we didn’t manage to blog this at the time, although it’s lovely that people are still mentioning the design. taking cue’s from literary history and continuing to evoke sense of place [the lure of a long weekend in scarborough is an integral part of marketing the festival] this identity from 2011 helped the festival consolidate it’s place on the literary calendar.
scarborough’s own cultural olympiad project, seaswim, is sending poem postcards to outdoor swimming clubs around the country asking them to notice sights, sounds and textures when they swim. the aim is to write a collective poem from the responses.
look out for a seaswim exhibition as part of coastival and a series of beach hut artist residencies in summer, plus regular group swims of course.
i heard that my drawing tutor from leeds college of art days, ‘lem’ mierins, died just before christmas.
lem was a vital influence in our graphic design training although at the time we often questioned why we spent so much time life drawing and listening to lem’s eccentric and passionate take on the history of art when surely shouldn’t we be designing book covers or something? but now i get it. not only do i credit lem with instilling in me a confidence to just pick up a pencil or pen and attempt to draw anything, but he also taught us to appreciate the flow and movement of line.
the theory of drawing the same thing multiple times, learning with each stroke to eventually be able to produce exactly what you want with all the freshness of that first attempt is something i learned from lem and continues to influence my approach to typography as well drawing.
being a great teacher was only one aspect of lem. he was a noted abstract/pop painter and produced life drawings of great energetic beauty, all about the purity of line and a moment in time frozen with charcoal, graphite or ink. he would regularly remind us as to how good his large geometric paintings would look in the receptions to design agencies – my only regret at not having a reception with black leather sofas and scattered design magazines is that i never had an excuse to buy a mierins.
the last time i chatted with him was at his retrospective exhibition at cartwright hall gallery in bradford, fresh from the state gallery of fine art in latvia [you can download the gallery catalogue as a pdf here]. although clearly moved at his former pupils coming to view the show he quickly slipped back into character and although i may have imagined him actually cuffing me round the ear (a regular technique in his life drawing class), his parting words in thick latvian accent were “…and buy a bloody catalogue!”. which, of course, i did.
we were invited to take part in this year’s beach hut advent calendar down the coast in bridlington. a beach hut is opened each night in the lead up to christmas and the theme we selected from the nativity story was “although many people who lived in this area were jewish they were ruled by the romans.” our choice was based purely on typographic possibilities – we figured we could do something with roman and hebrew letterforms.
playing with the idea of occupation and oppression and wanting to create something that people could take part in, and hopefully take something away from, we came up with the idea of filling the beach hut with balloons. it took 300. and all afternoon to blow them up. we closed the hut up and at 6pm two children opened the doors to reveal the mountain of balloons inside.
each has the word ‘oppression’ printed on it in a roman typeface and visitors to the hut were invited to think about an oppressive situation in their life and pop a balloon. inside each is one of several messages derived from isaiah 51:14 in jewish scripture promising freedom. as the balloons were popped a backdrop was gradually revealed featuring ‘shalom’ – a hebrew word meaning peace.
there’s still two more advent beach hut openings if you fancy popping along – all are welcome. you can find out more here (including a video clip of our hut being opened) and here and keep an eye on BBC local news for a feature. thanks to ben for inviting us to take part and blow up the balloons.
wishing you all a happy christmas and peaceful new year. from adrian, charlotte and rebecca.
interpretation panels for the recent ‘landscape revisited’ exhibition in scarborough art gallery featuring photos by joe cornish and paintings by kane cunningham.
the text was pretty much a conversation between the two artists reflecting their working methods that created the body of work for the exhibition. we took a typographic approach that helped break up the large body of text and highlight some of the common themes.
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the ordnance survey style contours feature shutter speeds and paint reference numbers rather than topographic data and run across the artwork labels too. larger contours on the gallery walls helped tie the exhibition together and were created on the fly responding to the hanging with jan, the exhibition’s curator, who had the original idea to team joe and kane together.
some photos from ‘echo funnel’ at enchanted parks 2011 in gateshead. what began as a clever yet charmingly simple idea from lizi patch blossomed into having a life of its own in the park with people queuing up to share their thoughts, christmas wishes or just have a fascinating (and rather addictive) conversation with the tree. you can tell a tree anything, you know.
we were also delighted to create some confusion and mischief with people wondering how on earth it worked. one of the most enjoyable aspects of making it work over 5 nights was the suspension of disbelief – people want to believe that a little magic is all that’s needed to chat with a tree.
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‘the tree’ talked to thousands of people over the week with many return visits and promises that people would come back for a chat when they were next in the park, although we can’t guarantee the funnel will always be there…
some thanks are due: to prop maker extraordinaire scotty for turning my rough sketch into something wonderful, to mark for the initial technical gubbins, dan and the tech team for saving the day and to robin and lesley at magnetic events for having us.
by the way – we’re on the look out for other opportunities to make trees (or rocks, or buildings, or vehicles or…) talk, and to do some more hand-painted lettering. get in touch and the echo funnel could be there… be there… be there…
whilst charlotte holds the fort back in scarborough, i’m up in gateshead this week with theatre director-writer lizi patch. together we’ve been commissioned to produce an artwork we devised called ‘echo funnel’ as part of enchanted parks.
enchanted parks is a festival that runs 7-11 december when you’re invited to explore the delightful saltwell park transformed by magical lights, sounds and artworks. just some of the wonderful things this year include the chance to meet medusa in a copse, discover a strained glass rose window made entirely of ice, watch a 3-D snowman zoetrope and, of course, have a conversation with a tree.
opening night was magical with children and adults alike suspending disbelief to tell the tree what’s on their mind through the funnel and hear its response. the tree will be listening and replying every evening until sunday so if you find yourself around the north east of england do pop along and tell it what’s on your mind.
you can catch a glimpse of echo funnel in action courtesy of the BBC by clicking on ‘wonderful things’ above. i’ll add some of our own photos as the festival progresses.
the final element of mine and rachel welford‘s commission to design and produce panels for lifts at york hospital was in the theatre lift. this takes patients to and from the operating theatre, usually on a bed and so in keeping with the intention of providing a welcome distraction for patients on a short but potentially stressful journey, this design is applied to the ceiling of the lift.
it continues the theme of native british trees that have a link with healing, in this case silver birch and the birds likely to nest in its branches, here represented by text.
the third of the york lift panels, based on the horse chestnut tree. we had a little fun with this – the text woven into the layered leaf & flower design are the rules for playing conkers. the original photos that the artwork is based on were taken around north yorkshire by rachel.
you wait all year for a beach hut and then two come along at once…
yes, we’re down the seafront again, but this time it’s not sea swim (although we will be sea swim beach hut bound again next summer), but down the coast in bridlington where we’ve been invited to participate in the beach hut advent calender project. each day in advent beach hut no.1 is opened to reveal something new, and today it’s our turn.
it’s all about surprise so we’re not giving anything away, other than to say you’ve probably never seen a beach hut quite like this before. and that you get to take part (you’re not scared of sudden loud noises are you?). so if you’d like to see our for-one-night-only installation-cum-interactive-artwork you’ll just have to turn up. go on – tis the season to be jolly.
the beach hut is opened at 6pm, beach hut no.1, just past the spa, bridlington south bay. all are welcome and there’ll be hot drinks for all.
electric angel design studio, scarborough, north yorks uk
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'city of invention' - public artwork in derby
'echo funnel' - at enchanted parks 2011
'everybody's always somewhere' - public artwork
CHART Scarborough - cultural map, trails & more
adrianriley.com - he talks about interesting stuff
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