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November 9th, 2008
10:12 am - Minicomix Workshop/Band by Night
Great weekend. Friday, minicomix workshop at Transmission, which went really well for the first time I'd delivered it - I got lots of useful feedback from the participants who were mainly artists from the Islington Mill Arts Academy. We started by talking (AA-group style) about what comics we read as kids, and what we read (or make) now, which was useful for me to gauge who I was dealing with. Then I did a short presentation looking at different genres/subjects, from Joe Sacco's journalism to Matt Madden's Exercises In Style; and finally a short look at comics like Get Your War On or detourned romance comics, which don't involve drawing. We then all brainstormed 5 potential ideas for our comic and posted them on the wall for inspiration - I was really delighted at the specificity and range of things that came up, from "the history of witches in Paisley" to "a group of people who decide to come up with a symbol for themselves" (I later found out these were related to the artists' currents activities). We then made an A6 minicomic. Finished subjects included the inner life of Noel Edmonds, talking goose, talking cheese (by someone who had misread the talking goose post-it), and ant politics. We copied and swapped the comics. I had planned a second half, a collaborative comic jam but the drawing took way longer than I'd planned so we just had some reflection instead. I'd been quite nervous about it beforehand, I think cos the setting was a gallery and I find artists a bit scary sometimes, and I had no idea who was gonna turn up, but it all worked out.
Enough for me to return to work with some of the same people the following day on Band By Night, a project by one of the collective called Maria Dada, where you draw a picture of your ideal band, collaborate with some random folk, form a band, flyer and record and play your first gig at night. I drew a band called The Misteries, triplets with long black hair, who play loud and sing quiet and sound like "water over rocks". In the end the band I was in did adopt this name, but we were a ukelele/stylophone/fisher price/beer bottle outfit. We jammed for a bit in a freezing warehouse on King St and worried about our fellow band members at the other end, one of whom was a BBC sound engineer and appeared to have come armed with a laptop and a magic box of tricks. It didn't matter though, we went back into the gallery and four bands played, and The Misteries went down well, with my pitchshifting stylophone solo causing a sensation amongst young uns who didn't remember the ads from the 70s. It's gonna be put on youtube so depending how embarrassing it looks it may post a link! The other two bands performed a spoken word piece with teapot percussion, and a mobile phone symphony.
Had a really cool day, very different from the way I usually work/play, and first time performing 'music' in public - the lack of expectation and experimental atmosphere just combined to make it really special....The Islington Mill folk were all dead lovely, and engaged in a fantastic project - a self organised free art education. Check it out here.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/smile.gif) satisfied
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November 5th, 2008
October 13th, 2008
02:57 pm - Last yrs Observer comics comp entry
Sadly, they didn't want a comic about what happened to the weather predicting Meryweather leeches after their career in the Tempest Prognosticator - the fools! It's practically a Disney script in embryo!
Currently working on this year's entry...it's a sticky gluey mess that hasn't a hope in hell of winning but what the heck.... Will post after comp.
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October 5th, 2008
02:41 pm - Porcelain Project, NeedCompany, Tramway
Tramway season started on Friday and I reflected on the fact that when sopmeone says, "d'you wanna come to this club night, it looks really good", my heart goes, "meh", but I see an ad for some performance art/contemporary dance two hours before it's due to start and I excitedly rearrange my evening in order to go. I feel obscurely guilty about this.
Anyway, Porcelain Project was billed as a ceramics/dance collaboration, two things which normally shouldn't come into contact for the good of all involved. However, nothing got broken, except for some stacked saucers on a stand which were intentionally vibrated at the very start till a few fell and shattered; and perhaps, our spirits towards the end of this overlong performance.
I liked the porcelain sculptures far more than the choreography which was pretty so-so. The narrative seemed to be about a kingdom in decline, with a crazy king, a jester-satyr figure, some homos - which got me thinking that in contemporary dance it's pretty rare to see man-on-man action represented - and a couple of female dancers who mainly seemed there to be abused. There were some really pretty bits - a headdress of delicately clinking porcelain fragments; the reflections of hung porcelain on the back screen. The whole thing ended in a sickly porno light, with the jester reduced to the deposed king's hound, a couple with porcelain tits and cock doing soft-porn writhing and a general absence of the healthy Boy Scout principles that have made our nation great.
