..OUR HOUSE IS A VERY VERY FINE HOUSE.....

 

 

 Well , its Christmas and with five granchildren its difficult to avoid having an Advent calender , so we thought we might as well get a decent one ; this one is lazer cut from ply and arrives ready assembled, complete with LED lighting , and the boxes are just the size for a chocolate...........just wondering now whether to sprinkle some icing suger on as snow........................  

 

 

 Merry Christmas and a happy New Year

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...AND IT's BEEN A LONG LONG TIME.....

.....Design Classics : I suppose at the mention of the phrase , the usual suspects leap to mind - the Zippo lighter , the Jeep , the E-type Jag , the Parker fountain pen , the Barcelona chair and the Charles Aimes chair , various Apple products , all examples of industrial design . Graphic design , not so many , possibly because of the more ephemeral nature of graphics . The question of typefaces aside , I suppose you are left with the London Underground map , David Gentleman's stamp designs for the Post Office , some of the Penguin paperback covers from the 1960s - iconic images all , but mostly of their time . Can graphic design - more specifically packaging - transcend its time ?

This thought wandered across my mind recently when I was in my local art shop buying some Winsor and Newton drawing inks for my MA course work, and it occurred to me that I had been buying them in the same bottles , same labels , same boxes for what seemed like ages - and ages and ages and ages and ages......was I really buying them in this self same packaging when I was last at art college - in 1970 ?.......the best part of forty five years ago ?..........and it's still the same packaging ?  No tweaking ?........even Coca-Cola/ Oxo / HPsauce logos get tweaked......

 

 

 

If they can remain unaltered since 1970 , still in production and still the same packaging then surely they rate as design classics. They were designed by Michael Peters , who won a D&DA design award in 1973 for his packaging design for Winsor and Newton , so they must have been on the shelves before then . Check out the interview with Michael Peters at

www.winsornewton.com/resource-centre/product-articles/michael-peters-interview/

 

........and after all that , I realised when I got back to the studio that I needed a couple of shades darker . Oh well , another couple of really nice little boxes to add to the collection.

...AND LET THE LIGHT , THE CANDLE LIGHT, SHINE

Late November and we brave the Christmas shoppers and the Christmas Markets in central Manchester - row upon row of brightly coloured sheds full of christmas cheer , selling mostly stuff that you wouldn't buy at any other time of the year.......

........and then we come across this shed..................

 

.......and it's lit inside by candlelight..............

.......and it has illustrations inside.......icons..........mysterious  eastern European icons...

.........and they are wonderful.

This particular shed is tucked away inside that enclave of peace and sanity known as the John Rylands Library on Deasgate in central Manchester , well worth a visit in its own right. The illustrations are purported to be the work of one Herman Inclusus , a name that comes from the Codex Gigas ( a medieval manuscript also known as the Devil's Bible ) that is said to have been written by a Herman Inclusus ( Herman the Recluse ). The overall occult mood of the works with their images of plague and misery blended with a more contemporary style of illustration make for a quite impressive visual representation of doom and death , and I really liked the way they were presented , in a quasi eastern european chapel complete with onion dome.

Herman Inclusus is the alter ego of illustrator Stuart Kolakovic : the web site
www.stuartkolakovic.co.uk/hermaninclusus.html
Stuart's own website is www.stuartkolakovic.co.uk - and the John Rylands Library is definately worth a visit.

..INTO THE GREAT WIDE OPEN.....

 

..Into the great wide open
  Under them skies of blue
  Out in the great wide open........

One more piece from my current MA work . One of the Context lectures we had earlier this
year took as its starting point Wittgenstein and the period he spent in Manchester early on in
the last century , something I wasn't aware of . A student at Manchester University studying aeronautics , he took to flying large gliders out on Chunnel Moor up beyond Glossop in the Peak District - an area I know well . Taking this as a starting point , the Context group organises a kite flying day up on the moors , followed by a theatre evening down in Glossop - all good fun.

My own knowledge of Wittgenstein was essentially of the building he designed and built in Vienna for his sister and I was fascinated by the structured thought and discipline that he brought to the design process ,  clarifying his own philosophical ideas whilst resolving the formal arrangements of internal planning and detailing. Records also exist of where he lived whilst in Manchester , both at the Grouse Inn out on the moors above Glossop and the house in Palatine Road in Didsbury.

