electric angel /design for life

rings

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.

northerly – you’re invited

we’ve had some exhibitions that have meant a lot to us in our tiny gallery since opening in february 2010. but even by our standards, this one is going to be rather special…

if you’re reading this, please do feel invited to come along. the exhibition will continue through to november and is part of the arts programme put together by coastival for the UK pro surf tour which comes to scarborough next month.

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settled

we (me on typography, james on photography) created this as an offshoot to the creative coast windows project (first fruits of the project here). it uses words from retirees in scarborough. writer dina murphy had conversations with older folks on benches around the town, which given the hilly nature of scarborough get regular use – she then selected phrases from those conversations as the source material for one of the windows.

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we borrowed some of the phrases to create a few temporary text interventions around town of which this is one. it’s exploring a potential approach to future public art projects – a small part of an idea we first had about 5 years ago and which has been stewing away since then. we’ll be revisiting this on different scales as we grab a bit of spare time here and there.

as for the windows project, we’re just chasing permission for our preferred building in the town centre. the window design will also feature illustrations by rachel welford alongside some wonderfully evocative text created/curated by dina. there’s also a design by another local writer-artist-designer team that will shortly appear on the former scarborough music shop opposite boyes department store.

creative coast : creative post

a new series of creative coast events start tomorrow night (thursday10th). responding to calls for a return to the pub, we’re gone really casual and developed a new format whereby we’ll meet in public bars rather than booked rooms and people can use the night however they like.

if you’re wanting to engage with the theme (this month it’s opportunity to suggest practical ideas on what kind of support for creatives local government and organisations could offer) then there’ll be postcards on tables for you to fill in and pass around. if you just want the networking or a good old chinwag, then that’s cool too. we won’t be having speakers or announcements but feel free to bring along flyers to distribute.

meet in the lower bar of the merchant, eastborough, scarborough from 8pm onwards.

and then there were four

bob tuffin’s three acrobat sculptures which we’re currently exhibiting outside our studio/gallery have been joined by an interloper. hanging from the fourth arch of the spa footbridge, this chirpy fellow, apparently made from plastic milk containers appeared overnight. we rather like him.

end of the line

public art project on the old scarborough-whitby railway line (now part of the national cycle network).

this project has its own blog (www.railwayart.com) where you can follow the project from initial sketches to completion which is why i’ve been a bit tardy on blogging it here. but over a year after it was installed, and now with a bench in place and a bit more greenery, it’s shortly to have an official opening. it’s a collaboration with rachel welford, includes a poem commissioned from john wedgwood clarke and involved the whole electric angel team in its genesis, not least rebecca’s skills acquired in a former life producing architectural drawings.

being the largest scale project we’d undertaken at that point, it was something of a learning curve for us – something that matthew at SBC’s parks & gardens team took in his stride. matthew really bent over backwards (while we were bent over forwards hoiking paving slabs around) to make sure the project happened with our pushing-the-boundaries-of-the-original-brief design – the original commission for was an upright signpost but we thought that with clever use of cost-effective materials there was opportunity to do so much more. kudos also to andy sharpe and the rest of the friends of the old railway line who initiated the project and were supportive and enthusiastic about our approach.

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the design aims to be both practical waymarker, signpost (to peasholm park, glen and cemetery) and a creative response to the history and current life of the line. the typefaces are those originally used by the London North Eastern Railway who ran the line prior to nationalisation, the overall shape echoes a train wheel with distinctive counterbalance straddling the route of the line. the names of the villages between scarborough and whitby form the central strip with john’s poem running around the circular perimeter.

the poem was generated after speaking with users of the line, john stopping people randomly to generate source material. we had primed the process by stencilling dates and times onto the surface that was shortly to be dug up. this approach using the vernacular communication method (there was plenty of graffiti on/in the bridge) resulted in lots of young people coming to meet the poet and contribute their thoughts. the first line of the poem which has also been adopted as the name of the artwork, “everybody’s always somewhere” was a direct quote from one of the young people.

