy heroes and not-so-wealthy heroines (and he'll inevitably buy stuff for her) but I can only think of two heroes who actually have sugar daddy vibes, and both of them unsurprisingly are Lisa Kleypas heroes. Secrets of a Summer Night's hero Simon Hunt is the og; he wants to make Annabelle his mistress and is fully like "tell me your price" and "you could do with a bit of spoiling", and backs it up by buying her really nice boots (the first pair of shoes in a long line of extravagant shoe purchases), and there's a very sugar daddy-esque scene where he buys her jewels and the second they're home, she all but pounces him to thank him. Marrying Winterborne's hero Rhys Winterborne has a similar energy where he thinks plying a gal with gifts is the best way to court her (and plying her with a piano or a greenhouse is the best way to get her to sleep with him which.... does work tbh), and Helen actually has to teach him to curb some of his more extravagant impulses.

Moving onto contemporary recs:

No Ordinary Love by Ann Christopher is similar to Marrying Winterborne in that the hero has only ever had transactional relationships before, so that's all he knows. So this man, Baptiste (he's French) hooks up with Samira ONCE and pays off 11k in credit card debt. She's understandably shocked and tries to make him take it back and as the story goes on, she teaches him that affection ≠ money.

So Sweet by Rebekah Weatherspoon: A classic modern sugar relationship; Kayla signs up for a sugar website but ends up hitting it off with the website owner/Internet billionaire Michael at a mixer and they begin a sugar relationship that morphs into something more pretty quickly. I also appreciate how it dealt with a pretty common misconception about the kind of person who has success attracting sugar daddies (skinny, white).

Skyscraper Cinderella series by K. Webster: Kind of a bonkers sugar relationship; Winston propositions Ash, the maid who's cleaning his office, and then financially incentivizes every sex act (and non-sexual acts) that Ash performs. There's a good amount of degradation involved. That being said, their relationship is actually really hot and pretty damn hysterical.

Highest Bidder by Sara Cate: Fairly run of the mill as far as sugar daddy/baby romances go, but it fits the bill; obscenely rich older man, financially unstable younger woman, he likes to be called daddy in bed, he takes her to Paris at some point.

The Master by Kresley Cole: So Cat is a substitute escort and it's supposed to be a one-night thing, except it isn't, and then he freaks out about her baby-trapping him and holds her as prisoner in his penthouse so she buys a lot of stuff on his card out of spite (or as she calls it "retaliatory consumerism"). That's the sugar aspect, but honestly the highlight is the prisoner bit.

August 2016 E-Book Haul

Source Heather I somehow managed to not buy that many books this month! Hooray! Love on My Mind by Tracey Livesay Feed by Mira Grant Signs of Attraction by Laura Brown Tqwana Heater Moments by Phyllis Bourne (this is a My Harlequin Rewards freebie. You get a free ebook with every 2000 points you earn. FYI, you earn 2000 points just for completing your member profile. Click here and sign up!) Risk…

Marks On The Edge of Space - 12

by Ann Christopher

Medium:Mixed media

b. 1947

Ann Christopher studied at Harrow School of Art from 1965 to 1966 then went on to the West of England College of Art from 1966 to 1969. Christopher’s first solo exhibition was held at the Mignon Gallery, Bath in 1969.

Subsequent solo exhibitions were held throughout the 1970s and in 1989 she was given a retrospective of work produced between 1969 and 1989 at the Dorset County Museum and Art Gallery. Christopher has exhibited in numerous group exhibitions from 1969, both nationally and internationally. Much of Christopher’s work is from commissions, both public and private.

Christopher won first prize in the Harrison-Cowley Sculpture Competition in 1968. In 1971 she won the Peter Stuyvesant Award and was a prize winner in the Daily Telegraph Magazine Young Sculptors Competition. In 1973 she received a Birds Charity Award and an Arts Council Award, Thornton Bequest, and in 1976 a South West Arts Award. More recently, she was awarded Silver Medal for Sculpture of Outstanding Merit by the Royal Society of British Sculptors (1994) and the Otto Beit Medal of Sculpture of Outstanding Merit (1997). Christopher was elected a member of the Royal Academy in 1980 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1992. She is represented by Pangolin London, and lives and works near Bath.

In Place of Shadows

by Ann Christopher