 So, Wittgenstein , kite-flying , houses , constructions.......................

The premise of the piece of work illustrated is that our hero the Book Lover , with his own house in the centre of Manchester - the ' House Of The Book Lover ' - is intrigued by this and decides as a homage to Wittgenstein and writers in general to build a Kite Flying Platform on the roof of his building , to enable ideas to escape , to float.................pamphlets , notes , sketches are launched from here to find their own way out into the great wide open.......

..TUNNEL OF LOVE...

..I can feel the soft silk of your blouse
 and them soft thrills in our little fun house
 then the lights go out........

The Tunnel of Love - another piece in the on-going story of four buildings in my MA course. There are a lot of things going on here , but then this piece exists in two states - the ' Study/ Work in Progress ' piece , illustrated here , and the final completed work , still in construction .

 


The ' Work in Progress ' piece deals with and illustrates  the ideas , the possible futures for this piece ; the work is still ' open ' at this stage  . The  ' completed work ' will deal with just one of those possibilities , taken to a formal conclusion .

The starting point here is of course the idea that the ' Tunnel of Love ' , the fairground ride , is indeed an actual tunnel , running between the basement of the Art Lover's house and the House of the Dominatrix .

Our Hero is intrigued by the possibility that he can pass from the Art Lover's house to next door unnoticed , the idea being that the tunnel becomes a changing room , a 'Rite of Passage ' . Our Hero is of course in love with his alter ego and emerges from the tunnel in his female persona - the ' Reveal ' . The piece of work contains many points at which decisions must be made ; for our Hero , decisions on the colour of lipstick , the colour of nail-varnish. For me , decisions on what to include in the ' final ' piece , what to leave in , what to take out. References are many - fair-ground rides , pop-art ,  magic , transformation , penny-in-the-slot machines , the Hoerengracht ............

 

HHmmmm ..........decisions , decisions........

..I WAS SO MUCH OLDER THEN.............

........Ah , but I was so much older then........
         I'm younger than that now

One from the archives this week ; I was clearing out one of the drawers in the plan-chest , sorting out some interior sketches to take in to Stockport College for the Interior design students , and came across some photos of old projects. Once in a while - if you are lucky - you absolutely nail a job . For some reason everything comes together - the site , the location , the brief , the client , the time - and , putting no small part of yourself into the job , when it arrives , when it's finished , you know that it could not have been any better . If you are lucky you maybe get five or six or these in a professional career ; I can probably still count on the fingers of two hands the projects I am really , really proud of...........so that's eight fingers , then.

 

 

This one dates from 1974; yes, that long ago . I was still wet behind the ears , only four years out of college , and was asked to design a traditional London wine bar - in Manchester . God knows how it came together - it was all assembled on site , by eye , from reclaimed screens and panelling that at that time were being stripped out of traditional pubs all across the city . A wine bar - no beers , draught or bottled , just bottles of wine , and forty years ago Mateus Rose and Hirondelle were all that anyone drank - well , ok , maybe the occasional Blue Nun - so to design a proper wine bar selling Bordeaux , Burgundies , all chateaux bottled was another world to me 

 

Still remembered today with great affection , it had a wonderful atmosphere , suddenly appearing yet feeling as if it had been there for decades. If it was still there today it would make a fortune - only be duplicated , sold on , rolled out , the energy gradually

dissipating as it becomes just another high street brand. One-offs should be remembered for being just that.

Goblets , Bridge street, Manchester , 1974

 

     

..NEEDLES AND PINS......

Following on from last week's posting re the Art Fair in Macclesfield , I should note that I actually ended up buying three pieces , not two . Our time on the saturday was cut short as we had a train to catch , and I didn't have time to purchase the third piece when it caught my eye on the friday .

Fortunately through the catalogue I managed to track down both the piece and the seller , Louise at
www.drawntostitch.com  and the piece duly arrived , safely packaged , at the weekend . Its a small work in mixed media - ' Cottage on the Moors ' , really nice and moody , delicate stiching over brown paper . Check out her website and her page on Facebook for more examples of her work .

 

 

Many thanks , Louise

     

..ART FOR ART'S SAKE..

