The Snow has gone, the temperature has risen and the birds are out.
The annual RSPB Garden Bird Watch was this weekend and for an hour the quiet focus was only interrupted by the birds calling or singing to each other as they found food in the feeders or the buds and berries that are beginning to show themselves. Two distinctive blue and orange Nuthachs appeared to display their clever food collection techniques using their long precise beaks. They run up and down the trees tap, tap tapping as they go.
Nuthatch, Ingoldsby 2021.
Below the less colourful and more camouflaged pair of Dunnocks pick up the seeds as they forage amongst the undergrowth before lifting off to sing their loud song. Seasonal activity is on the increase as the seasons change and perhaps we are more aware of them in these times
Drawing
Literature and written research is taking precedent over drawing and printmaking in current times. However I have drawn two portraits for the series: WHEN WE COULD MEET AND SHARE #BLM. The first is from a photograph made before Lockdown in the Birmingham School of Art Print room when MA student @ray_workz dropped by with her statement hat. The orange flat colour is reminiscent of that which she chose in her CMYK large scale self portraits. The second was while visiting the British Museum for The American Dream, Pop to the Present in April 2017 drawn from the museum’s collection of prints. Art Desk review by Mariana Vaizey. That was sometime ago when many peoples attended the Museum and shared cultural experiences.
Rachelle 2019. Digital drawing January 2021.British Museum 2017. Digital Drawing January 2021.
Lest we forget
September 17th. Digbeth, Birmingham UK
covid update
There are no words to describe the level that the death rate has risen to this week.
BBC News
Cathedral Vaccination Centre to Music.
Impromtu music makes such a difference.
Follow the Salisbury Cathedral Organist who provides a soundtrack to vaccinations in unlikely surroundings and a commentary on the introduction of a vaccine service on his twitter feed. Look out for the surprise appearance of Bernie Sanders who has been turning up in his mittens across the globe. Made possible by NYU masters student Nick Sawhney.
Last week’s webinar flurry was followed by an animated and erudite presentation by Professor Erin Manning from Canada. Her paper Art as a Practice of research seminar is available on the Material encounters website.
Q&A at the conclusion of the fully engaging webinar.
Erin Manning is a professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada). She is also the founder of SenseLab (www.senselab.ca), a laboratory that explores the intersections between art practice and philosophy through the matrix of the sensing body in movement. Her current projects are focused around the concept of minor gestures in relation to colour and movement. She talked about the concepts of “research-creation” and on issues around whiteness, black life and neurodiversity.
Impact 11 the international print conference has announced it will be fully online in 2021 as the 2020 had to be cancelled owing to the pandemic. There’s not much time for final preparation and for recalibration for a virtual environment.
Architecture
Mark Holden of Invigour published the 2nd of his architectural reviews. Chamberlain moved to Birmingham in 1853 and was known for his Victorian Gothic style and was one of the earliest practical exponents of the ideas of architectural theorist, John Ruskin. He was increasingly influenced by the early Arts and Crafts movement in his later works.
He served from 1865 until his death as Honorary Secretary and on the Council of the Birmingham and Midland Institute. Among his notable and surviving creations are Highbury Hall and the Chamberlain Memorial fountain. Shortly before his death he completed the designs for the Birmingham School of Art and it is widely considered to be his masterpiece.
Lest we forget
September 17th. Digbeth, Birmingham UK
covid update
Even though the hospital cases are slowing and the vaccinations are being given in increasing numbers the death-toll continues rise. Per Head of population the UK death rate is one of the highest in the world.
Web/seminars. Murals, Whooping Cranes, Buoys, Lighthouses and Lightships.
Online web/seminars are getting underway after the not-so-festive break. Although not the real experience online video events are becoming more efficient with less tech teething issues allowing access with ease to content and interaction. The global internet allows participants and presenters to contribute from their base, no matter where they may be. The old democratising dictum of digital to be accessible to anyone “anytime anywhere” is coming to pass. The first alert to pop up was from the Yale Alumni Non profit Alliance : “Public Art: Supporting Art as a Way to Build Up & Bind Local Communities”
The session’s first speaker was my newly appointed second Phd supervisior Dr Jonathan Harris, Emeritus Professor in Global Art & Design Studies. He talked about the value of the Roosevelt New Deal art and cultural programmes to help counter the affects of the great depression in 1930’s USA. He drew parallels with the current pandemic and how there might be similar effective measures taken by global government’s. The panel provided a diverse range of responses to the public art question. The role of major mural projects were highlighted including the Philadelphia Mural arts Programme : ‘Personal Renaissance.’ The programme was extensive and drew upon mutual health and cultural needs and benefits, which was evaluated over time and in detail.