I would dearly love to see how pieces like this are developed. I don't know any dancers and wish I did. Is it as simple as musicians improvising, starting from the artwork, the props, and developing a bunch of pieces which are then loosely linked together into a double gatefold concept album? There was an after-show discussion where I could have asked this but I was pretty tired out and so went home. Our friend Lee from Manchester was stopping off between two WOOFing gigs, and showed us a Ray Mears wooden spoon he had made on his coppicing course. He had been in the woods for weeks so I think my descriptions of the performance made him wish he was back there, where a man is a man and a tree is a tree.
Current Music: Kate Bush; Aerial disc 2
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September 20th, 2008
05:23 pm - Bill Griffiths on Crumb's ZAP comix
'He reinvented the comic book. Took it over, just as other people of his generation took over music. He just said, "No, you can't have it that way. We're gonna make it the way we want it!"'
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05:17 pm - Diana R
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05:16 pm - Suzy Q
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05:04 pm - Random Painting
Lately I was in the largest 2nd hand bookstore in the UK in Alnwick, and was so overwhelmed I decided to negotiate around it via a random number method, and read 15 mins of each book I came to (who knew that a history of working men's clubs in Northumbria could be so fascinating? Or that a University of Salford's painting catalogue could get me into several new artists?)
Since then I've embraced the idea of randomising when faced with too many choices. I'd recommend it for choosing everything from bedtime reading to what to eat that day.
The below painting - acrylic, oil and watercolour(!) on cardboard - was made by painting whatever I found on a random magazine page (in this case a photo of Peggy Sue and the Pirates from Plan B.)
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04:55 pm - Drawing on scrap paper
First in a series entitled - I am drowning in small scraps of paper and need to scan them in and post them here so I can throw out the originals...
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September 4th, 2008
12:47 pm - Alternate universes
Logging on here in order to post link to a very funky alternative Mimi-led version of Low's Hatchet which may be of interest, I mistyped ww.livejournal.com and found myself in a Bizarro livejournal universe. Terribly disorientating.
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August 31st, 2008
08:25 pm - Completed bookplate
I'm quite pleased with how this turned out, though I'd have preferred a more comic book-y stark red and blue, but this rose colour was the nearest they had....
The printing process was surprisingly quick after all our prep, and very satisfying to do.... We were only allowed to make five copies though, which was a shame, one of mine was a dud too, so only four bookplates. One's going on display at Glasgow Women's Library. So I am trying to think of my three most iconic, important books to put the remaining ones in.
Apparently after two more hours of printing time, I'm eligible to join as a member and use the facilities, so may look into that. In the meantime I may try and adapt my original black designs in Photoshop, sure I could get similar effect, at least for online use, and my website needs an update...
In other news...I am turning into my dad. I am totally buzzed, an organisation addict, as Howard Devoto might have it, had he just been to Maplins and bought a selection of Really Useful Boxes of various sizes and brought order to his tool cupboard. C keeps catching me opening the door and beaming at all my newly categorised rawl plugs, paintbrushes, nails etc...
We also did a trek up to the Chinese supermarket where our shopping always comes to £100, despite good intentions. Purchases possibly surplus to requirements were a paper suit complete with small wristwatch, several types of frozen prawn (they were really cheap tho compared to Somerfields) and three types of Taiwan Mochi, glutinous rice cakes, also known as the slug sweets, cos that's the exact amount of resistance they give to your eager mouth... And best of all I can't get enough of them and C hates em.
Lest anyone think I am showing off conspicuous consumption in these credit crunchy times, let me add my income is shortly about to plummet and I should NOT have bought a paper suit that I didn't really need and three types of slug sweets.
Current Mood: organis-ised
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August 30th, 2008
05:38 pm - Garrrn!
Which is something I seem to be saying a lot these days. I blame the muggy low cloud pressure which is passing for summer in these parts, makes me grumpy...
Any cartoonists out there know how to use the scrapbook function in LJ so that one's A4 cartoons are actually readable? I seemed to manage before with linking to my Flickr account but now even that seems to give me these puny panels (see below) unreadable unles sone - yawn - clicks on each on in turn which rather interrupts the flow.