Art for art's sake, Money for God's sake....

The bi-annual Art Fair in Macclesfield , in aid of East Cheshire Hospice , has just finished and as usual the standard was very high - obviously a lot of talented artists reside in our local area.

As usual I was tempted , my justification to my long suffering wife being A )  ' well its all for a most excellent cause ' and , slightly pathetically , B ) ' well at least they are better than mine '.......... She made no comment.

I ended up buying two paintings ; the first a work by Jenny Hirst who lives in Alderley Edge . Apparently she ran an interior design business for some six years or so but wisely gave it up to concentrate on her painting ; wouldn't we all love to..........

Oil and mixed media , this one is ' St Tropez ' . We had bought one of hers at the previous fair in 2010 , and I really like her style . I sometimes ( most times ) wish I could just sit down and paint , rather than spend days thinking about and designing my illustrations....

 

 

The second piece was by another local artist , Renata Davies . This isn't it as I don't have a pic of it yet , but this is typical of her style - quite small watercolours sometimes collaged together on bits of paper and card with an intensity of feeling for local landscape. 

 

Both quite traditional pieces in a way , both technically accomplished and something to look at and aspire to as I sit at the drawing board getting increasingly frustrated and wondering just what on earth I am supposed to be doing.......... 

 

AND it's all in a good cause .....................

 



..BAD MOON RISING..

...Night Time......

Our hero is standing outside a discreet doorway on Canal St in central Manchester - The House of the Dominatrix.  He wishes , tonight to be a submissive , to relinquish all control for once , to be punished .But now he pauses at the door , apprehensive - as so he should be .

A voice beckons...........

" Come on in , dear , she won't bite............."

........but of course she will , for tonight is the night of the bad moon rising.........

Back to the illustrative work I am producing for my MA , using buildings that I know in Manchester and the framework of architecturally drawn sections and plans to investigate alternative futures , alternative pasts , alternative presences........

 

This is still a work in progress , probably around 85% complete. This is based in the House of the Dominatrix and is entitled ' Red Riding Hood / Role Play : 1 '. Fairy stories generally always have their origins in old myths , legends and folk tales and I was interested in exploring the initial premise of role play via the Dominatrix through the idea of transformation and shape-shifting .

 

 Our hero enters the building on the understanding that he is to be dressed in the costume of a dog and then be subject to the ritual obediance lessons as required by his mistress - an inversion of the usual wolf / little red riding hood relationship.....the dominatrix is , however , at a certain period in the month a shapeshifter and does indeed become her alter-ego , wolf as the predator ; a far more terrifying presence. 

 

And whilst writing this , it has only just ocurred to me that the red signifies the menstrual flow......... 

 

Hhhhmmmmmmm

 

I see the bad moon rising

I see trouble on the way

I see earthquakes and lightnin'

I see bad times today

 

Don't go round tonight

Well it's bound to take your life

There's a bad moon on the rise

 

 

..MUSIC IN A DOLL'S HOUSE ( FAMILY )

...London Fashion Week , Tuesday 18th September , 1.00 pm , and down in a hotel on Park Lane , London , Anya Hindmarch's Spring 2013 Collection ' Pomp and Pleasure ' begins to roll......or at least rotate...............

Having spent much of the last forty years or so as an interior designer sketching out interiors and then seeing them come to life , it's no longer a suprise when they actually get finished , mostly just a sense of satisfaction.

For a certain Jonathan Chadwick of www.artistictype.co.uk , however , it was ' a most surreal experience , seeing my illustrations brought to life in a full / life size doll's house ' . Jonathan had been approached by the designers of the show , who had come up with the doll's house concept , to produce each and every elevation plus all the details as illustrations that would then be blown up and reproduced at a life size scale ;
eighteen days single handedly sketching out and formatting all the walls and all the furniture to the correct proportion . Not just straightforward elevations, either ; the whole design had an illustrative quality far removed from the normal ' working drawing ' style .The house was then constructed on a circular turntable and rotated slowly to the delight of the crowd , together with  fully programmed lighting and sound effects and complete with Anya playing the organ.........far beyond anything i've ever done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=AMvDUu0CNiM

' Surreal , just surreal ' Jonathan commented.........and since the only thing that I have ever seen that comes remotely close to this on this scale were Hockney's designs for  ' The Rakes Progress ' then maybe some theatre work may beckon for him ? And I did notice amongst the scenery in the doll's house a quasi-renaissence putti that bore more than a passing resemblance to a certain grand-daughter , naked in all her glory.

