Taking Notes

In which we list other things that FP is working on

Written by Forest Pines; published at 10:55 am on April 15th, 2009.
Filed under: Artistic, Dear Diary, Meta.

Incidentally, one reason I’ve been missing the target of posting here every day recently is that I have been non-blogging about something else. Non-blogging, in the sense of a private diary; but about a specific topic, rather than vague everyday-life ramblings. In a few months, it will hopefully get published, either here or on paper; but I can’t say anything until at least the summer, and hopefully longer. But if you’re writing something like a diary, it’s best to do it as the events occur, while they’re still fresh in your mind; and it’s been soaking up the spare words in my head.

Last week I mentioned that we felt inspired to finish off our current artcraft projects. It got me thinking just how many creative projects I’m working on at the moment, that are at least vaguely concrete but haven’t been finished. There is:

• A crochet bomb
• A binary scarf
• Two model railway wagons
• A website that, as yet, is secret
• The aforementioned diary-blog-zine-thing that is also currently secret
• Something vague for the London Zine Symposium, heading towards us more rapidly than I care to think
• K’s sister’s wedding album, which we definitely should have done more of by now

That’s 7 or 8 things, depending on how you count. Plus there are many other ideas which haven’t yet made it outside my head, and vague concepts such as “a photographic portfolio on the theme of disused hotels,” or “a model railway incorporating the Ostrich pub”. Really, though, I should complete some of the started-projects before embarking on anything else.

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Keyword noise: art, craft, crafting, crochet, diary, knitting, laziness, photography, projects, zines

Art

In which we have an arty weekend, and get inspired

Written by Forest Pines; published at 4:58 pm on April 8th, 2009.
Filed under: Artistic.

A bit of an arty weekend for us – well, an arty Sunday at least.

First off, the Bristol Artist’s Book Event – or, BABE – at the Arnolfini. The whole gallery was turned into a market for the weekend, so that people working in the field of “artists’ books” could sell their wares. Even though we couldn’t afford to buy very much, it was interesting just to treat the event as an art exhibit in itself. I’m not sure I want to become an artist’s book collector, in any case; for one thing, I wouldn’t have a clue how to file half of the things on display. They are wonderful objects to appreciate in their own right, though; hand-made, hand-bound, artisan objects. They are something I could make myself, if I had a mind to it – well, possibly not the hand-bound books, but you know what I mean. Anything can be art, after all, if made with an artistic event or viewed with an artistic sensibility. My eye was drawn to a folded concertina of a book,* a book of photographs produced by walking through a city and taking photos looking upwards at predetermined intervals. Too few people look up as they walk the world; I had trouble recognising all of the locations even though it was an area I knew well. It unfolded like a little Box Of Delights, drawing the reader in, yet fiddly to use with clumsy mind and fingers.

In the Arnolfini, we were hailed by a sandwich-board chap, laden with all sorts of things,** and a big sign saying “DRINK MORE GIN!” He gave us fliers for a corresponding exhibition at the Central Library, to go alongside BABE. We wandered across to College Green to find it, which was easier said than done. The exhibition, of artists’ books from the city library’s art collection, was squirrelled away in a conference room, in a part of the Reference Library normally well out of the public eye. When found, though, it was excellent, partly because the city library has a very good collection, and partly because of the access visitors got. We were free, under the invigilator’s beady eye, to pick the things up, read them, investigate them; quite an awkward job given the nature of some artists’ books, needing to be unpackaged and unfolded and probed gently but persistantly. The collection was biased mainly towards the last 20 years, but there were some earlier things; a pamphlet with Eric Gill illustrations, for example.*** Some were up-to-the-minute: things we’d seen on sale at the Arnolfini a few minutes before.

