Back in St Andrews

Back in my old home St Andrews.

St Andrews Bandstand

Butts Wynd

Hamilton Hall

Philosophy Building. Separate entrances for Moral and Logic, but they both lead to the same place.

Harbour

Crumbly cathedral tower

The pier

View from the pier

Reflections in Harbour

Harbour

Cathedral

Principal's Residence. Former Art History Building.

View from 72 Market Street

The Bandstand

The Burrow Open House, Brighton

I spent last weekend in Brighton, participating in an open house art exhibition. The Burrow, a.k.a Moomin House, is home to the very welcoming Laura Honeker. A variety of colourful couchsurfers have stayed under her roof and I am no exception. I couchsurfed with her back in November, as I fancied a jaunt to Brighton, and at that time my travel expenses to London had been paid by the BFI as I took part in the Second Light Documentary Pre-Production workshops.

My poster for The Burrow exhibition

On Friday I saw the sights of Brighton with fellow creatives Nathan Berry and Leti Mortimer. The Brighton Museum desk-man was nice enough to let us leave some Burrow flyers there. The Brighton Museum was also nice, in that it was full of some interesting stuff.

Leti Mortimer, illustrator, and Nathan Berry, photographer, outside the pavilion.

Meg Vaughan, designer.

Saturday was Trans Pride in Brighton. I missed the march and main rally, as I was manning (/womanning) the fort back at the Burrow. But I did end up there later, having taken a walk, and saw some free comedy.

Nick Williams, musician.
In the background is art by Thea Wilkins and Leti Mortimer.

Sunday saw a final party, with live music by Nick Williams with his instrument assortment, Laura Nenonen and her cello. There was also an impromptu performance by a blonde girl on keyboard, whose name I didn't catch.

Some cool street art.

Psychedelica in Helston

This here's a poster for my exhibition in Helston Museum. ON NOW! If you are a Cornish lass or lad, or a visitor to our fine shores, do pop in. It's free entry to both the museum and the exhibition. So not only do you get some exciting, psychedelic work to soothe your soul, you can first see lots of sparkly rocks, Victorian wagons, military costumes, vintage children's toys and almost every kind (surely) of radio and typewriter this country has ever seen.

My old next-door neighbour died a couple of months ago. He had a grand collection of radios and typewriters. (He also had a lot of biros; rumour had it he'd once had a crush on girl who worked in a newsagents.) I don't know what's happening to them, but I hope his family keep them in one collection. The quantity alone must be impressive. I still have the small transistor radio he gave me when I was a child, though it has been out of batteries for most of the time I used it, so I instead used to pretend it was a high-tech (it was largely silver) communicating device. A walkie-talkie basically. I did in fact have walkie-talkies, but as they were orange and black (Action Man branded, I believe), they didn't feel realistic enough (even though they worked (at least, they did before the batteries ran out). I remember lots of battery-powered toys running down their batteries and then having to run on the power of imagination.

At my Psychedelica exhibition in Helston Museum, there are amusing devices which have no batteries to run down. They are my special Thinking Devices. Through them you can find clever arty things to say to impressive your friends. Although, chances are you might end up with a result that makes you sound a bit of a wally. It's a risk, but I hope it's one people will think worth taking. Art can be fun!

Psychedelic Swirls

Coming Up: The Social Factor

Have been working on my upcoming poster-portraiture exhibition for Bush Bounce, at The Bush Theatre, London on 14 November.

Exciting times. Photoshop has been talking to me more than it ever has before. First it was the scratch disks and then it's converting the hoobaloid*... Then it stops talking to me altogether & all the other programs take its side.

*I forget the actual term, this is an approximation.







All the portraiture subjects in a big hotlinked list:

Michaela Coel

Joe Simpson

Foz Meadows

Alena Walker

Bren Markey

Martin Hendry

Ellie Beadel

Colin Goodfellow

Kingfisher

Return to the Country

Top of my dad's head is not an essential part of the artwork.

After the Fringe, after a brief sojourn in St Andrews, after a 12 hour journey, here I am back in my native land. That is, Cornwall. The picture you see above, is one of the unfinished works that greeted me. It looks much better to me now that I have returned to it after a 7 week hiatus. Expect more works like this in the future.

I arrived home on Monday night at what must have been around twenty to ten. After precisely ten hour ten minutes on the train my patience snapped and I wrote a lot of grumpy twitter updates defaming the train network. I had a seat on the quiet carriage, but they only ban mobile phones, not children. It was quite a noisy carriage for much of the journey.

I overheard from the ladies in front of me in the carriage that one has to 'keep up with new developments in knitting'. Not a phrase I had would have expected, so I am obviously very ignorant in regards to this craft.

After arriving home I relaxed with a bowl of homemade curry (taken from the freezer) and the new episode of Doctor Who. My dad said he liked the episode, because he identified with it. There was then a pause while I thought to myself, doubtfully: "Does he mean he used to think he was a dalek..." He went on to explain that he was thinking of when he was in a mental hospital for a week and thought he was dead, but also knew he was in a hospital; in comparison to the dalek thing, this sounded quite reasonable really. I'd forgotten it was called "Asylum". Most of the daleks in that place seemed just like the supposedly sane daleks, except better at sleeping.

I have eaten homemade bread and homemade jam, listened to the quiet of the trees and lapped up the sunshine; all stuff one should do when in the country. I arrived just in time for my mother's birthday; went out for dinner; terrible vegetarian selection; didn't have a starter as I was already having mushrooms and cheese for main course. And also in time to help decorate my sister and her husband's new house. Fortunately, I have a great variety of clothes suitable for decorating in - i.e. already covered in paint.

Dollar Cove, Gunwalloe.
 Featuring my mother as the figure beside the rocks..