Sketchbook project 2012

For those of you that don't know, ArtHouse Co-Op in Brooklyn, New York has been doing a yearly sketchbook project, where for a relatively small fee (compared to the usual entry fee for UK exhibitions) they send you a A5ish sized sketchbook which you can alter almost anyway you like, a project title and will then exhibit the sketchbook around the USA and store it in the Brooklyn Art Library forever for people to look at.

For 2012 the project is also getting toured overseas, so my sketchbook should be available to view not only throughout the USA but back here in Blighty as well.

Pages 6 and 7

There were a selection of topics to choose from, with my love of postcards and subverting the traditional postcard image I chose “It's Summer Where You Are”. I intentionally wanted it to be quite free flowing like a sketchbook should be, also like a journey and work with images and postcards that were from places I had travelled. I was tempted to use postcards I owned to present some kind of story from a fictional person on a journey but felt that it seemed a little forced for the idea of the sketchbook. It is after all meant to be an exploration of ideas as well as a body of work. There needs to be some experimentation. Additionally I'd tried previously to produce my painted postcards with reverses, this seemed like a good idea but in the end it just served to make my point about these paintings being postcards too bull headed. Of course there is always a exception to the rule as Greetings from the Mantelpiece showed.

Pages 8 and 9

In the end I dumped the writing idea completely leaving just a few examples on pages that were meant to be more about unformed ideas than actual semi finished work. Which in the end was just some musings on all the various ice cream trucks I had encountered on my travels over the last 5 years. The rest became a mix of small scale biro drawings, a few unusual or interesting photographs and printed on postcards.

Roughly the sketchbooks journey started with an exploration of places around the coast. I'd been to Southwold very recently on a summer holiday and as one that reminisced heavily from my childhood holidays with my parents it seemed an obvious place to start and spend some time/pages on. Moving on, the sketchbook visits Portsmouth (including Portchester), Cowes and from the boats of Cowes to the boats of Venice then through other foreign places including India and Tenerife. Returning back to London and following a route west towards my home, through Kew Gardens, Windsor and Virginia Water.

Pages 16 and 17

The inside back cover and front cover are the same image done using two different methods that both had heavy use in the sketchbook. This image of Brooklyn Bridge was taken by me when I visited New York in 2005 and is one of my favourite images from the trip. I wanted to include it as a homage to the sketchbooks final resting location and organisation that created the project. The original idea for the book was to have the book reflect the actual physical journey it would go on but I felt uncomfortable trying to reproduce images of places I had never been. Nor at that time did I know if I had postcards from each of these places. I still am unsure but thats a story for another day.

Pages 18 and 19

Many of the methods used you will recognise. The biro drawings I have been doing for a few years now. I was interested however if I could do them that small and in trying to push myself technically.

The photographs were chosen because of an inherent oddness or importance to the visit I made. For example on page 9 I have a photograph of a sunny Southwold with an obvious and somewhat ominous rainstorm on its way (No photoshop by me, this was real and I got very wet that day). On page 16 there is photograph of a pair of entertainers in Cowes week, dressed as sailors they arrived and created an utterly surreal air about the place. It was fantastic and really set the tone for the rest of the day.

Pages 20 and 21

The printed on postcards embraced a number of methods depending if I already had produced a plate for another purpose of that place. There is a postcard of Southwold beach huts that has on the reverse a print from my Southwold Beach Huts etching. There is a postcard from Tenerife that I have printed on using a solar plate of Tenerife and there are a number of postcards that I have used the polymer plate lithographic process on including Venice and the front cover showing Brooklyn Bridge.

The method of printing was fairly immaterial, polymer plate won out with the newest plates only because it was cheap, quick and very graphic. Mainly I was interested in the idea of printing imagery on the reverse rather than words. It seems subversive and can produce some aesthetically interesting combinations. While imagery, it still retains this contrast from the highly detailed photograph.

The tour starts in April in New York. http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject2012

Images are my actual sketchbook.

Pages 24 and 25

Windsor - 15th March 2009

It's a funny thing but more often than not I haven't investigated places in my local area, instead going to places like London. Now while London is, as I have said before, a very important urban centre especially with regards to my work. I kinda feel however like I might have been missing a trick in not doing these places close by. I think the reason for this is because they are close by, I feel like I know them or at least think that I do. What I have realised is that actually I really have no clue and on top of this there is a particular mind set I feel I have to go through or get into, if that makes any sense.

So what is so special about Windsor? Well to answer that I shall quote a friend on msn I talked to the morning after the trip. Unfortunately I cannot quote it verbatim as I shut the window (I have the setting to save the conversation switched off, saving space ftw).
“Can't say I know much about Windsor other than:

1. The Castle

2. Legoland
3. Legoland has a scale model of the castle at point 1”

Apparently point 3 was made up, and after Internet based searching I can neither prove nor disprove it (would anyone like to pay for me to visit Legoland to find out :P).

What I am groping for here is the point that Windsor is very much based around the castle. 90% of the postcards I have found depicting Windsor are of the castle, however this is understandable for just how a dominant and important structure it is. (It is important to note as fully half of the postcards in Windsor do not actually depict the castle but instead are images of the royal family)

Wikipedia says:

Windsor Castle, in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire, is the largest inhabited castle in the world and, dating back to the time of William the Conqueror, is the oldest in continuous occupation

In fact I found the full wiki article very engaging and interesting and encourage you all to read it as I will be doing once I finish this first draft.

The castle was based of a motte and bailey type structure and has expanded over the years. Due to this and possibly a natural hill as well (It certainly seemed that way while in town but I couldn't find anything to quote and prove it so) the Castle overlooks the town of Windsor. In fact it is so dominant that I found it a hard task to not inadvertently photograph it. Add in that it is the favoured weekend retreat of Her Majesty and you have a tourist paradise.

However I don't think this dominance is a bad thing. It is a good looking building and around it has grown the town, so happily there are plenty of older buildings. Now I pride myself on being able to find interest and beauty in any place I visit but it is made much easier in places with a little history behind them. Maybe the buildings just have that little bit of individualism that sets them out from each other, maybe I just find them more aesthetically pleasing than masses of glass, steel and concrete. Possibly it is nothing more than while trying to act as a tourist to these places I get wrapped up in the atmosphere and advertising of these older places and my notions of holidays in Britain. Anyway I really struggle when faced with ,what I see as faceless, shopping malls and city centres and frequently find myself attracted to churches and occasionally pubs.

Actually I think that the major thing for me is that I want myself and by extension the people who look at my images to be able to say of yes that is London or wherever, without me having to put text on the image to that effect even though I generally will anyway. I realise that this is a little irrational and that I have many an examples of a postcard that is of some cottage in a tiny little village somewhere which would have made no sense to me if it wasn't for the text.

Anyway Windsor is in that regard a joy to photograph and of the almost 300 photographs I took I am sure that I will find many many potential paintings, drawings and images from them. And every one will stand a good chance of having the castle in them.

Seriously, go down to the river and turn around, there is the Castle.
Walk to Eton, the Castle peeks over the rooftops.
Wander the depths of the Great Park and there is the Castle on the horizon.

In fact I actually started my day in the Great Park and the further away I walked from town the more of the Castle I could see, mainly becuase I was going up a hill in the park. It reminded me of the time years and years ago (I think almost 20 but I can't be sure) when visiting Windsor with my father we parked in a nondescript multistory car park at what felt like miles from the castle. Even so we were able to see and photograph the castle with even my rubbishy compact camera which I found very exciting. Which proves that some things never really change. Unfortunately the photograph I took I seem to have since lost.

I did however find this unrelated and previously forgotten about photograph. It was taken about the same time as the Windsor ones on my first visit to Alton Towers.

I took it because (and I remember this very clearly unlike the rest of the trip) I liked the way the crazy dark sky looked so strange in contrast to the bright shiny sunlit Windmill.

Well wouldn't you know.

Thoughts on Blogging

You know there is a whole world of difference between thinking about writing something and actually sitting down to do it. I do not feel entirely comfortable writing (it is something I haven't really practised in the few years since finishing University) and I am aware that my turn of phrase can be fairly unique, maybe even over convoluted and needlessly verbose. I am also aware that I tend to ramble and that my use of punctuation less than perfect. Never the less I will endeavour and hope you all don't get too confused.

While walking around Windsor I started thinking about the nature of Blogs (and by extension Facebook and Twitter). From this came thoughts about writing as part of my practice. (Actually now as I write this I am not sure which came first. Each seems to feed the other). That the events and feelings I get when I visit a place to photograph would add interest to the images and paintings I finally create, a little insight into the creative process if you will. I also feel that this will extend, even if only slight, into times when I travel for other reasons as any kind of travel sparks this very individual and unique thought process in me.

However before I could get to deeper thoughts on my work or of Windsor this string of thought led, while wandering across a bridge of all places, to a discourse on my stance on these online diary entries. This is something I have thought about many a time but never felt the need to write about. And you know I'm not going to write about it now. I did write a long entry about how I see other peoples blogs but I fear that I am generalising and so these thoughts will remain unfinished. Maybe one day, but maybe that is a thought for a different kind of blog, one not devoted to my practice. I would say one that assails you all with my opinions but how would that differ from this one. ;)

As I said I plan to Blog about very specific events. I have always sucked at keeping any kind of diary or journal so I will write about times where I have gone to a place, travelled etc. (no, they are not the same thing) and not about everything else in my life. These are big events that I will be returning to many times over a period of days and weeks as I sift through and play with the imagery. Hopefully these events will work like an ongoing project diary. Don't expect it to be updated often. Weeks and or even months may pass in between events and then, in a gloriously sunny week like the previous few I might be going all over the country and bombard you with multiple entries. That being said if it takes me this long to write and refine the entries....

In fact I find it very hard to articulate these thoughts in writing. While in Windsor, when I was thinking about these things, I knew the shape and form of what I wanted to say and although it remains like an itch I cannot scratch while I write this and try to write the next entry about Windsor it just refuses to come out.

I worry now that all my thoughts about Windsor have become lost and fuzzy so I shall go now and battle with Windsor.