Southend Art School 1966/7

A few faces here that I remember from my art school days. Just found this on the Southend Art School FB page. Lots of interesting photos on there including some from me if I get around to it. Most of them are from after 1967 so don't recognise many people in the years Ken Bottom took over as principal. Not sure when this function was or where it was? One I missed obviously.

Curios Radio 2

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Modern Vintage Illustration

Books are like buses - none come along for ages and then two at once! This time it's "Modern Vintage Illustration" by Martin Dawber - due out this year he tells me. I have a couple of collage works in it. This year seems very lucky for me so far - let's hope it continues!

Artists' Postcards Book

Jeremy Cooper's fabulous book artist's postcards turned up today which has several of mine scattered through it , all in glorious colour. Some of the text is slightly off and the index misses a couple of pages but otherwise I am thrilled. I am in good company as many of my old mail art chums are represented including Anna Banana, Mark Pawson, Nigel Bents, Robin Crozier etc. and a good range from Fluxus to Brit Art and beyond. Good to see Angelica from Scrapatorium and Flickr in there too.

More details HERE

Buy at Amazon.

Collaborative Flyers 1985

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Knutsford

Nice walk around Knutsford this morning to see a few charity shops and mooch round the graveyard. Amazing to see the path made from old grave stones and this huge wall made of grave stones. The coffee morning was interesting too we saw advertised - a white elephant stall, home made chutneys and jams, cakes and a book stall. Hazel bought two knitted outfits with hair and eyes for Cadburys creme eggs. I found a DVD of a French film about a ventriloquist with Eric Von Stroheim. Also got a small picture frame from another charity shop. Sadly the Oxfam was closed for refurbishment. Popped in to see Hazel's Mom and sister afterwards at Lostock - saw some Spring lambs on the way.

More Shopping

We don't often buy furniture, infact hardly ever as we have no room for it and we aquired most of our wonky chairs and tables from other people over the years. But Hazel spotted a lovely old oak tambour in the antique place near us recently and she had to have it.When she knocked the price down and said I could use it for my spare DVD's it then became more of a required item. Later we discovered they are quite pricey going for 300 quid or more so ours seemed quite cheap by comparison and it certainly looks the part - goes where the chair used as a coffee table used to be in the front room. Just the right height for a cuppa and glasses and oofa-doofahs fit on top very nicely thankyou. Oofa-doofahs in case you were wondering are Granma and Auntie Audreys name for the remote controls! Also in the antique place I found a clockwork Grinning Gorilla and some postcards. It was like Xmas all over again. More like a post Valentines treat what with the egg on toast and side order of chips in the cafe. Yum!

Petite Pierre

One of those little joys of a film that we managed to capture on the old VHS machine many years ago and have looked for a better copy but never seen one until now. Not sure this IS better but its slightly longer than the copy we have I think. Emmanual Clot who directed it does a wonderful job with the atmosphere, editing and the music.
Short films don't get any better than this!

When Pierre dies his creation was neglected and vandalised but thankfully it has been moved to a Outsider Art Museum called Fantabulosa? Kenneth Williams used to love it there.

Murry Krishmush!

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More nonsense from the past. A small publication I churned out every festive season for friends and family based on those annoying little mags that drop out of the radio Times and Sunday papers when you least expect it.

Peace In The World Or The World In Pieces 1984

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I have been having fun trying to figure out how to transfer old 'zines and catalogues to Issuu - a site for publishing online documents of all kinds. The pdf files give me a lot of trouble - also working with Word which refuses to do anything I want it to! How do I get rid of those big borders round the edges of pages for a start? Ill figure it out eventually I expect after tearing my hair out and ranting at the PC screen for hours!

I proposed the idea of a mini mail art show on an 8 foot long pinboard for the Whitechapel Open back in 1984 and to my amazement I was accepted and the board with help from my old chum Dick Turpin was duly installed in the warehouse the Whitechapel was using that year to show the work as the main gallery was closed for some reason. I didn't have a grant of any kind to had to bare the expense of materials and postage myself which wasn't easy on the dole!
The invites sent out I waited for all the mail on the theme of war and peace (or 1984 ) to come rolling in - which it did and during the exhibition , which was about a month long, I religiously took the daily mail along to the exhibition space to pin the participants work up onto the board. You can read inside the catalogue just how many and from which countries etc.

Dick's cousin or Uncle , I forget which, kindly donated the catalogue, which was litho printed in the East End of London or Barking? Anyway, totally over ambitious and a big headache at the time but I look back with fond memories of putting it all together and as I leaf through this slim volume I wonder what happened to all these people I used to correspond with?