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we responded to the words of the poem for the typographic approach, talking john’s lines for a walk and seeing where the words naturally wanted to go and play. there are also some design features that started as purely practical solutions to potential problems such as ice build-up in the larger etched lettering – the pattern that fills these (made from letterforms) helps avoid that happening. all the paving slabs are made from recycled glass paving that we had made especially with a skimmed surface to allow the glass particles to show and glint in the light.

swimsuit shoot

the launch of the coastival poster/brochure on the south bay beach. there had been notice it would be a swimsuit model for this photo opportunity, and rumours abounded of who might be brave enough to pose as our poster buxom beauty (who has been christened ‘gladys’ by the coastival team). but not many people had counted on a male model… a very game andrew clay, director of woodend creative workspace. pick up a brochure to see his comic counterpart.

above: evening news photographer andrew higgins (see his daily photo journal here) sorting various musicians, artists, dj’s and more.

above: andrew clay in character with coastival director, wendy clews. joining in on the snapping is tony bartholomew who is also photoblogging as coastival365. contact tony if you’d like photos of the launch or just of andrew in a bathing suit. we won’t ask why.

crescent gardens transformed

photos (by james) of a few of the pieces in last weekend’s art trail in crescent gardens behind the three villas on the crescent. we had 250+ people visit and many more discover the trail by accident. people are asking if we’re going to organise it again – perhaps we will but we’d really like to reinvigorate the discussion about having a permanent sculpture trail or some other long term creative use of the space.

thanks to all the artists who who took part – every piece was wonderful and the feedback we received was great. and special thanks to our work placement students michelle (curating), charlotte (designing the trail guide) and emma (designing the logo, posters and flyers).

‘seeing red’ by tracy himsworth. tracy wrapped tree trunks with red material creating a very striking effect. for the next 12 months tracy will be creating site-specific works across scarborough so keep an eye out for her work on the streets, gardens and alleyways of the town.

‘landmark’ by gaby naptali. gaby’s work built up of thin layers of coloured clay had already become part of the gardens overnight as hordes of woodlice took up residence. being of organic materials, the council’s parks and gardens team gave permission for the work to be left in place, gradually returning to the earth. go take a look – it may still be there. gaby will be exhibiting in our tiny gallery in october.

‘the garden of adonis’ by charlotte middleton. poet edmund spencer’s text form the source material for this work which charlotte hand-cut from board.

‘boy fishing’ by bob tuffin. one of three pieces bob put in the trail – this boy could be seen fishing in the goldfish pond behind scarborough art gallery. bob will be exhibiting in the trees outside our gallery as part of coastival and continuing through 2011.

‘ceyx transformed’ by jack cole. inspired by the roman poet, ovid’s ‘metamorphoses’, the driftwood and tin sculpture was jacks first exhibited piece. the materials looked remarkably harmonious with the stone and water of the old fountain behind.

crescent gardens art trail

so we had this idea… that for one day only we would invite artists to create/exhibit something in the gardens that link yorkshire coast college westwood campus, woodend creative workspace, scarborough art gallery & crescent arts and the rotunda (and almost our studio/gallery too). we suggested the idea to a few people who like to make creative things happen in the town. and it’s happening this saturday between 10am & 4pm.

actually the idea has grown as people got excited about it and with woodend acting as a hub there’ll be an arts market, some live music (organised by create – the people behind the fab ‘art & soul picnic’ a few weeks ago) and an exhibition of historical photos of the gardens from scarborough museums trust. it’s also free entry to the gallery and tours of woodend because it’s heritage open days weekend – we’ll even have a specially written heritage trail of the gardens as part of the CHART Scarborough project. thanks are due to scarborough borough council parks and gardens department who have been enthusiastic about the idea and given permission to use the gardens.

most exciting of all though are the artworks left to be discovered amongst the trees and bushes which include trees wrapped in material, trunks smothered in clay, woods hanging from branches, textile tree frogs, life-size wire people and lots more.

it has also been opportunity for several of our work placement students to get involved and put some valuable experience on their CV’s – the initial curatorial work and organisation was done by arts degree student michelle, the logo and posters designed by emma who is now at 6th form, and the art trail guides is being designed by charlotte who is working with us this week.

live, last night, sold out!

thursday evening, as a dreary, misting of dank weather engulfs the town, a small gathering of surfers, designers, poets and artists got together for the second of our ‘tiny poetry’ gigs at the electric angel gallery – tonight was the turn of landscape poet mark dickinson.

mark’s work is intrinsically linked with his surroundings, his time spent in the natural environment, be it fishing or surfing. he says more important to his poetry than these activities is walking. his great knowledge of natural environments, geology, history and words create orchestral poems that build and ebb and flow as if a part of the landscape themselves. mark read from a decades worth of work ending with the epic trods which follow.

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our next poet, john clarke, attended (who you can see next thursday, 26th august), along with local filmmaker ollie banks, who works with mark on many surfing related projects, and james koppert, another of our poets who’ll be performing on thursday 9th september.

two weeks in to our tiny poetry gigs and they seem to be going down very well indeed.