..BLUE MONDAY....

......Blue Monday , New Order and a certain building on Oldham Street in Manchester.......

At the start of my current MA course, when looking at selecting four buildings with which I was familiar with in order to investigate them further , Dry Bar on Oldham Street became a natural choice for the ' House Of The Music Lover ' ; I already had plans and elevations of the premises through having worked on the building for some eighteen months for the current owner with a view to converting it into a 28 bedroom hotel, and it seemed a natural fit with the other buildings I was looking at.

I was interested , therefore , as part of my studies , to sit in on a lecture by Sally Stone of the MMU School of Architecture discussing the creative and dynamic approach by Ben Kelly with regard to the design of both Dry Bar and the Hacienda. This view seemed quite at odds with that of the clients , New Order , whose side of the saga is recorded at length by Peter Hook in his wonderful book ' How Not To Run A Club '. The view of Academia - cutting edge design - versus the more pragmatic view of the client - financial over-runs and mismanagement that dragged Factory down into spiralling debt and a scheme that didn't answer the brief . I suppose my sympathies lie more with Peter Hook , and I am still not quite sure how you justify the reputation of a designer who does his own thing at the client's expense.

My own work on the MA course on this particular project started by looking at the facade of the premises  - my idea was to keep the existing facade as a free-standing ' screen ' and to set a new plain facade some 1500mm back ; this then allows me to explore the idea of ' Liner Notes ' , referencing the information and photos that are tucked away inside album sleeves or inside CD jackets  - all in keeping with the idea of re-developing the building as 'House For A Music Lover '.   I also took great enjoyment in borrowing the tomb from Joy Divisions ' Closer ' sleeve and interring the current owner - who refuses to pay us for our work -
in a vault below the basement................

........anyway , here is Work in Progress

Blue Monday indeed - and congratulations to Manchester City on shutting up United fans for once.

......YOUNGER THAN YESTERDAY............

.......Every so often , when you buy a piece of artwork and end up placing it next to another one , something odd happens.....

This is a really nice papier-mache ' portrait / head that we bought from a gallery in Toulouse..........................

......and this is a really nice little carved statuette from the contemporary art gallery in Ruthin..................and then we put them both together.................

..........and something happens at this point - the space between becomes charged , dynamic........is the ( older ? ) one looking up approvingly ? ........is she being moralistic and dissapproving ?...............or is she just remembering times past , the young girl she used to be ?

I don't know , but what i do know is that the two together are much more than the sum of two individual pieces.

....PAPER WINGS......

Its been again a bit quite on here lately , partly due to life happening in a way we weren't expecting - as in getting mugged in Spain - and partly due to the fact that by the time I return to the blog I find that Google have changed all the settings without bothering to tell me about the new ones . Thanks , Google .......

Anyway , studying for an MA in the Art Department at MMU has at least given me the opportunity to mix with other students and appreciate some of their work ; I was suprised , I suppose , that once you are working in commercial practise how easy it is to become insular / isolated within your own particular field .

One particular fellow student whose work I like is Angela Davis who works with reclaimed materials - papers , books , envelopes , letters - to produce works that have that elusive quality of ' memory ' , suggest of events and times that may - or may not have happened . Similar in some ways , thematically rather than artistically , to my own work that i am struggling towards , I suppose . The problem I am finding is that working in a way that is quite different to my normal working methods , I have absolutely no criteria on which to decide whether my work is any good or I just wasting my time.

I do , however , like Angela's work . check out her website at www.angeladaviesartist.co.uk

FURTHER ALONG

.......Well , its been a bit quiet of late on here , mainly due to pressure of work - and life happening when you're busy making other plans.........

I have been kept very busy working on drawing commissions , three sketches for a design practise in London for a high-end domestic residence and a couple for an interior designer for hotel in a continental city . Along with this we were filming at Velvet Hotel in Manchester for an Australian tv production company - more in the next posting - and desperately trying to keep up with my MA work for the first cut-off assessment point in May ; again , more in a future posting.

All this and trying to run a design practise - and we still find time to go out to France on the car ferry to Santander , at which point , having landed in Spain , we promptly get mugged - passports , credit cards , documents , the lot . If I wasn't so pissed off , it was actually quite a slick operation. The thing that was most frustrating / energy sapping / time consuming was the ensuing beaurocracy ...........moral , don't get mugged in Spain and keep all your documents / cards etc in 27 different locations about your person - not all in one.

Viva Espana

THE ART MOB'S OUT TONIGHT

.......and as an aspiring visualiser , one of the professional bodies that I belong to is The Society of Architectural Illustrators , who are putting on a group exhibition at the Anise Gallery , Shad Thames , London from April 21st through to May 20th this year .

The gallery duly circulated all members with an invitation to submit entries and much to my surprise they duly selected one of mine , the watercolour shown above , entitled ' Florence - the Bank of the Arno '. So if any one is in London around this time try and get along , as I am sure that there will be a really good selection of artworks on show, most probably a lot better than mine !

......the gallery's website is at http://www.anisegallery.co.uk/ for those who are interested..........

......and introducing the latest member of the family to express their artistic skills - granddaughter Erin , age 3 going on 18 , sketching a portrait of her new sister Heidi , age about 5 weeks.......box of markers at the ready.........

...STARTING OVER......

...........and so to work that I have been producing for my MA course - I suppose the hardest thing that I have found over the first six months is having to deconstruct my usual working methods......

Usually sketches are produced fairly quickly with pens and markers , as a direct response to the clients brief and in conjunction with the development of the plan . The work I am starting to produce is quite different , being slowly produced / labour intensive , with a variety of medium and some new techniques . I have come across a really nice range of fibre tip pens that remain completely stable under a water colour wash , and have discovered a fixative for ink-jet prints ! This might seem low-tech but it has opened up some new possibilities . I have to submit some evidence of work in progress by the end of May , so there should be some more work appearing on here shortly.

The work illustrated is ' The Vault Of The Forbidden Books ' , and there is another three or four hours work to be done on it yet...............and I have just worked out that it is the first in a series of 37. Better get on with it , then.............

...HERE COMES THE SUN.....

When Sky announced the arrival of their road racing team in 2010 , with a five year plan in place to win ' Le Tour ' , every other team smirked - it's not that easy................

Things have changed - Bradley Wiggins has just won the first classic of the season , the ' Race To The Sun ', Paris - Nice...the first winner from the Uk since Tommy Simpson back in the sixties .......and with things going to plan , and Cav in the team , whose to say the five year plan won't deliver ? Sky are now reckoned to be one of the top teams in pro-cycling now , so roll on this years Tour ........should be interesting .