Like a passing show that has now left town , the structure had but a fleeting presence ;
for Jonathan however the experience will remain with him for a long long time.

And , yes , for those of you who follow the more arcane and obtuse musical references in all these blog headers , the album  ' Music In A Doll's House ' was released in 1968
by the group Family. Most appropriate , I thought.......

...IN THE SUMMERTIME....

.......In the summertime not much gets done on here as we have been out in France , walking up in the Pyrennees and Navarra - Northern Spain really is a lovely part of the country , and walking in the mountains in the early morning
tends to clear ones head...............

But september has arrived , term time for my MA looms and now it's down to work . One sketch I did manage to get done in the last four weeks or so was a concept sketch for a new dim-sum and cocktail bar for Dre Masso in Gerrard St , Soho........

 

The contact here came via Jonathan @ Artistic Type , who has created the logo for the bar and went on to fine-tune my sketch for the press release.............

 

 

 

.....and a fine job he did too.............and we have both been invited down to the opening.

 

More on Jonathan's work in the next posting - Music In A Doll's House perhaps ?

 

...ONE DAY I'M GOING TO SOAR

....." It's no secret that when reaches his or her forties , maybe fifties , almost certainly his or her sixties and seventies , the world as it presents itself in advertisements , talk , technology , dress , movies , music , money and perhaps most of all manners , the way in which people walk down the street , the way in which they say hello or goodbuy or don't bother to do either ,bemoes an affront to one's entire existance. One may reach a point where one's " life begins to go into the past " -that , or your whole fucking frame of reference "..........
                             Greil Marcus , ' Listening To Van Morrison '

.......Well , I suppose as you get older , modern / contemporary music starts to make less and less sense - ot at least become less interesting. True , the ones who have been there for you all along are still producing music that is relevant - Springsteen's and Ry Cooder's last albums put it to the bankers and the financiers big time , Ry Cooder's new one posts cutting edge citicism of the current state of American politics and the spectre of the extremist right wing ,, Neil Young continues to go his own way .......and Dylan - well you either love him or hate him , but at least he is dealing in some ways with the experience of ageing.....
Other than that the current state of the music scene leaves me cold - nothing new , nothing to interest these ears...........................
....And then something / someone somes along and blows all that out of the water......the new Dexy's album seems to come from somewhere else altogether - another time , another place . Totally barking , totally brilliant - honest , painful , hilarious . Album of the year................Wonderful , timeless ............somone just trying to make sense of it all - life , love , warts and all....................

.........and whilst we are still soaring , a quick shout out for ' Requiem For The Timeless ' , Johnnys Rogan's latest - and greatest - biography of the Byrds ......the notes and discography alone is over 300 pages , and this is just Volume One ...........a fitting epic for my favorite band of all time....................

...LONG RIDE HOME.......

.....Sometime back in 2009 , Sky announced to the cycling world that they were intending to enter a British Team in the Tour de France in 2010 , with a view to winning the race within 5 years , Given the relative lack of interest in road racing within the UK and a somewhat lack of success in the race over the past 100 years or so this was generally met with a degree of amusement and scepticism on the continent , amongst those in the know........No chance.....especially after their first effort in 2010 resulted in the team leader arriving in 23rd position.............

In the end it didn't happen in 5 years at all - it only needed 3 - and they did it in style.

Sunday , July 22nd , Paris . The last day of the Tour is generally a gentle ride into Paris for the winner elect , safely surrounded by his team in the middle of the peleton. Not this time - instead the crowds were treated to the site of Bradley Wiggins in the Yellow Jersey putting in a hard stint at the front of the race and acting as lead-out man through the Place De La Concorde for Cav to rock up and win his fourth stage in a row in Paris and the 23rd of his career...............three weeks of effort finally over - at least for a week or so , until Wiggins put it all together again for the Gold in the Olympics time trial . Way to go.....................and maybe the UK will start to take cycling seriously now and recognise the talent here , at least until Murray wins Wimbledon or something............

