a gratuitous picture of a wing mirror. It's snowing again, which fills me with apprehension regarding my flight tomorrow. I hope it all goes smoothly and there aren't too many delays. Fingers crossed. Otherwise, I've been thinking about a text for the "constellation". I'm trying to find out more about Mason and Dixon at the moment, uniting the themes of travel and astronomy. I worry that the connotations might be misleading (I wasn't, in the event, travelling in their footsteps or anything like that. A whole state or more away, in fact.
Monday, 28 February 2005
freewaying
yet another picture from the Philadelphian transmigration. I'm using it as the basis for another book in the "Morning and the Evening" series, overlaying it with the names of hundreds of stars. Atop all that, I'm going to overlay a constellation in the form of a quotation. There are eight pages to the book as a fold-out, accordion structure, and my intention is to find a quote about space, travel and navigation that can be broken up into 8 short sections.
Sunday, 27 February 2005
Saturday, 26 February 2005
We plan an exciting day
V and I, noble creatures that we are, have offered, perhaps under the
influence of Mexican food, to spend the day with Atkin-san helping him
dry-mount the tip-ins (a strangely nautical phrase, no? "Dry-mount the
tip-ins!" "Aye Cap'n!") for his book Street Life in London Redeemed (bits of which will shortly become visible at Atkin-san's website.
This will involve him "showing us the machinery", which he almost never
does on a first date.(...umm, sorry...)and bringing us into the
mysteries of the dry-mounting process. My own vast experience recalls
one particular dry-mounting press which looked like a prop from a James
Bond move, a glittering behemoth that no-one in the workshop ever used.
Anyway, looks like we'll be sat doing repetitive tasks, snacking and
making appalling puns all day long. Atkinson has promised us music
while we work, but I worry that this means he will bring his vast
collection of inscrutable classical guitar recordings to bear.
I was reading in Alberto Manguel's book On Reading about how workers in Cuban cigar factories would pay for someone to read to them as they worked:
"... Sanchez mentioned one man who was able to remember the entire
'Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.' Being read to, as the cigar workers
found out, allowed them to overlay the mechanical, mind-numbing
activity of rolling the dark scented tobacco leaves with adventures ..."
I for one would love it if someone would read to me from
The Tin Drum about little Oscar's adventures. But I think and fear that
a steady diet of Antonio Lauro and his chums from the guitar store is
to be my fate.
Friday, 25 February 2005
Tin Drum
Not actually an American classic, but the second thing that caught my eye at the Montclair book centre. (The first was "The Baron in the Trees" by Italo Calvino, but I often find Calvino's flattened, heraldic style faintly annoying in anything but the most abstract of moods). I rejected several possibilities with New York or Jersey themes as perhaps over informative and maybe a bit touristy in the circumstances. A bit of vanity, to think that I am not immediately apparent as a tourist- and why would I want to fit in- nonetheless, I am going to spend parts of the afternoon in postwar Germany and Montclair in the winter sunlight simultaneously. Both the Baron and the Drum invoke themes of otherness and commentary on the generality of the world, so perhaps my choice reflects my mood.
Philadelphia
a shot from my recent, short and sweet visit to Philadelphia. Good job we didn't decide to stay for a couple of hours or God knows how we'd have fared on the mysteriously constituted herd migration that is the New Jersey turnpike.
At Café Eclectic
I'm the only customer at Café Eclectic, a pair of rooms in Montclair that do not offer a cup of tea. When asked for one I was offered Lipton's Brisk. A product I do not identify with, despite its many doubtless appealing qualities. I have instead opted for a cup of filter coffee to accompany me to the divan near the window where a cold draught is shooting up the back of my jacket. I'm looking at the café, a random assortment of scuffed, worn velvet and encrusted, overdone embroidered upholstery that manages to be somewhat comfortable whilst being a bit lurid at the same time. It would all be a lot more bearable if it weren't for the sports metal being broadcast for my individual enjoyment over the café's speaker system. Fortunately I've got my little set of headphones and a small but potent lump of digitally-encoded Bach to drown out what appears to be a sort of second-rate Chili Peppers thing I can hear occasionally between the pauses. My socks are quite full enough with my feet, thanks, chaps.