Dad's Army Art School

Had a strange dream last night which centred around the old Southend Art School but all the tutors places were taken by the cast of Dad's Army! Arthur Lowe was teaching lithography and a squirted water in his face squeezing a sponge as I mopped the litho plate ( this did actually happen! ) and hilarity ensued. Captain Mainwairing called me a "Stupid boy!"
Leo Hardy's ( the principal) was played by Godfrey. he just stayed in his office all the time and poked his head out of the door occasionally to say "O dear!" and pop back in again.
Pike was teaching life class and getting very embarrassed and calling for Uncle Arthur who was the ceramics tutor I think. It all gets a bit confused and fuzzy.

The collage above is the card I made for Archie to celebrate the confirmation of his dyslexia. He's been having an ongoing test at college and at last he's found out what we all knew all along but his High School and 6th Form college failed to spot or even acknowledge! Thankfully the folks at Mid Cheshire take it more seriously. Its good to know he'll get some extra help whilst at Uni. and a free laptop and printer!

Curios Thing Compendium

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Poop Poopy Doo

Another week whizzed by or maybe two. My resolution to make one collage a day is going well. This is the latest for the Kollage Kit theme of Tigers, Lions and Bears. Do bears sit in the woods? Also completed a flick book for a project in Holland. I don't usually bother with mail art projects these days but this one caught my eye - in a few ways. Luckily a had a small book of receipts that was ideal. I traced some old zoetrope illustrations from a children's book and repeated them a few times. Simple but effective. I'll see if I can film it with the Flip camera.

No boots this weekend or any walks as the weather was a bit iffy.
Today I walked into town and back. Very mild for January so surprised to find a squashed snowball on the way - maybe thrown from Norway by a troll? Bargains of the day were two tiny memory sticks from the Isle Of Man for a quid each in the Red Cross Shop. They had details of some conference or other and lots of photos of the island and hotels etc which I deleted. Also got some films including Red Dwarf series 3, The Jolson Story and The Day Today - Series One. No sooner have I made lots of space on my shelves than I begin to fill them up again!

Welcome to 2012

Blimey- it's windy out there - a gust caught my shopping bag whilst I was trying to stick a stamp on a letter by the postbox and tipped most of the contents out onto the street where they blew in all directions! Arrgh! Mad scramble for the precious things of the bag- namely letters, bus pass and library card. Lost a few receipts and bus tickets but they don't matter too much - they must be halfway to Chester by now!

That's Xmas and New year's Eve over for another year. Back to normal now with all the decorations and cards taken down and that feeling of living inside Miss Haversham's shed elimenated.

Also had a nice walk around Shakerley the other morning to see the ducks and other bird life on the lake. No ice this year but a bitter cold wind blowing so we didn't stay long.
My only NY Resolution is to produce at least one collage a day no matter how small or ill conceived it might be. Day two and two in the bag ( folder ) so on course so far - so good.

Another walk involved taking out lots of plastic carrier bags and filling them with the roadside detritus that the council doesn't pick up for some reason. We felt good about ourselves being so community spirited despite the odd looks from passing motorists who were probably responsible in the first place!

Merry Crumble!

Here we are gathered round the festive twig. Had a nice day out yesterday in Liverpool despite the gloomy weather. Good to see the Alice In Wonderland exhibition at the Tate although we felt it could have been a bit more fun - for the kids. A nice maze or a Mad Hatter's Tea Party or something. It was all a bit too serious and celebral despite the inclusion of Bill Woodrow and Peter Blake. Lots of stuff that really shouldn't have been in it. Also popped in the Walker to see the Matisse books but as Hazel said the gallery lacked that spark - felt a bit isolated and empty. Some terrible pretentious twaddle on at the other gallery I always forget the name of. No festive joy there. We had lunch in the Hole In The Wall which was a mistake as it was very busy and we waited ages for our egg on toast which turned out to be an egg toasted sandwich with a side salad. Which we didnt mind too much as it turned out cheaper. A lot of noise though from rowdy diners.

Didn't do much shopping as it was so incredibly crowded with queues forming outside some trinket shops - so obvious still lots of money about.
Popped into the Oxfam and the Comic shop and found some books we liked but not the price. I've done most of my Xmas shopping anyway. Just some chestnuts and puff pastry to get and we shall be almost there!

Psycerbolics

A blast from Christmas pasts here , 1968/9 maybe , under the influence of something I'm sure though probably nothing more than Thrimpton's Old Perculier.

My earliest memory of Xmas was going to a big department store in London and having a ride of Santa's submarine to his fishy smelling grotto under the North Pole. Elves with fins and flippers? I can't quite remember that clearly but seem to remember the fishes and penguins swimming magically past the port holes ( canvas strips on pulleys being cranked along ) as we chugged along and then lead out through another door to where a red coated plump Neptune of a Santa was waiting to ho ho ho and give out presents. It may have been a tin of water colour paints in the gaily wrapped parcel or that may have been another time.