Garrrn! Rain, dammit!
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August 24th, 2008
10:18 pm - Glasgow Print Studio
Very hungover, I did a workshop at the Print Studio today - GWL ran a course on making bookplates and someone dropped out in week one, so I got their place. Worked on my design yesterday (showing the Texas Book Depository, design below). We then prepared fine mesh plates with photosensitive paint, let them dry, then placed them over our designs and fired UV light at them through an amazing Dr Who style contraption. The exposed goo hardened, the unexposed goo didn't. Then we sprayed them with a power hose,to wash off the goo, and we were left with transparent replica of our image. It was quite counterintuitive washing away one's design to reveal it. Next week we are gonna print - I'm going for a red and blue Bazooka Joe gym wrapper effect.
1. My original 2 colour design, drawn in black Sharpie pen, on a special material a bit like very strong tracing paper.
2. Closeup of one of the images after exposure - we did both images on the one plate. By the way, the writing's only back to front cos I shot it from the back of the mesh plate - screenprinting is the only printing method whereby what you see is what you get at every stage, you don't have to write backwards etc.
3. Third Reich style printing press. Not sure if this is the one we are gonna use, I just liked the eagle.
4. A mysterious room I poked my head into, called The Acid Room. Loos like a torture chamber...for pens.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/sad.gif) drained
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August 22nd, 2008
11:23 pm - Cat Lady Scientist
Things to do after a late shift #1: Expand your cat's frontal lobe
Night vision notwithstanding, from my observations, cats are far more auditory than visual creatures. Ostentatiously hide something from a cat and unless it smells very strongly, it'll tend to lose interest very quickly, where in the same situation a dog will get the game rightaway.
I took my cat's favourite toy (a tiny chewed up fake mouse) and chucked it around a bit. Then I ostentatiously (ie with grand magician-like gestures) hid it under one of two mugs. No amount of reveals would help my cat. It stared everywhere and checked all round the room in the most unlikely places, including under the carpet.
I then hid the mouse under one of two transparent glasses. As he could see it, the cat immediately liberated the mouse though unlike a dog, who'd just tip the glass over, it delicately nudged it till the tail was slightly poking out then nibbled and tugged at that.
I then reverted to the opaque mug again. Moxie still didn't get it. It took another round of the transparent glass and then back to the mug, for him finally to click. But he stared it at long and hard first like a yokel who's just been read A Discourse On Reason.
I like to expand my cat's consciousness of an evening. I recommend it. It offsets the fact my own consciousness has been pummelled by subtitling such delights as "Help! Teach Is Coming to Stay" all day.
Current Mood: frazzled
Current Music: just the humming of my hard drive
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July 19th, 2008
03:18 pm - A Shout in the Street
Talk by Kenny Hunter at Tramway. His usual articulate self - perhaps in the case of this exhibition, too much so, in that every possible subtext of the pieces was drawn out. Not that he was a bore - he's a really engaging speaker - and everything he said about this exhibition was valid. Only it was interesting the piece which gave me the strongest emotional tug - Citizen Firefighter - was one he passed over briefly. He did give a lovely reply to a guy's question about the reasons for his pursuit of this medium over others which was essentially Joseph Campbell's follow your bliss. Afterwards in the bright new exhibition space which opens onto Albert Drive, a mother to her child - Don't touch them! Yet that's what you want to do - firstly because his sculptures of pigeon, cat and fox are so cuddly, neotic; but also because of the trompe l'oeil of cardboard boxes cast in resin, right down to the brown tape. Much smaller than I'd expected from the slides but of course I should have known, you cast a microwave it's gonna be 1:1 scale.
In the street after, everything seemed to have a potential for being cast, from my bike to an Asian bloke in garage overalls. Govanhill needs a Kenny Hunter sculpture (rather than the incongruous giant urn of flowers that's been plonked by the council on a street corner.) Who do I call?
http://www.mapmagazine.co.uk/index.cfm?page=9BB5C692-C2D1-592B-A55AC1A30F1D80EF&commissionid=22
Current Mood: alert
Current Music: Moxie settling down to sleep in his wicker throne
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honeypears's journal