.....which in the end was all of  about ten days or so...................oh well.

....A NIGHT AT THE OPERA........

......well , only to be expected , really , after A Day At The Races............

One of the buildings that I am looking at as part of my MA course is the Dry Bar building on Oldham street in Manchester . Given that it was once owned by New Order and is still associated with the musical scene in Manchester I was intrigued by the possibility of  ( theoretically ) staging some sort of open-air roof top concert there , at least as a subject for a drawing.........and what better subject for a roof-top open-air performance than the opera ' Tosca ' ?? ...........

The drawing then developed as a sectional illustration highlighting the final dramatic scene , filtering the emotion of the performance through the pragmatics of architectural notation and the mundanity of day to day beaurocracy............so apart from the structural requirements necessary for acoustic separation and the support of the front wall , the heroine's fall is interpreted through health and safety issues , the calculations of terminal velocity and the ( inevitable ) media coverage of a ' tragic death ' at a public concert............hhhhhmmmmm
...Anyway , here is an illustration of the work in progress , titled ' Tosca - Live From Oldham Street  ' , as yet unfinished and still needing a bit of editing.......and you can purchase the soundtrack from The Diskery on Spear street , or from the bookshop at The House of The Book Lover on Bloom Street, both in Manchester.

Still quite a bit of editing to do , but it's getting there slowly.

..A DAY AT THE RACES.....

........last Fridays roll call went something like this...........

Oscar Freire - punctured lung and broken rib ; Maarten Wynants - percolated lung and two broken ribs ; Woet Poels - bruised lung , torn kidney , torn spleen , three broken ribs ; Imanol Ervita -bruised lungs , ripped knee ; Ametz Txurruka - broken collar bone ; Gorka Verdugo - a hole in his leg big enough to post a letter in.........Griepel coming in second on a sprint stage with a dislocated shoulder , ripped elbow and knee , split thumb...........the tuesday before , Tjallingii finished the third stage - 197 kms - only to discover that he had fractured a hip............................

No , not some terrorist attack , just the fall out from the first six days or so of the Tour de France.............just another day at the races  . As we speak , Murray has lost again at Wimbledon to vast media coverage , Button and Hamilton fail again at Silverstone to vast media coverage , whilst over in France Wiggins and the Sky team are blitzing the field . No British rider has ever won Le Tour , and Wiggins is only the fifth British rider to wear the yellow jersey . Team Sky currently hold
first and third places , with a more than reasonable chance of winning.......and with still the best part of another two weeks to go , anything can happen..........maybe even a mention in the media without the spectre of doping............

..........a rest day today , Tuesday , and then off again tomorrow.......just another day at the races.

....THREE STEPS TO HEAVEN.......

.....Well , ok , maybe not heaven but three stages towards an MA degree with the Art Department at MMU , and three pieces of work towards the first stage.......
As I have mentioned previously , I am re-visiting four buildings that I have worked on in Manchester with a view to investigating alternative pasts , alternative futures and the nature of the buildings themselves through a form of drawn architectural notation.......three pieces were completed for the first stage , together with a lot of written work and I sunsequently ended up with a pass / distinction so I suppose something must be making sense.......
Anyway , here they are again...........

The Vault Of Forbidden Books / the House of the Book Lover ......

The Liner Notes - Oldham street / the House of the Music Lover

......and finally The Tea Rooms / The House of the Book Lover............

The next two pieces , the ones that I am working on at the moment are ' The Kite-Flying Platform / The House of the Book Lover ' , and  ' Tosca- Live from Oldham Street / The House of the Music Lover. ' ......

.........and after that we will probably be leaving those two houses for a while , and be visiting The House of the Art Lover and The House of The Dominatrix.........

Watch this space.........

....SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE.......

....Some twelve months ago I posted an item on the work of artist Teresa Wilson and an installation that she had done in Macclesfield for the art festival........twelve months on and she has done another one.......

Based on a poem from William Blake's ' Songs of Innocence and Experience ' , ' The Ecchoing Green ' is an installation at King Edward St Chapel in Macclesfield. The Chapel itself is an independent chapel and a really atmospheric building in its own right, dating from 1690 and with galleries to the upper level. Dark and moody , especially on a grey overcast day , the building lends itself to a claustrophobic installation - overhung inside with branches and the sound of crows...........