Finally, wandering into the Old City, we saw a placard for a temporary exhibition at the Centrespace Gallery, on Leonard Lane, tricky to find if you’ve never been before, as Leonard Lane is barely more than a doorway in a wall.**** It was “Dark Stars and Bleeding Hearts”, an art show by a local artist we’d not heard of before, deadgirl,***** also known as Keri Gardom. You can see examples of her art on her website: it’s brightly-coloured acrylic illustration between black outlines. The most common tag on her website gallery seems to be “morbid”; and she really should consider selling prints of her work, as well as originals. They’d sell in their thousands to “alternative” teenagers who can’t afford to spend £250 on a painting. What caught my eye, though – apart from the free sweets for visitors – was her palette. Not the selection of colours in her work, but her physical palette, sitting next to her easel in the middle of the room. It was piled up thickly with layers and layers of used paint, two or three inches deep. I wanted to take a picture; but she was busy talking to somebody else, I didn’t want to interrupt, and taking a picture of her palette without asking would be far too intrusive – like posting a photo of someone else’s desk.

In general, we felt inspired. Inspired to do things, ourselves, to get creative, to finish off our current artcraft projects. We almost went back to the Arnolfini, where one of the stalls at BABE was selling used printing blocks and sets of type. Not that we have a press, or forms, or anything else that printers need, but vintage typography can be beautiful, and the type itself even more so. Expect the Symbolic Forest Press to make an appearance one of these years, even if we don’t quite manage hand-printed or hand-bound hardbacks straight away. The world is creative, and we can be creative too.

* Unfortunately, me being me, I didn’t get the artist’s name

** although the only things that I can remember dangling off him were stripy paper bags

*** Unfortunately, me being me, I didn’t get the writer’s name.

**** You can tell it’s a street, though, because it has double-yellow lines on both sides, despite being narrow enough that you’d have trouble stretching your arms out to full width.

***** warning: dangerously over-flashed website

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Keyword noise: Arnolfini, art, artists, artists books, BABE, Bristol, Bristol Artists Books Event, Bristol Central Library, Bristol Libraries, Centrespace, Centrespace Gallery, College Green, Dark Stars and Bleeding Hearts, deadgirl, gallery, Keri Gardom, Leonard Lane

Sound And Music

In which we are annoyed by an apparent mime

Written by Forest Pines; published at 10:31 am on February 11th, 2009.
Filed under: Artistic.

A busy weekend for us: we had visitors. Well, one visitor, Stu, who came down to explore and discover the city for himself.

Stu’s into electro, somewhat, so we found something on Saturday night that we thought he’d like. “We Live Here”, at the Arnolfini, a live art weekend featuring a gig on the Saturday night. Thinking it might be interesting, we packed into the gallery’s rather crowded bar to see what was going to happen.

Unfortunately, we were a bit disappointed by the first act – in fact, by the first act’s first act, if you see what I mean. Magnús Scheving Magnus Spectrum,* a chap in an orange jumpsuit who bounced energetically around to laptop and keyboard-generated electrical noise, waving a Nintendo Wii controller as he did so, throwing himself about the performance space and almost into the audience. He shook his wrist, and the sound tremolo’d itself.

Now, if you search the net for Magnus Spectrum – which I did, to try to find out if he’s got a website** – you’ll find people saying that he uses the Wii controller as a synth, or as a midi controller, and so on. The Arnolfini’s own website says:

Magnus Spectrum makes physical noise music via Nintendo Wii controller and much leaping about

His Facebook page says: “he performs on synthesiser, using consumer goods as wireless controllers”.

So we stood watching him: me, K, and Stu, who is a big console-gaming fan. And Stu, being the expert, noticed something. According to him, at least, Magnus Spectrum’s Wii controller, with which he was apparently playing his synth, wasn’t actually switched on.***

I’d been a tad suspicious, just because, at some points, the chap appeared to be following the music, not quite on the beat; dancing on the beat is quite hard with arrhythmic music, after all. Stu, though, was adamant. Spectrum had performed once and stopped,**** and nobody else looked likely to be coming onstage any time soon; so we gave up and went for a drink at The Apple instead. Apologies to Freeze Puppy and Chew Magna, whose acts we missed, especially as Chew Magna do seem to be quite good.

Talking it over afterwards: there’s nothing wrong with playing electrical noise and bouncing around energetically to it like a loon. Magnus Spectrum’s dance style wasn’t too unlike my own empty-room crazed bouncing; and I’ve been known to wear orange jumpsuits in my time, too. There’s not even anything wrong with miming, in itself. We left because: there is something wrong with saying “I’m playing this live” when you’re not. Magnus Spectrum did, occasionally, nip over to his keyboard and press a chord. Stu might be wrong, and Magnus might have been using a slightly broken or modded Wii controller; or it might have been a cock-up of some sort. Overall, though, we ended up thinking that he was probably miming, at least as far as the Wii part went; so we decided there were better places to be.