More impressive is the sunshine and snow and the odd combination of lushness and tackiness that seems to embody Montclair's spirit. This is such a strange part of the planet, the more so I think because of its seeming closeness to my own native habitat in the U.K., which it superficially resembles. I can't put my finger on it. It seems more ruthless and temporary, and also more filled with possibilities. A comparison between a motorcycle and an armchair seems apt. Which is more beautiful? Which more comfortable? Which, as Lipton put it, more "brisk"? Perhaps it's a necessary condition of being a tourist that I feel detached and aloof from whatever makes people tick here. It's a homeless sort of place, this suburbia. Everything seems like a facility, like a sort of institutional provision that one cannot take for granted. This doubtless has a positive connotation, but for now it seems a sort of coldness that rivals that of the weather.
I'm skewed, of course, towards this feeling, by my actual lack of a home here. I'm out of the house, trying to give my hosts a wee bit of free time whilst I roam the streets in gloves, and what V refers to as a "Toboggan" - what my own argot deems a "Bobble Hat"- and a pair of painful artificial boots I bought in haste from a "Shoe Source" when it became apparent that my existing footwear wasn't going to carry me across the surface of this snow-covered continent in anything resembling dry comfort. They are the colour of cardboard and the texture of suede under anaesthetic. They are very uncomfortable and a false economy. I curse them in their waterproof bigotry. My toes want to breathe and be free. Returning from my toes to my head, a traverse that takes in the grateful expression occaisioned by the hot coffee that is the inevitable alternative to a nice cup of tea- to my hat, in fact, a black and scarlet thing that causes my hair to rear up in amazement when I extract it from the depths of the toboggan like a conjuror's trick, it's kind of strange to be in a place cold enough that the scarlet orb atop my bonce doesn't attract the odd sidelong glance from passersby and sniggers from overexcited schoolchildren. Here it is merely sensible.
I have just discovered that i have forgotten to pack my reading material. The copy of the Montclair Times provided by the local newspaper emporium has failed to engage, but I can see what appears to be a second-hand bookstore from my coffee-scented eyrie. I propose to go and extract some neglected classic from within. Well, one lives in hope anyway.
Thursday, 24 February 2005
snow!
Mucho snow in Phila has resulted in my lecture being cancelled, sadly. darn. Excitingly perilous journey back to Montclair on the Nooj turnpike.Photos follow...
damn, it's cold out there
Atkinson and I were outside taking photos last night up at eagle rock, from where one can see the jolly old city. Experiments such as this one (one of Atkinson's) flowed through the lens.
note to self: "destinacion: incroyable!"
Wednesday, 23 February 2005
Tuesday, 22 February 2005
Monday, 21 February 2005
Sunday, 20 February 2005
a mooch around
Cap'n A and i motored into the big city today to stroll about the avenues with NYC's gentle citizens, and, incidentally, perhaps buy a new, more compact camera for me at B&H. As it happened, we didn't, having spent a little longer strolling the aforesaid boulevards than we'd planned. Maybe for the best, as I plan to quiver and tremble about the purchase for a while longer.
A highlight for me today was the radio, playing constant oldies with laconic/insane monologues keeping the various musical parties from merging into one fantastic mélange. Now it's snowing. I wonder how much we'll get.
Atkin-san
The ineffable peace that results from a hearty lunch descends upon us all. He is no exception. Ponder sagely, my friend.
waking up in montclair
Here I am. Those are my toes. I've been dreaming excerpts from Puccini in my sleep. It's supposed to snow in the next couple of days. Atkin-san and I are probably going to B&h to look at cameras today. Wish my credit card luck.
what does one do whilst waiting on an aircraft?
It seems rather to depend on how long one has to wait. Speaking for myself, I appear to have turned up, with my usual precision and economy, about 3 hours early, denying myself another three hours of dreamless warmth and healing silence.
Still, there are compensations. One, a fateful sense that the smoothness of the journey so far has been purchased at the expense of my being so profligate with my time as to lavish it so opulently on the airport's strategies for people-flow in this manner. I've never walked up to an empty check-in desk before, for example.