Tamarind
Next up: The Tamarind Institute: Independent curator Candice Hopkins talks to American born, Columbian Mexican artist Harold Mendez about his artistic motivations. The conversation was wide ranging as is his work, however, he did talk about his motivations to make prints at the institute. The two lithographs created at Tamarind incorporate a screen as the final printed layer of each image, which visually changes the viewer’s engagement with the work either up close or at a distance. There is a veil to peer through to the image, but it is not separate, but a part of the image. He had travelled to Havana, to find traces of the life and memory of Cuban artist Belkis Ayón, who tragically took her own life at the age of 32. He set out to find her grave and encountered sites of commemoration, offering, and sacrifice. He made a litho print from a metal plate titled Counterweight which depicts industrial steel weights and pays homage to the lost burial site of Ayón.
The Institute was founded in 1960 on Tamarind Avenue (hence the name).“Tamarind’s founder, the artist June Wayne, with whom I worked closely, later likened lithography’s plight to that of the whooping crane: “In all the world there were only thirty-six cranes left, and in the United States there were no master printers able to work with the creative spectrum of our artists.Tamarind’s challenge, as she saw it, was no less than to create a new ecological system, in the absence of which “this remarkable medium of expression [might] die in its youth without having been asked to reveal its untapped powers for new aesthetic expression.” An informed energy: lithography and Tamarind by Clinton Adams.
The annual TBW drawing exhibition was unable to be held this year. The photograph advertising past events was a reminder of what we are not experiencing as the gallery was rammed with enthusiastic participants enjoying meeting and sharing the event. Much effort had clearly been made to make the 2020 winning announcement one to remember. The exhibition includes 71 drawings by 56 practitioners selected from 4,274 submissions received from across the UK and internationally. Founder artist Anita Taylor introduced the event from the Cooper Gallery in Dundee with a series of short films and a tour of the exhibition of the 2020 drawings. The event culminated with the commended and winning artist’s drawings.
As well as the winning drawings there is an interactive virtual gallery on the site. Each drawing can be zoomed into and has an information label. Online gallery produced by V21 Artspace
The Corporation of Trinity House was originally a voluntary association of shipmen and mariners and was granted a charter by Henry VIII in 1514 as “The Guild or Fraternity of the most glorious and undividable Trinity of St Clement”. It received its coat of arms in 1573 and with it the authority to erect and maintain beacons, marks and signs of the sea, “for the better navigation of the coasts of England”. Since then, it has been the famous company responsible for buoys, lighthouses and lightships and pioneering the techniques involved.
This history was not particularly alluded to by the TWB representative in his introduction to the ‘Hugely expansive exhibition’, but the value of drawing as ‘the basis of everything’ was. The drawings are rewarding of a visit if not by peering through the windows of the TBW gallery on the River Thames, through the online portral.
Material Encounters and printgang
Photo: Boyana Aleksova.
Coming up next is Material Encounters Research Cluster with Erin Manning from Sense Lab in Montreal for which preparatory reading has been undertaken. Tuesday 19th.
Printgang took to the internet again with an all-round catch up. On of our number had experienced covid isolation and talked of a soundtrack of omni present ticking clocks and door knockings. Good to report the virus has been banished from the household.
Lest we forget
September 17th. Digbeth, Birmingham UK
covid update
The death-toll continues rise even though the hospital cases are slowing and the vaccinations are being given in increasing numbers.
For 24 hours I have been phone less. In isolation this provides challenges. No camera, whatsapp, instagram, twitter. At least I made the decision to be off grid, unlike the soon not to be President of the United States.
The phone has expired, defunct, “is no more”, “has ceased to be”, “bereft of life, it rests in peace”. (Monty Python: Dead Parrot Sketch). This is an ex-phone. It no longer springs to life at the tap of a finger. The screen now displays a laptop and usb cable icon. For 24 hours it has not woken. For eight hours it has also displayed the apple support url while I discuss with helpful support agents in many locations, how to bring the phone back to life. Agents begin with confident directions to get it back into operation as I provide the error notification numbers. As the day goes by, they become increasingly frustrated leading to escalations up the support chain. Finally, the landline phone I hold in hope goes dead. The time has come to accept that the 18 month-old, iphone xmax “is no more.” A first world problem I know. In discussion with my savvy son an order is made for an android device. The first time in my mobile owing life that my phone will not be an apple. How will I fair?
Positively, reading has been uninterrupted by the call of the phone. The day has been relaxed. Perhaps the next phone should be turned on and off to a schedule to reduce unnecessary anxiety and enhance focus.
36 hours on and it has arrived. This is the reality of Lockdown ‘accelerated order to door consumerism’. Should it be opened? It sits in its oversize polythene package enticing opening. I will finish reading first. Joanna Love. ‘Drawing Dust.’ from Drawing and Science a recent journal from Intellect Publications: Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice. Vol 5 Number 2. Edited by Catherine Baker featuring a series of position pieces and project reports Including from Garry Barker, Harriet Carter and ‘Drawing Ed Ruscha’ by one Edward Turpie.