Another vivid memory must have been around Xmas time - a snowball fight in Corringham in Essex where we lived just after we moved from London. It was a pokey first floor flat in a row of delapidated houses. We accessed our flat up some rickety wooden stairs to a balcony and the kitchen door. A tin bath hung on the wall outside. Gas mantles and the radio worked with a big car battery on the side board. Anyway, I was throwing snowballs down from the balcony to passing urchins and they in turn threw them back. I had not realised the door to the flat was open and snowballs that missed me found their way into the kitchen and made quite a mess. Mum wasn't very pleased when she found them half melted on the lino floor.

Who Ate All The Pies?

Weird dream just before I woke up about finding collaged soggy boxes of old gramophone needles in a fly tipping area by a bus stop. I was telling the people at the bus stop how awful all this fly tipping was and secretly thinking " heh heh, I have the gramophone needles though". The collages on the boxes were old ladies cooking pies but they were infact all mechanical inside like robots seen in section.

I looked through my collage archive on Flickr and found this one I did a few years ago. It's about the nearest the dream gets though pretty sure the collages in the dream were in black and white.

Weekend Trunk Calls

Not a particularly busy weekend though we did manage to sort out the Xmas card photo - dressed up in our silliest festive jumpers and hats we posed around the the festive twig with dangly pine cones that Archie made copying the illustration in the Ladybird Book of Things To Make. Going to get 100 printed today and make up the cards over the next week or so. I bet you can't wait!

Also the boot sales. The one at Witton was a bit of a disaster due to the inclement weather. Only three stalls outside and three inside. Luckily the i-Insect lady was there so bought two off her. Hazel bought some last week and I was keen to get some of my own. Trumpety trump!

Archie bought a huge bag of old Ultimate Real Robot magazines with attached bits of cyborg to make for a quid. The lady selling them said 50p first of all but Archie thought this too cheap and doubled it. When he got home however he realised 50p was too expensive for the pile of mouldy smelly crap he had bought in the dim light of the shipping container that served as a stall. He threw most of it in the bin!

The one at Antrobus was a lot busier but a quid to get in which was a bit steep. They even had a few stalls outside. I bought two old steam train books and a DVd of "Spiral Staircase" " a Hitchcockian thriller". Hazel got loads of stuff from the 20p stall including a lovely old 1937 copy of the Radio Times with extra Coronation of King George 6th colour supplement. Worth it alone for the amusing adverts for sheds, dog food and Liver Pills. Also a King George 6th glass fruit bowl, a potty, a set of cutlery and all manner of other tat.

Nuclear Family

Havent really done all that much of note lately but a quick update. New blog seems to be faltering slightly with me the only one adding to it. I thought it was a good theme too - Family. This is one I did which seems to have gleaned lots of comments on Flickr. Strangely other collages which I consider much more accomplished have been ignored completely. Again I seem to be at odds with the world around me! Nevermind - it helps me focus on my collage work which was the main reason for starting a new blog in the first place.

Besides the alternate daily shopping trips and healthy walks we have been to the boot sales which continue despite the Winter weather. The one at Witton, although small, comes up with bargains week after week. Last week I got a huge bag of stuff mainly because it was so cheap - DVD's , CD's and books. More stocking fillers. Hazel found some great creepy crawly i-insects which run on tiny batteries and whizz about looking very authentic. Only a quid each and in the shops they are sometimes as much as six quids!

They still keep trying to get planning permission for the land at the end of our garden which is annoying. They have been turned down several times already so hopefully they will be again though in the current climate one wonders.

Hazel has been poorly with a nasty sore throat and laryngitus so off work for a week. Amazingly I havent caught it ( touch wood ) but Archie had a mild dose of it but cleared up pretty quickly.

Keep taking the tablets!

Will & Adela's Wedding & Guy Pile

Here's the first guy pile with the one I made at the front. There's a better photo of me dancing with it that Hazel took but seems to be horizontal and no idea how blogger can twist it round.

A lovely time was had by all needless to say though we did feel a bit like gate crashers as we didnt know anybody- only Will & Adela. The disco wasa bit loud ( showing my age here! ) so glad when it stopped and the guys were called for and we danced around for the judges. Needless to say we didn't win any prizes - some amazing elaborate ones had been created.
Here's the lovely bride and groom singing a heart warming duet by two pink piggy cakes . No fireworks though but some cows looking over a fence and lots of kids running around high on icing sugar and pop I imagine! Coincidentally it was our anniversary so an interesting way to celebrate it. Now we shall never forget Will & Adela's as it's the same day as ours and the Bonfire Night which in itself is a massive clue and sticks out like a sparkly rocket on the calender.
Outside the Hotel in deepest Cheshire the guys are piled up before the big dance off. That's not Nick Clegg at the front next to Cow Guy.

PS. We had to take our guy home and rather than burn him we took his papier mache head off and put it on a shelf in the front room so now he looks down at us while we watch telly.

We labouriously unscrewed the balls of newspaper inside used as stuffing and flattened them ALL out again for putting in the recycling bag. The clothes and slippers are going to Oxfam.