For another, a sense of how familiar a country this is: the country of waiting. It's probably a timidity of spirit that makes me prefer it to rushing around, but I'd rather make the time to have time to spare than hare off to my appointments precipitously. And it does mean that one ends up twith all this blank time. There must be, I'm convinced, an art to enjoying this time, to spending it well. It helps, of course, to have something to do. Whether work or entertainment. Obviously I have my computer with me, which gives me access to all manner of useful and worthy things I could be doing. Which, of course, I will begin to do as soon as i decide I have finished this note. Another strategy is to take all that the departure lounge has to offer- from browsing amongst the available shops (there's no newsagent quite so appealing as an airport newsagent, not because of any special virtue- an unlikely prospect in this world of multinational, highest-bidder chainstore units- but on account of the hunger one acquires for reading matter under these circumstances. I wouldn't go so far as to admit to perusing automotive and angling magazines, but you inevitably get the picture. A note to self regarding duty free alcohol: buy gin on the way back.
And people watching. An overrated sport, I think. Perhaps it is my lack of penetrative insight, my insularity or selfishness, but I find the airport crowd uncolourful, stressed-out and obviously at the mercy of purveyors of overpriced croissants, huddled as we are on so many upholstered benches in need of a good scrub. (By this, I largely mean the upholstery needs a scrub, but one does see the occasional insalubrious specimen off of a long haul somewhere, the reek of timezone clinging to his (inevitably his, not her) flesh like the miasma of reheated food. It feels very much like hanging out in a sporting goods chainstore, though with more strident announcements. At least there are few televisions.
Looking ahead, I wonder how successful I will be in my efforts to make some sort of recording of my trip. I suspect that I will initially be reluctant to put together entries because I am tired, and later reluctant because I am spending more time doing things than recording them. Perhaps it will have to wait for a retrospective recording. At any rate I have the intention of making at least daily entries.
Still, there are compensations. One, a fateful sense that the smoothness of the journey so far has been purchased at the expense of my being so profligate with my time as to lavish it so opulently on the airport's strategies for people-flow in this manner. I've never walked up to an empty check-in desk before, for example.
For another, a sense of how familiar a country this is: the country of waiting. It's probably a timidity of spirit that makes me prefer it to rushing around, but I'd rather make the time to have time to spare than hare off to my appointments precipitously. And it does mean that one ends up twith all this blank time. There must be, I'm convinced, an art to enjoying this time, to spending it well. It helps, of course, to have something to do. Whether work or entertainment. Obviously I have my computer with me, which gives me access to all manner of useful and worthy things I could be doing. Which, of course, I will begin to do as soon as i decide I have finished this note. Another strategy is to take all that the departure lounge has to offer- from browsing amongst the available shops (there's no newsagent quite so appealing as an airport newsagent, not because of any special virtue- an unlikely prospect in this world of multinational, highest-bidder chainstore units- but on account of the hunger one acquires for reading matter under these circumstances. I wouldn't go so far as to admit to perusing automotive and angling magazines, but you inevitably get the picture. A note to self regarding duty free alcohol: buy gin on the way back.
And people watching. An overrated sport, I think. Perhaps it is my lack of penetrative insight, my insularity or selfishness, but I find the airport crowd uncolourful, stressed-out and obviously at the mercy of purveyors of overpriced croissants, huddled as we are on so many upholstered benches in need of a good scrub. (By this, I largely mean the upholstery needs a scrub, but one does see the occasional insalubrious specimen off of a long haul somewhere, the reek of timezone clinging to his (inevitably his, not her) flesh like the miasma of reheated food. It feels very much like hanging out in a sporting goods chainstore, though with more strident announcements. At least there are few televisions.
Looking ahead, I wonder how successful I will be in my efforts to make some sort of recording of my trip. I suspect that I will initially be reluctant to put together entries because I am tired, and later reluctant because I am spending more time doing things than recording them. Perhaps it will have to wait for a retrospective recording. At any rate I have the intention of making at least daily entries.
Friday, 18 February 2005
we're gonna go see some gates
Book results
Both A9 and Google now return results from inside books (something seen to some extent on Amazon too, of course).How useful this will become remains to be seen. Certainly it will help to return more results that might point towards authorities- even undiscovered commentators on subjects. With the recent firing of librarians at the University of Wales at Bangor on the basis that it was so easy to find stuff in the interweb a recent, stinging wound, the question of whether this functionality is another step in the direction of librarian-free libraries. I think not. People's reluctance to research is a frequently seen feature from the other side of the library desk, and even the most basic variation in search strings or imaginative searching is far from being par for the course. Whilst it's certainly helpful to have good tools like this - which, of course gets better and inclusive all the time as more material comes into the searchable set- the nous, the impetus, the modicum of insight that makes research tick has to come from the person doing the searching. And if not them, then one is left with the idea of some sort of professional archivist with a knowledge of how retrieval systems work and a good general knowledge of the major resources across many fields, whose job it would be to hold researchers' hands and get them asking the right questions.