1950-17 US Photography influences
I will continue to read ‘LEAVE ANY INFORMATION AT THE SIGNAL’, a collection of writings and interviews with Ed Ruscha that illuminate the artist’s artistic thought processes and add to my understanding of the 1950 – 70 period of American visual arts. There are regular references to Rew–shay’s adoption of photography for various purposes from his early seminal books of sunset strip and gasoline stations that are bereft of cluttering human presences. He makes a telling reference to his rethinking of the value of photography on seeing Robert Frank’s Americans and cite’s his admiration of Walker Evan’s documentary photography. One can imagine Rewshay seeing Evan’s photographs from Farm Security Administration projects of store fronts and being affected by them aesthetically with their ‘straight on’ representation of location and prominent typographic signage. He might have seen Evan’s series of photographs of a roadside stand near Birmingham Alabama: F.M.POINTER’s ‘The Old Reliable’, ‘HOUSE REMOVER’ with its ‘FISH, LAKE FISH’ and ‘SPECIALS’ large and regular size painted/printed signs all in one storefront. Or the Filling station 1929, with massive lettering: CARS GREASED – MOTOR SPRINGS OILED – AUTO BODY SQUEAKS RE[PAIRED]. And the 1930 Truck and Sign photograph of the Globe Electric Sign truck picking up the massive typographical sign : “DAMAGED”. Walker Evans Anthology.
Evans was a champion of Frank’s work as he was of Lee Friedlander and Diane Arbus.
Photographs at midday Brum@12
Lockdown Lookout. Computational photograph. January 2021.
There is a fisheye mode on the Pixel phone. It require 36 shots to create 360 sphere.
Lest we forget
September 17th. Digbeth, Birmingham UK
Good Funding news.
covid update
It is tough to be back in Lockdown. Acting collectively as a society might stop the spread. The vaccine(s) may generate a degree of protection, but if we all did not mix we might stop it sooner. Looking at the countries that adopted strict all holds barred lockdown it is clear from the data, that this is the way forward even if it is anathema to libertarian values. There is a downside to to the libertarian argument: there were no masks in the storming of Capitol Hill. And there were few national guardsmen stopping the far-right rioting, unlike last summer when BLM protesters peacefully made their views known.
New Year has passed. A quiet affair. But each day brings further turmoil.
The variant gives more cause for concern and the figures reach relentlessly upwards. It is so depressing, debilitating and Soul destroying, leading to emotions of helplessness as the problem is too large to be resolved by individual actions, no matter how socially responsible. Helplessness is taken to the ultimate conclusion with the government directive to ‘Stay at Home.’ Lockdown is back.
Structure to lockdown life
I have been invited to participate in the BRUM@12, 12days at 12pm photographicproject. As well as contributing to a local online artistic community it also provides another point in the daily structure. A midday alert has been added to the diary to remember to take a photograph of some relevance. I had intended to make pictures featuring the midday sun as it streamed on to interior surfaces. That was on the 31st of December 2020 ahead of January 2021 when the midday sun shone brightly. Sadly the 1st of January 2021 saw little sunshine. It has returned as the week progresses and on the 5th the sun shone brightly. posted on instagram, Facebook and on a page on my new server website.
With practical structures taking some form post the festive break, it is time to instil a research structure even though the University art school has not reopened. James Mensch’s book ‘Embodiment: from the body to the body politic’ provides a focus for phenomenological assessment of body, natural and artificial intelligence. He introduces philosopher Merleau Ponty’s concepts of intertwining and perceptual faith and while his focus is on human perception, a number of the propositions can be applied to physical acts of drawing by hand with an implement, as a means to grasp the world.
This new year’s first Patter post discusses the values of blogging to researchers: ‘I’ve been thinking about academic writing and blogging again. I’ve been wondering what we might learn from thinking about the writing that bloggers do.’ She applies the lens of ‘action’ and for the doctoral researcher her outlining of the value of varying forms of writing is helpful in defining academic writing.
This prompted a first 2021 visit to Garry Barker’s always rich and extensive blog. Having missed some posts from late 2020, the November 18th offer titled ‘Drawing: Vija Celmins, Frances Richardson and Peter Dreher: Nature Morte’ attracted attention. In it he points to the relationship between photography and drawing of Vija Celmins which allows reflection on the materiality and function of each image making process in the artist’s early decisions to spend her representational and creative time. As Garry’s blog is for students of art, he offers a practical, valuable drawing exercise based on staring at an uninteresting object, drawing it and staring at the result which: ‘ hopefully there will be a moment of revelation, a realisation that you and this object are in fact entwined together in existence and that just for a little while you were joined in a harmonic relationship, one that is recorded in the materials of your extended mind.’