* That isn’t some children’s-entertainment-based insult, by the way. I genuinely am having difficulty with the name “Magnus Spectrum”, because every time I try to think it, Scheving pops into my head instead.

** He’s got a Myspace page under his real name and a Facebook page as Magnus, if nothing else.

*** Stu knows enough about Wiis to know where the controller on-lamp is; he also knows enough to tell us that it was, apparently, an early model of Wii controller. Not that that matters, really.

**** After apparently accidentally shutting himself out of the building – the side door was set to let people out but not in again.

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Keyword noise: Arnolfini, art, Bristol, Chew Magna, dancing, electro, electropop, event, Freeze Puppy, live art, live music, Magnus Spectrum, mime, miming, music, Nintendo, performance, performance art, review, synth, synthesiser, We Live Here, Wii, Wii controller, Wii synth

Photo post of the week

In which we photograph the deep blue sea

Written by Forest Pines; published at 9:32 am on November 14th, 2008.
Filed under: Photobloggery.

I grew up not far from the sea. I didn’t go down to the beach or the seafront very often, but I was close enough that you could see out to sea from the top deck of my school bus. I’ve always felt good by the sea.*

On the other hand, I grew up in an area where the sea is the colour of weak milky tea. So it’s always nice to go somewhere and find that the sea can, actually, sometimes be storybook blue.**

In other sea-related (or, at least, tidal) news: the mystery words on the shore of the Avon, which we spotted last weekend and posted about, have been identified: an artwork to highlight litter in the sea, by an artist called Pete Dolby. Thanks to Liz for writing and letting me know.

* You could argue some sort of genetic memory, because my mum’s family’s descended from a bunch of 19th-century Cornish fishermen (and smugglers, no doubt), from Looe and Polperro. On the other hand, my dad’s family’s from Derby, which is as unsealike as you can get.

** Pure water is, as a matter of fact, very very slightly a pale blue colour. You can see it, just about, if you run a bathful of water in a white bath. That’s not the main reason the sea can look blue, though. And different cultures have seen it different ways; the Homeric adjective for it is “wine-dark”, and you know how dark Greek wine can be. I’ve heard that the ancient Greeks didn’t quite distinguish between blue and green in the same way as we do; but I don’t know enough Greek to tell you how true that is.

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Keyword noise: art, blue sea, boats, Carrick Roads, Cornwall, Falmouth, family, feedback, fishermen, genealogy, Gyllyngvase, harbour, holiday, Pete Dolby, photography, photos, Porthminster, public art, sea, smugglers, St Ives, summer, water

“1000 Tide”

In which we are briefly puzzled by some art

Written by Forest Pines; published at 2:06 pm on November 10th, 2008.
Filed under: Artistic, Photobloggery.

A few weeks ago, exploring the local area, we started walking up the Ashton-Pill path. It runs along the side of the railway up the south bank of the Avon, along the Avon Gorge and under the famous Suspension Bridge, downriver towards Pill.* We walked along it until we got bored and turned around.** En-route, though, we saw something slightly unusual. A big pile of plastic bottles, on the shore, below the path but above the tide line, corralled together.

Presumably, we thought, some sort of anti-littering campaign, fishing non-degradable bottles out of the river or out of the undergrowth. But then, the other day, we were up on the Downs on the far bank, and noticed the bottles—or, what we assume is those bottles—again. They’ve been arranged into words.

We have no idea, though, what it is. An art project? An advertising slogan? An anti-littering project as we originally thought? The internet doesn’t seem to be helping – the only relevant search hit at the moment is, er, that photo. We’re puzzled.

UPDATE: Thank you to a correspondant called Liz – who was also puzzled by it – for letting me know what it is. It is, indeed, an anti-littering art project; there are apparently 1000 plastic bottles washed up on every tide,*** hence the text. It does, though, change regularly, and eventually the artist, whose name is Pete Dolby, is going to make them all into a raft. So now we know.