Sound familiar?
how to travel
I'll be off on my flight soon. I'll be indulging in a little of the pictured, reading about Peter Cook, and listening to something like 19 CDs worth of MP3s of White Teeth as I make my way to Montclair. We shall shortly see if this is a good plan. In the meantime, Prost!
Thursday, 17 February 2005
snore
Very tired today. Was up 'til 2 o'clock framing. Still, chin up. I'm off to see Hem at St George's tonight. It should be a hoot.
Wednesday, 16 February 2005
ruined library IV
The suspension of grazing rights in the upper gallery was never very vocally challenged, and as a result, the area was once again cleared and set aside for storage and retrieval purposes. Much of what is there today is in fact a reconstruction of how experts believe it must have looked when in daily use in the early 21st-century. New discoveries in the records have brought to light radically different floorplans to those in place today: a radical overhaul is indicated in the interests of historical and topological accuracy.
ruined library III
the seige of 2031 lasted only 15 days, but contemporary accounts are marked by its impact for decades following. Barely any of the original commentators escaped being affected in some personal way by the seige, and its immediate aftermath of revenge, reperation and politicking.
ruined library II
the signature grooves in the marble from the shuffling knees of the penitents making their way up and down the spiral staircases have been left in place as part of the restructuring program, a reminder of the many uses the library was put to in the interregnum. Not so obvious, however are the preserved habits of speech, dress and formal behaviour, originally laid down in the Library Code of 2090 and never formally repealed
tying stuff up
Tonight I’m hoping to get the drawing done for the last bit of work for the Head & Shoulders show. A variation on the Elizabethan Motorcylist, I’m going to do a full-length portrait on a black background of a figure and a Triumph motorbike. I’m not sure what all this stuff is about, but the technical exercise is good fun, and it appeals to my sense of heraldic design. (I’ve always been a bit keen on such stuff).
Also hoping to post a few pictures of the work done and in progress to Flickr and blog them up here.
How does this work relate to my other work in books? Does it relate at all.
Yes.
How?
I don’t know. But I like the sense I get of the hand-work feeding back into what has been by-and-large digital practice for me. Something to tear me away from the photos and the screen a bit. I’m not drawing from life though, which is substantially different in terms of looking and preparation, even in the daring it takes to look and set something up. A sort of visual reportage.
Tuesday, 15 February 2005
ruined library
in 2048, when the meteorites hit, the main reading room was directly in the path of a chunk of red hot interstellar ore. Stepping gingerly through the wreckage, contemporaries were still able to find their accustomed reference materials, none the worse for a bit of irradiation. Indeed, some volumes even now harbour traces of rare earths deposited at the time of the catclysm.
Getting ready
Getting ready to go away now. I'm planning to spend today getting work ready for ale and porter and getting things like clothing and stuff sorted out for my packing. Paintings going quite well. Morose and/or insane Elizabethans seem to suit me.
Friday, 11 February 2005
elizabethan motorcyclist
I'm just getting into the spirit of things for head and shoulders now. I may produce a painted version of this, but for now its just a digital study.
searaven
L, my charming boon companion's picture of a cormorant or sea-raven on some sort of aquatic pole. He waits. He preens. He waits.
The first really great full-size picture to come out of my new printer. She sure can take a photo, that lass.
The first really great full-size picture to come out of my new printer. She sure can take a photo, that lass.