His post observing a number of artist’s material engagement with drawing helps us pursue what Frances Richardson, in describing her present drawings suggests is: ‘An exercise borne from the solitude of our current moment’. Garry’s most recent blog brings him back to the 2021 digital, virtual world we are contending with that ‘consists of both an external ‘surface’ reality and an inner underlying, often unconscious world of feeling and intuition.’ Recommended.
Lest we forget
September 17th. Digbeth, Birmingham UK
The Black Studies team at Birmingham City Uni headed up by Prof Kehinde Andrews ran a webinar this new year’s week to discuss the value of Black studies. They invited Patrick Hutchinson as a guest interviewee. Patrick leads a life as a ‘peacemaker’ after capturing the hearts of the nation when he carried an injured rival protester from danger. He is a founder of UTCAI and has just published a book documenting his early experience growing up as a black lad in Britain: Everyone Versus Racism: A Letter to My Children
United To Change And Inspire (UTCAI) works to bring people together and are united in strength to overcome injustice and prejudice and champion equality for all. They aim to change past narratives and bring forth fairness and equal opportunities in the education, business and justice system, as well as the corporate, creative and sports industries.
Poetry by chance
Listening to poet Carol Ann Duffy on Women’s hour she answered the question do you pray? She replied: ‘. I’ve been on my knees for nearly a year, that’s all I can say . . . . I’m not a religious person, but I do feel myself to be spiritual’. 24 minutes in.
Digital Traumas cont…..
Traumas reduced! I have come to understand the rules that govern local disks and virtual servers. But beware there is another trauma on the horizon – The malfunctioning phone !
covid update
The daily Coronavirus figures are now being referred to as the ‘Numbers’.
As they grow yet higher, they become more frightening. Decision-makers must daily face these and know they are underestimates but have to try and act appropriately even if too late, while sufferers, suffer.
UK Govt. We are over 75,000 deaths, please let it not get worse.
Christmas 2020 was a quiet affair with a very small bubble as London went into tier 4 just as that team was about to leave to join us. The variant we are being informed about gives more cause for concern and the figures go relentlessly upwards. It is so depressing, debilitating and Soul destroying, leading to emotions of helplessness as the problem is too large to be resolved by individual actions, no matter how socially responsible.
Snow and presents
It has snowed. Mesmerising as ever and a welcome reminder that the season’s continue.
I’ve had two surprise presents. No One is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thundberg points to the issues to be addressed if the seasons are to continue to be predictable and Birmingham Lockdown Stories by Jaskirt Boora. I ordered Jaskirt’s book as I was photographed by her in the sun-kissed first Lockdown, for inclusion in the series of portraits people of diverse backgrounds from Birmingham, contending with Covid. Jaskirt included an extract from our conversation about how I have drawn my way through Lockdown.
ejt by Jaskirt Boomra. May 2020
As I have never grown a beard the portrait is the one and only image of myself with one. Jaskirt also included my drawing of Vanley Burke being listened to at his HOME Exhibition celebrating elder Black Women at the Birmingham Hippodrome.
I am still spending Lockdown-time with my laptop and our relationship with the new virtual server. There is a job to be done: all the significant image files that have been collated on a personal internet space over the last 15 years have to be re-collated to take their place on the new accessible 2021 server presence.
What began as an updating of the internet hosting webspace has become a reconfiguration of the visual life experience documentation, that is hosted. In the process the relationship with images becomes the arranging of inanimate files. I am not making warm creative new images or relationships between images as they are gathered and presented but am organising digital files of information into digital matrixes, included or deleted at the stoke of a keyboard key. The experiential meanings behind the taking and retaining of an image over time is diminished, as the technical requirements of arranging each in a templated structure, that has been selected earlier, is the overriding focus. Perhaps I do not have the computing skills to see creative possibilities as the technical, functional use of the technology determines the job in hand.
The parameters of virtual server organisation via the file manager are being internalised as the compilation process grows the accumulating saved image files. Getting to grips with a new virtual organising platform as an ‘administrator’ has more responsibility than previous use of a web hosting platform as a ‘customer /user.’
A folder cannot be deleted. It can be removed, but not deleted. A trace remains. A database entry that cannot be erased? Although empty a folder is a visual reminder of previous significance, which has redefined, when attention is needed to be paid to active folders of significant value. Another Helpdesk call suggested that folders can be deleted via file transfer protocol.
Eventually it will all have to be backed up!!! Double the virtual space.
Lest we forget
September 17th. Digbeth, Birmingham UK
covid update
Seemingly vaccines are on the way, but the figures just keep rising with the UK a terrible third in the world rankings.
UK Govt. We are over 70,000 deaths, please let it not get worse.