The first thirty seconds or so of any such installation are charged with meaning and emotion, as one is taken from one reality to another.........

........except that as I walked in and turned right into the body of the chapel my appreciation of the installation was fatally compromised by a figure to my right who lurched up out of the half-gloom , grabbed my arm and and with her mouth full mumbled " Shorry I wash eating a bananah for mgy lunch yore sposed to read this it will ecxplain it " , thrusting a piece of paper into my hand..............the crows and the figures seemed somewhat diminished after this encounter.

I like site specific installations , the theatricality , the opportunity to control an audiences response , but to my mind this can only be achieved by having full control over the environment and by definition peoples' perceptions. I am perfectly capable of forming my own responses , which may - or may not - be enhanced by an explanation of the artist's intent . In this instance , however , the experience was lost , for me at least.

...HERE COMES SUMMER.....

.......and after a few months of anticpation the big event of this summer of sport is nearly upon us, eagerly awaited as for once the UK is up there with the best and with a good chance of coming home with the spoils........yes , its time for Le Tour again.......

Bradley Wiggins has just won the Criterium du Dauphine for the second year running , to go alongside his win this year in the Paris - Nice , Team Sky are looking well organised - and then there is Cavendish , World Champion and the holder of the green jersey. Three weeks of drama unfolding as they race through France .....whats not to like ?  This year they are both finishing and starting stages in Pau , about 45mins from us , so a chance to get to see them again..........

...TEA FOR TWO......

......And after quite a few late nights I finally delivered all the work for the first stage assessment of my MA course...........

Is it any good ? I have no idea - I have never done anything like this before , although Liz and Cath who did the framing ( thankyou LCT ) seemed to think the works were ok.

Anyway . this is the third piece , based loosly on the Tea Rooms I did for the boys at Richmond House in Manchester - Tea For Two.

This one is for Miss Georgia , Miss Edie-Mae , Miss Erin and Miss Heidi , and one day girls we'll all go for afternoon tea.

...THE LAST WALTZ..........

Levon Helm , drummer / singer / mandolin player , died on April 19th last......

From  ' The Basement Tapes ' , on through ' Music from Big Pink ' and ' The Band '  -

the album that seemed to arrive from somewhere else altogether in 1969  -  on through the tours with Dylan , on through the Scorcese film ' The Last Waltz ' .....on through fires , on through throat cancer , on through his last recordings ' Dirt Farmer ' and ' Electric Dirt' ........... for the best part of getting on for nearly fifty years now Levon Helm brought me joy.............................from somewhere timeless , always remembered for the music and those photographs................. 

............and now he is gone , along with Rick Danko and Richard Manuel......

Levon Helm , thank you for the music .....R.I.P

..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 .

..GOING TO THE END OF THE LINE......

....Well it's alright , we're going to the end of the line.............

........and following on from the last posting on the theme of techincal drawings , a quick thanks to Network Rail for uploading their historical archives onto the web ......a unique collection of drawings illustrating the development of the railway system and its infrastructure throughout the uk................bridges , tunnels , stations , its all here.

......a wondeful set of drawings -check out the full archives at www.networkrail.co.uk/virtualarchive/

..I'M LEARNING TO FLY.......

       I'm learning to fly , but I ain't got wings.....
       Coming down is the hardest thing .

..........and as part of the Strategies Of Thought lectures on the MA course , we were introduced to the works of Wittgenstein . What I hadn't realised was that his education had started in Manchester , where he had enrolled to study aeronautics at the University......and ended up flying Cody kites off Glossop Moor , where he lodged in the Grouse pub , well known to anyone who goes walking up there.

And flying , or rather the lack of ability to do so , reminded me of a book that I had come across sometime ago , with the most wonderful illustrations........

.......The  ' Teach Your Chicken To Fly Training Manual ' - superb hand drawn anatomically correct plans and sections of chickens set out as faux technical drawings , all bolted onto a text written in the style of a training manual . Bizarre , and totally within its own little world . I have no idea what size the original artworks were , but I am guessing A2 . Wonderful.

....and maybe one day I will get to this standard.