Guerrilla Bookbinding
Link: Spike Island Printmakers: Courses. I'm all set to teach the above course tomorrow. All my photocopies ready, all my examples packed, all my papers and glues and treads and needles ready. Also today, my new printer, a Canon Pixma ip5000 arrived. I'm currently teaching it some new tricks, trying to get used to its way of doing things. I was very attracted to its ability to do duplex printing- a great boon if one is printing a book. One point which I was concerned about was the ability to match the centres of pages, so that a fold could fall on the page-dividing line of a folio. Worked just fine. Image quality is pretty good, so long as it's treated right. I must say on properly coated paper it works a treat, but on lower end, less sized/glossy paper, the inks perform quite poorly. Still, I understand that the inks are guaranteed lightfast for 75 years which is reasonably archival quality for something like a book, which isn't going to spend much time in the light. What I need to do now is source a good paper for double sided printing. I believe canon do one, but I'm not sure it'd be the most cost-effective solution. I think I'll give it a spin though. So far I'm happy with the results when i don't push the envelope too hard. Really shows up the limits of my camera and my photographic technique, though. I've promised myself a beer at the end of the day on Saturday at the tobacco factory. Maybe some of my class attendees will be there too. it's all getting a bit local round here. I'm looking forward to a couple of days work on my pictures for Ale & Porter's new show "Head and Shoulders". Just me and the sweet smell of sumi ink. Bliss.
Thursday, 10 February 2005
busy times
A tremendously busy few days. I’ve been pulling together a new lecture for my forthcoming visit to the US, so I’ve been running around finding examples and apposite qutes and trying to put together a structure for the talk. I’m stopping now, on my fourth version of it, now in a somewhat modular form so that I can strip parts of it out easily to fit different audiences. I think it hangs together alright. It’s a bit of a departure from the lectures I’ve given previously, inasmuch as this lays out something of the critical context of the work and uses pieces of my own work to illustrate that, rather than the other way around. Having said that, the modular construction of the work I’ve produced for this means that the section where I’m analysing my own work could be a freestanding talk on its own. My most pressing anxiety, such as it is, is that I have too much material. I think it wil necessarily be a case of cherry-picking the best material out and talking about it. I’ve devised the content to be easily editable like this, so it shouldn’t present too big a problem.
I’ve also been assembling the materials for my upcoming Guerrilla Bookbinding (!) course at Spike Island printmakers, swiping the last necessary handful of stirrers from Starbucks to be reincarnated as the rods in piano-hinge bindings. It’s all ready now, apart from the photocopied handouts which I’m hoping to do at Spike on Friday and the loan of a bunch of artists books which I am arranging to get from Sarah Bodman. Seems okay, really.
I’ve also been painting a number of Elizabethan Portraits in Chinese ink. This will be for the Head and Shoulders exhibition at Ale & Porter in Bradford on Avon and is going alright. I’ve maybe 3 good pictures for the show now. I need to decide about framing tomorrow, and perhaps produce one or two more rapid studies.
Some reading carries on, of course. I have a sort of mini literature review to carry out on the books specifically abut artists’ books, which is going alright. I’m only covering a few of the bright lights in this particular incarnation, but my general angle is a criticism of the lack of a heuristic explanation of why artists choose to make books (as opposed to a histotrical situation, where artists have the opportunity and are asked about their methods of exploiting the opportunity.) For myself, I’ve always wanted to be a bit evangelistic about the tremendous sense of liberty that the framing power of book art has given me. At the time it was a release from a terrible sense of too-wide horizons, and a too limited sense of what I was allowed to do in generating an oeuvre that had no useful boundaries to help me see projects, areas of interest. Books gave me permission to differentiate projects: to differentiate solutions to particular areas of research and interest.
I’ve nearly finished the graphics work I’ve been doing for Bristol City council- som e library guiding. The last few edits should go through before I go to the US.
I’ve produced a new version of my song “Sweeetness and Light” on Garage Band, using the condenser mic from my mp3 player. It flattens out and distorts and stuff, but it’s amusing enough in its own way. With some care, I could end up with some useful materialto use in films. On which topic…
The recent Librarian’s books workshop has left me fizzing with ideas to produce a book that combines a celebration of the library’s centenary with a somewhat darker side. It should be popular with Bristol Library service too, who are looking for ways to mark the centenary that won’t break the bank. If only they had a decent exhibition space, I’d push for us to show the librarian’s books show at the central library in Bristol. Anyway, I’ve a series of research photos I’m going to use to start using to make some drawings and paintings of the library in a ruined state in another hundred years ( a faulty vision, I hope, but one to keep us on our toes, perhaps, as regards the preservation of the institution itself). Lots of drawn vegetation and ruined ceilings. I’m not planning a fully-animated fim for it, more of an essay on the rostrum camera, like la jeteé. Some overlays of vegetal patterning. Some sort of secondary narrative would seem apposite. Perhaps I could invent or discover some personage that could haunt the ruins in a meaningful way?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)