Coquina, columella, puka and berm. These are all words of the coast, and were all new to me. But they weren't the word I was seeking. I stumbled across them when I was googling about in vain for the term to describe the crunchy, presumably metres-deep layers of oyster shells that form the Solent beaches just south-east of Southampton. That word has remained elusive, a mystery like the shells themselves. I took one home and held it in my hand as I drew it, over and over, each time feeling new textures, finding new contours, discovering new evidence of the symbiotic lives that had attached to it - tiny worms and suchlike, but never once beginning to fathom the mysterious life that shell once contained. What is it like to be a mollusc? I will never know - no more than I will ever know what it's really like to be anyone else, confined as we are within our own bodily boundaries.

In today's post, you can see some of my ever-changing observations on the oyster shell. They are part of a 30-metre drawing I started last October. I'm unfurling that very long drawing again, adding to the marks made in situ at The Depozitory in Ryde, and, in its new form, it will be on display together with work on the walls by Hampshire artists Amanda Bates and Adeliza Mole. This includes Amanda's own studies of an oyster shell, among others, and her cartographic interpretations of the Solent, together with Adeliza's visionary landscapes and seascapes painted out and about on the Hampshire fringes of the Solent, and mixed media work of mine from the Island side, including the egg tempera painting at the top of this blog post. Our approaches are probably as diverse each from the other as the ripples on the shell of an oyster.

We are calling our exhibition Solent: From Both Sides Now. Please take this as an invitation to come to our opening event, 6 - 8pm on Friday 2nd August (that's next Friday at time of writing), and to the exhibition itself which is open every day until 18th August, from 11 a.m. daily and with late opening until 8pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

We are delighted also to have permission, from a native of the area, poet Jeremy Hooker, to feature verses from his anthology Solent Shore as an accompaniment to our own work. If you would like to seek out his poetry for yourselves in advance, Preludes has just been published by Shearsman Books, and is just as evocative as Solent Shore, and contains some new Solent poems. But here is one from Solent Shore, first published in 1978 by Carcanet: