the first frost is here (and snow!)

hello!

well, walking to work yesterday the grass on the hill where i live was still super frosty, even though the sun had been up for a while and i read that there was a big flurry of snow up by inverness too - wow!

this weekend i have my very short, short film 'the possible consequences of one action: part 1 - the end of the world' showing at the hidden doors festival @ the roxy art house in edinburgh - it looks like a totally amazing line-up over the next three days of live bands and films - i'm really really looking forward to heading over on sunday afternoon to enjoy the entertainment! well done genevieve et al, i doth my cap to your stupendous powers of organisation and dedication (they are all volunteers who work in the collective - my kind of folk xx)

i also believe that one of my silk portraits has made it into the RSA open 30th October - 15th December!

wow!

i believe it to be true mainly as i have not received an email asking me to come and remove it from the premises - i did get an email to collect another piece of work as i had entered two pieces - so that's super coolio too!

then of course there is hallowe'en.....

the world's first audio horror movie, 'the dunwich horror', is being screened at the grosvenor on sunday 31st october and so to celebrate the end of the month club is relocating from the 13th note basement to the bright celluloid lights of the grosvenor cafe for the hallowe'en special IX - and as ever, i will be singing my usual spooky nonsense and taking part in some exceptionally distasteful collaborations ....ooooooo!

and then it will be november.......eeek!

xxx

aaaaahhhhhhh it's october!!!!

oh how did that happen already?? BLIMEY!

september went past in an almighty flurry with the opening of TIME TO GIVE UP, a show by Simon Shaw and myself at the glasgow project room on saturday 4th

the show was only on until saturday 11th, after which the sad task of sanding back and painting over began - it is indeed the weirdest thing in the world to spend all the spare time i had either side of my jobs for about ten days going to the project room and hand-drawing onto the wall with POSCA graffiti pens to make what the project room committee termed a "substantial piece of work" only to just paint over it and make it disappear again - it's kind of liberating i suppose and i have plenty of photographic documentation of the making and destroying of which i will hopefully make into a stop motion soon...

so, after TIME TO GIVE UP, i discovered that my work for the big antidote had also been printed by cure studio, down in London, as part of Zineview: a pop up reading room

this event was run by Teal Triggs (Professor of Graphic Design at the University of the Arts in London) in conjunction with the London College of Communication and Thames and Hudson on Monday 20th

i am also forgetting the marvelous Pietro Fortuna exhibition, Glory, at the Tramway that I was lucky enough to be an artist in which took place on Saturday 28th August - that was pretty exciting stuff to be a part of something so large scale!
and then there was the Ironbbratz antidote to Glory, which was an exhibition in IB HQ with the nifty title, Shame - and i think we were all suitably ashamed of our particular exhibits in this show (well at least Mr Smith and I were as they were particularly low quality) - this show happened on saturday 11th.

that's all for now!

ciao xxxx

TIME TO GIVE UP

wowee! ok, so the time is nearly here!!!

on saturday 4th september

simon shaw and myself are having the opening of our wondrous show with the nifty title

TIME TO GIVE UP

at the Glasgow Project Room, 1st Floor, Trongate 103, 7-9pm

the show runs daily 12-6pm from tuesday 7th until saturday 11th september

short and sweet x

wading through muck

hmmmmm, well i have successfully avoided doing anything creative towards my impending exhibitions..............i am floundering around in the muck trying to sort out how to pay huge bills when i earn so little money - it takes up a lot of my time and really doesn't get me anywhere at all, except for making me more worried about drowning under the pressure of trying to stay afloat! bums!

it's less than 4 weeks till the project room opening and my last vain attempt to secure funding through central station didn't work - that's about 5 or 6 funding strands i've approached for this one show and not a single sheckle offered towards it. i know i'm not good with words, that much is clear, hence i'm a visual artist, but i really find it difficult to swallow that i am so unworthy of investment - am i really?

i've tried every year for 15 years to secure some sort of funding from all kinds of places, possibly 20-30 applications each year, but to no avail whatsoever....it's really hard going, especially when i have a show and yet i have no money to produce anything that i had really wanted to, that's really disappointing. yes, i can just show some drawings, yes, i can possibly print out a few pamphlets, but it's not ever going to be the show that i was intending to exhibit due to lack of finance.

i guess it's a never ending balancing act - trying to earn enough money to just get by so that there is enough time to be creative - i've just not found the right balance - before i was far far too busy to fit in creative time properly, now i don't quite earn enough to enable me to pay for my creative time....it's a conundrum...

x

time flies!

well well well, time flies sooooo fast! i can't believe it is a month since i last posted a blog - how did that happen??? blimey! if it's any consolation i have thought about it frequently...no, that doesn't actually count does it, sorry!

ok, so what has been happening? well, i managed to survive the intensive month of june doing the ironbbrazt art-off at market gallery, phew! i got a letter back from glasgow city council's sport and leisure saying that had unfortunately not won a small visual art grant again (i think i have a complete set of these knock-back letters that span the past 15 years!!!), i have almost completed my first ever e-card animation and i have nearly filled my first book of 'iamconsumer' (only two pages to go!)....

up and coming over the next few months is ironbbratz team working with some italian artist at the tramway in august - {will let you know what, where, when and who once i know} - and also a show in the glasgow project room in september with simon shaw - {cripes! i'd better start making stuff!!!}

i'm off to eat my tea now and contemplate the future manoeuvres needed to sail my dingy safely around the shores of possibility xxx

june june june june june...etc

my my my, half way through june already!!!

this month I have mostly been involved with the Versus project held at Market Gallery - I am on team Ironbbratz - hell yeah! we have created and installed 4 shows since the beginning of the month and we have our 5th show opening on Saturday 20th at 7pm - come and join in!

also, the comic strip project, the big antidote, that i did the opening story panels for (not the title at the top, but the bit that introduces Sylvie and the fox) is now actually up on a 30 metre long hoarding on Old Street, London!!!! if you can, please go and see it, take photos and send them to me (as I can't go to see it myself), i would most appreciate that, thanks.

right, must go and make art!!!
xxxxxxxxx

i think this must be the gulf stream!!!

well, this month has started off at full throttle....
a week or so ago i got invited to take part in an exhibition experiment which sounded pretty good fun - i didn't have too many details about it, just vague idea about it being a kind of competition against another group of glasgow based artists....
we had our fist meeting yesterday at 7pm at Market Gallery where the true extent of what i have signed up for became a lot clearer...very suddenly!
it's art wars!!!!
we got our first brief last night and a budget from which we had to produce a work to assessed this afternoon at 5:30pm!
there were several factors that made this a hard task
- 1st was my group Ironbbratz was made up of people who didn't all know each other or each others' work and practice
- 2nd the budget was given to us after most of the shops had shut (and our decisions were definitely made after all the other useful shops in the vicinity had closed)
- 3rd was that many of us have those really crap things called jobs which get in the way of work!!! hee hee, only kidding!
it was all good and really really exciting - i've not been so pumped about being involved in anything for ages - this is the kind of project that takes me back to just after i graduated when everything seemed possible and everything pretty much was possible depending on how much effort you put in to make it happen - BRILLIANT!
we got graded as 'effective' for our response to the first brief, occupy....
we have our next brief already and will be graded on Friday afternoon....hmmmm...
apart from that, i am in the final stages of the ten animated films i'm making for East Ayrshire hopefully - squeezing them into all my spare time (which seems suddenly to have completely evaporated - eek!) so that should be one less thing to do soon, fingers crossed...
i'll be back..................after this break
x