* as you might expect, given its name

** after all, walking down towards Pill and back another way would have been a very long walk; and any other circular routes would have involved a stiff climb through the woods.

*** in the Avon Gorge, that is. I’m not sure what the number per mile of coastline is.

One comment. »

Keyword noise: 1000 Tide, art, Ashton, Avon, Avon Gorge, Bristol, Clifton, Clifton Suspension Bridge, litter, Pete Dolby, Pill, river

In darkness

In which we find art in a cave

Written by Forest Pines; published at 3:07 pm on November 3rd, 2008.
Filed under: Artistic.

One of the things I like, about living in this city, is the randomness of things one comes across. One will turn a corner and find something new happening, something unexpected, something undreamt.

We were ambling around the harbourside, at the weekend, along the stretch that is overlooked by red sandstone cliffs. There are caves dug into the cliffs there, gated and walled off now; but as we walked along the quayside we noticed that one of the gates was open, with a sign outside it: “photography exhibition, this weekend only”.

We looked closer; and saw a brick archway let into the cliff, with darkness inside it, no sign of anybody about. Tentatively, we stepped inside; the brick walls gave way to rough stone, and a sign warned of falling rocks. And, inside, in the darkness, we found: a photography exhibition.

It turned out to be by a local photographer, Jesse Alexander,* who has taken long-exposure natural-light photographs of various underground locations. Caves, cellars, underground reservoirs, and so on. When I say “long exposure” I don’t mean “get the tripod out”, I mean “get the tripod out, set the camera up, then come back a week later”.** To show them in a suitable location, he’d found an unlit cave, printed transparencies of his work, and mounted it up on individual lightboxes. The whole installation he called “Threshold Zone”.***

It was an interesting and unusual concept. Printed normally, set up in a gallery, the prints would have been examples of technically good and well-composed photography, but without anything particularly distinguished about them. Mounted there, in a dark, quiet cave, they took on something special.

* not to be confused with Jesse Armstrong, who isn’t a photographer but a comedy writer.

** although he loses out slightly, in the long-exposure stakes, to Justin Quinnell’s six-month pinhole camera exposures

*** If you go to his website, you can apparently download a PDF about the work. Whether you can read it is another thing; I can’t get it to open. But it might be worth a try.

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Keyword noise: art, Bristol, caves, Jesse Alexander, long exposure, photography, Redcliff, Redcliffe, Threshold Zone, underground

Guerilla art

In which we talk about art and anonymity

Written by Forest Pines; published at 6:55 pm on October 2nd, 2007.
Filed under: Artistic.

Over the years I’ve had all sorts of plans for art projects which have never quite got off the ground. So I’ve never had to answer the question: how would I feel if I did something Artistic, which became famous all over the place, but nobody knew it was me who did it.

The local news here was full of something similar, recently. All around Yorkshire, in Goathland, Kilburn, Arthington and Braithwell, mysterious stone heads have been appearing; and some then disappearing again. Intriguing, you could say. I’m strangely attached to the idea of mysterious heads – which are reminiscent of some of the stranger stone crosses on the Yorkshire Moors – popping up in the night. Rather like crop circles, in a way.

Unfortunately, though, the mystery of the stone heads hasn’t lasted very long. Crop circles were a puzzler for a few years, back in the 1980s. The stone heads have been a mystery for a few weeks; but they’ve only stayed a mystery for a few hours now the story has hit the national news. They are apparently made by a chap called Billy Johnson. Presumably, he’s done it all for the publicity;* as he left some easily googleable clues attached to each head, it’s fairly obvious that he wanted to be found. Artists have to make money somehow, after all. Personally, I’d rather it had stayed a mystery, though.

Mysteries are good for the imagination. An anonymous sculpture, appearing out of nowhere, is something to tantalise the mind and get you wondering about all those things sitting just around the edges of the known world. A self-publicising sculptor called Billy Johnson – whether he’s real or not – is dull and mundane by comparison.

* and I’ve just helped, haven’t I. Oh, well. Billy, if you’re a self-googler and you’re reading this, I’ll tell you where my own street corner is; you can leave one there and I’ll make sure you get some more publicity for your website.

