..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.