Life is Like a Butterfly at Walthamstow Osteopathy & Natural Health Centre
The map was getting quite floppy and damp as we hoofed it up St Mary Road towards what I dreaded to see was some sort of new age massage parlour. When we got there we were able to see a couple of works in the window and a few more on the walls in front of a small receptionist's counter. I opened the door and entered, to be greeted by a quite shy lady sitting on the other side of it. She welcomed us and didn't seem to mind the puddle that followed. Its a very small space, but these are quite small works. The blurb on the guide map said that these were 'paper butterflies placed in boxes - mixing colour and patterns, these insects are not what they seem.' Indeed they are not, though not all are in boxes by the way: some are in conventional frames. Each picture features very precisely cut identically sized butterflies arranged in beautiful patterns, except for one work which has the butterflies overlain with a textured transparent surface with a handwritten poem, beginning 'I saw you dancing on the roof of your house...'

Butterflies have many significances in art and philosophy, including the zen thought that a butterfly can beat its wings a thousand miles a way in an act that sets off a chain of events to transform the world. The lifecycle of a butterfly from egg, larva, chrysalis to imago, has long inspired speculation on the nature of existence and other realities. Butterflies can symbolize rebirth. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once woke from a dream and asked "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"

The transformations in this exhibition are extremely subtle, particularly the work containing eight butterflies made of intricately patterned papers, which somehow reminded me of the repetitive mon of ancient Japanese feudal clans. In a sense they are related, as these mon are sometimes now the logos of many of the world's great corporations, setting the tone and style for the rest. Each butterfly is actually made from the lining paper of envelopes containing bills that have been sent to the artist, each with its own distinctive corporate heraldic pattern, the butterflies thus made pinned like specimens displayed in a museum case and labeled mobile, gas, mortgage, credit card, bank charges, insurance, electricity and land line.

Another exhibit contains butterflies significant for the promotional larvae of the local businesses they have been transformed out of. Like the receptionist in the Osteopathist's, sadly the artist is very shy and does not give his or her name, which is a pity, given that these rank among the most original and brilliantly executed pieces of artistic work that I have seen in many years.

The Human Touch - abstractions, by Valeria Bateson, West Avenue Road
One of the treats offered up to us tourists on the website, was the chance to see artists work in their natural habitat, which, of course, is not in the Tate Gallery but through the net curtains of suburban homes. Valeria Bateson's work is not actually visible through nets, but it is as much fun as if it were, being displayed facing out to the street from the bay window of one of our lovely period terrace homes in Walthamstow. A sign invites Art Trail participants to get up close to the works and invade the space of the front garden, which in itself is a thrill to a tourist in a strange town. I had a slight problem maintaining the fiction and remaining a tourist however when looking at these works. The name is familiar to me from some work the artist had exhibited last year in support of the local orchestra. These are very different from those other representational pieces, being abstract depictions of geometric physical forms, such as local buildings. Although very different from the last work I'd seen, I liked them very much. I was just in the process of writing a little note to that effect in the booklet which had been placed in the porch for such comments, when who should open the front door but the artist herself.

It is the kind of thrill that can make a tourist's entire trip to be able to meet a real live artist when visiting a strange place and discuss their works. I remember being as jealous as hell many years ago when some friends I was traveling with behind the Iron Curtain came back to the huts we were staying in near the zoo in Prague and told me they had been walking past an apartment when they'd heard lovely music playing on a piano through the open window. Their overheard remark about how nice the music was led to them being invited in for an afternoon's conversation with an artist who wanted to speak to some people from abroad. This was at the height of the cold war, of course, when independently traveling Westerners were a rare species indeed- nowadays tourists are two a penny in Prague and don't get the time of day.

Well, after many years I was able as a tourist to have my proper bohemian tryst at last or at least have a conversation with an artist at her own home about her works. I won't report in full what we discussed right here, because I very soon dropped the tourist act and Valeria kindly gave me some advice about a couple of things, as well as filling me in on a few local affairs. She also let my wife and I see a few paintings of hers which are not in the exhibition, which was very gracious. As an unashamed fan of her work I shall not critique it here, because people will just think I am biased, but I would recommend anyone in the area to look up No. 46 on the map and make up their own minds during daylight hours. I think the trip is well worth it.

The Tree of Life and Other Paintings, by Shirley Pountney
One thing I did take away from Valeria Bateman's place was a good tip as to where to go next. The feet were beginning to throb, to be honest and we were both feeling rather damp, but like all good tourists everywhere we wanted to pack in as much as we could from our trip to Walthamstow and weren't going to go back to our hotel until it was far too late. We'd heard about this thing called the Village, and saw on the map that there were a lot of little red dots there. So we walked up the hill towards Vestry Road, on the way passing a house with a sign in the window. I wondered if this was an advert for something on the Art Trail, or even an exhibit in itself, but it turned out to be a poster for something about saving a post office in Orford Road.