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Keyword noise: anonymity, art, artist, Billy Johnson, Goathland, Kilburn, mystery, performance art, public art, sculptor, sculpture, stone head, Yorkshire

Infernal machines (part 2)

In which we discuss an artist of invention

Written by Forest Pines; published at 6:54 pm on June 12th, 2007.
Filed under: Artistic.

The other week, I wrote about W Heath Robinson, and how I first discovered him: illustrating the children’s books of Norman Hunter. He wasn’t as good for the stories, though, as a later illustrator, who is much less well known. His name is George Adamson.*

Adamson’s work is, in a sense, much more mundane and ordinary than even Robinson’s. Robinson is, in his “mechanical” work, an artist of ridiculous things. Adamson, though, makes ridiculous things look ordinary. Like, for example, a Mayor having to take his tea in a bathtub:

Robinson’s machines look entirely plausible, and their workings are out on show. Adamson’s machinery, though, is hidden away. It’s magical, because you can’t see how it might do what it’s supposed to; it fits Hunter’s descriptions of machines that can do the physically impossible. Some of them are sinister: very 1950s in design, plain cases with the occasional dial or switch, presumably painted grey or pale green. Others are more complicated, but their working is never obvious or spelled out. They are wonderful depictions of machines which never do as they are supposed to.

* not to be confused, of course, with George Adamson

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Keyword noise: art, artist, George Adamson, George W Adamson, illustration, Norman Hunter, Professor Branestawm

Infernal machines (part one)

In which we talk about a classic artist

Written by Forest Pines; published at 7:04 am on June 1st, 2007.
Filed under: Artistic.

A few months back, I saw, on a friend’s bookshelf, art books about members of the Robinson family: Charles Robinson and his better-known brother William Heath Robinson; and I resolved to write about them here. It’s taken me a while.

The wonderful thing about Heath Robinson’s work – apart from the army of identikit men who keep his machines running – is that everything looks entirely workable, in a certain sense. Everything looks as if it should fit together and run smoothly, especially with his little arrows and dashed lines to show that this moves that way, that cog turns like so, and the lever over on that side swings round to hit the golf ball over here.

The first place I came across Heath Robinson, though, I found him slightly unsatisfactory. In the 1930s he illustrated two children’s books by writer Norman Hunter, about an absent-minded inventor called Professor Branestawm, a creator of amazing, fantastical, physically impossible inventions. Robinson’s illustrations were just too possible – although they may well have worked, they could never have done everything described in the story. I was, as a child, disappointed. I much preferred his 1970s illustrator – but I’ll tell you about him another time.

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Keyword noise: art, artist, Charles Robinson, Heath Robinson, illustration, Norman Hunter, Professor Branestawm, Robinson

We love enthusiatic amateurs

In which there’s work to do, to take our minds off disgusting art

Written by Forest Pines; published at 10:39 pm on December 12th, 2006.
Filed under: Artistic, The Office.

Today, the boss spent the afternoon over at our warehouse. It’s fifty miles away, so it does at least keep him well out of our hair, with no risk of him suddenly popping down to find me and Big Dave playing poker,* or The Good-Looking One From Accounts skiving behind my desk.**

Right after he left to come back over to Head Office, one of the warehouse staff phoned:

“Your boss was on my computer for ages fiddling about with stuff. And now it doesn’t work.”

Oh, hurrah. That was the rest of the afternoon gone, then – working out just what he’d done. I realised what he’d been trying to do; and had to work back from there to sort out what he actually did.

Ah, well. To change the subject: have you ever been browsing the web and thought: why the hell would anyone want to do that? Tonight I came across: spermcube.*** It’s all in the name of art, apparently. If you want to know more reasons why it’s a bad idea – other than just “ewww” – read this.

* for our collection of spare computer case screws. I reckon I’m about 15% up on him at the moment.

** if she kneels next to my chair, and the door is shut, you can’t see her through the window.

*** link via Rod Begbie, who I remember being a prolific Sinisterine back in the day

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Keyword noise: art, Big Dave, breakage, colleagues, computing, disgusting, IT, IT support, office, work