...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