We wandered past some sweet little cottages along a pathway, and admired the architecture of some of these, particularly a house that seems to be only as wide as the front door, with a glass frontage making up the exterior wall for both first and second floors. I thought of some of those tiny houses in Amsterdam. The path then opened out into a 'village' scene and ahead of us was the exhibition which Valeria had recommended. It was very popular, being in a room opening straight out onto the pavement like an old fashioned sweetshop. It was all very pleasing to the eye and probably deeply symbolic, even if the ideas were being used from one picture to the next over and over again. Some works reminded my wife very much of heavy Indian embroidered tapestries. There are also a lot of multi-media pieces, in a 'Galaxy' series, ready framed and made of wool, silk, fleece and beads. The paintings were great, if a little 'professional' - beautifully painted if slightly unchallenging acrylics in curvy shapes on big square canvasses. They would not be offensive in most living rooms. The basic designs are a round circle or light source to the left of the smoothed stemmed 'tree' which had some foliage at the top framing the circle. Brushwork is very clean and precise. Everything seemed very reasonably priced.

Vestry House Museum
From Church Road was but a short hobble to the Vestry House Museum, which had a huge banner outside saying it contained a craft fair, or as they put it the 'E17 Designers'. On entry, there was a room to the left which contained some more art being exhibited so we decided to take these in. My wife enjoyed this more than I did, I think- I thought the room was too full of pictures and spectators, but it was also full of the paper take-aways so essential for tourists to feel they have had a good day out when they get back to their hotel. Some were fliers for courses in photography or tasteful cards promoting organisations which have local authority grants.

Pirasteh Gourang has a fine set of photos on display in a series called "Aftermath", probably the most overtly political works which were on display in the museum. There were a few bold statements about the affects of war, photographic pastiches put together, it appears, from scenes in the peaceful environment the artist now resides in, such as 'Now We have Roof over Our Heads' and also some clumsy and somewhat expensively posed questions, such as 'Is this the Road to Peace?' (On sale for £450) posed about the most effective ways of stopping war. The answer to that question I can give her for free, as it is a no-brainer: that way hasn't worked. To see what I'm talking about, I suppose people will have to go along to see the picture for themselves.

The map also said that there were some works by members of MENCAP on display in the museum. If there are, I did not specifically notice them to be any less or more worthy to be on display than anyone else's work. I have to say I am never happy with the use of 'disabled' or 'disadvantaged' type labels attaching themselves to artists and being used as a justification for making a special effort to see their works. Whichever were the works by the disabled artists, they seemed to be holding themselves up in the right company - after looking at Pirasteh Gourang's work I have to confess though that I stopped looking at the names as I was so tired. I was soon just glancing around me in that gallery daze tourists get into, sizing up the other visitors and only seeing works that really stand out.

I wandered out into the garden for some fresh air and sampled a few of the herbs growing there. It seemed odd to see sisal being grown deliberately, as it is endemic in the Lea Valley, but I suppose it does have some sculptural attraction and the people attending the museum did look like a few of them would be into dry flower arrangements. At an annex towards the rear of the museum I came across the designers fair. I was transported to church fetes of my childhood; crowds of competitive women were displaying their clever takes on everyday household objects while pregnant mothers were stoking themselves with cakes from a kitchen at the back. The air was full of talk of the new academic year. A few men in Saturday afternoon sweaters were feigning interest at crafts few people will ever use, trying not to blink too much at the raw politics of the suburban female powerplays crackling all around. These men seemed out of place. They also seemed to have their faces suspiciously well defoliated. I noticed a couple of these fellows trying to sidle off, but there was no escape and they were soon brought back into the maelstrom by their terrifying wives. Still, I suppose the craft fair kept everyone out of trouble.

I had had enough of this quite quickly, but on my way to find my wife, who was still engrossed in the museum proper, I came across the Bremer car and then a room with a few chairs. These were facing a screen with a video (itself a technology which will soon only be seen in museums). The credits were rolling for the end of a piece called 'Elegy for the Elswick Envoy' by Nancy Willis. Like all good tourists, I did not have my watch on, and so being told that the show would commence at the beginning of each hour fazed me for a minute, but then I realized from the guide map that the show was 25 minutes long and it would be 35 minutes till it next kicked off. Why they couldn't just have showed it every half an hour beats me.

Life was by then too short to plan around an upcoming video, so I gave this a miss. Sorry Nancy, but its a cruel world when you are competing for the attention of tired fickle tourists in a gallery at the top of a hill. I did however enjoy the paintings and prints which were on the wall behind the chairs.

I strolled around the regular exhibits of the museum. I came across a display of some old Britains' toys. One of these was a large canon. A friend of mine used to have this exact piece of heavy American artillery when I went round to play soldiers at his place. The mothers being vicious to each other in the craft fair would have banned these for their own kids, I'm quite sure. Far too militaristic, and they could take someone's eyes out. There was also a telephone exchange on show and a number of odd items from factories in Chingford, including some samples of wood veneers.

I learned a bit more about AV Roe: the first Walthamstow, and hence first all-British, plane to fly was a Triplane. My wife rejoined me, and told me she was fascinated about the story of a world war two wedding dress on display. The best photo of the afternoon for me turned out to be one of the last things I looked at. It is one of the regular exhibits in the museum - a scene from about 1900 of a cycle club meeting. Two likely locals in huge late Victorian beards staged a 1960s happening several decades before the word was coined: they rode about the neighbourhood on a bicycle made mainly from wood, dressed up as cavemen in animal skins. Now that's what I call art.