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.

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.

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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if you’ve taken the most cursory glance at james’ blog, tweets or photography portfolio you’ll know about him and bikes… i know about james’ ability to use a mouse and keyboard with one arm in a sling. so whilst it’s unlikely i’ll also be flinging myself down mountains on two wheels anytime soon, i was recently given a long discarded rusty old gal which prompted this repaint and spur-of-the-moment typography job (you’ll see i didn’t really bother tackling too much of the rust).

having a bike again has prompted something of an affair with the cinder track (site of the wayfinding artwork we created with rachel welford) which i’d only walked various sections of before. having tasted the scarborough end of the route on bike and loving the ravenscar stretch on foot i’m rather tempted to attempt the whole scarborough-whitby in one go. but should this sound all rather athletic, no fear – there are plentiful opportunities for ice creams, cream teas and pub lunches on route.

iSaint came about as a response to a call from designed and made for their items that could be given or lent to people as part of 100% design (aka london design festival) which is happening this week. the idea of the project, called ‘love me live with me’, is that people live with an item for a couple of weeks, then respond with how/if it made an impact on their lives in some way.

iSaint is a secular icon – you write your name on the front and hang or place it by the door to be reminded every time you leave the house of your potential to play a positive role in the world.

you can follow progress of our iSaints (there’s a thousand of them out there somewhere) and look at the other items that are part of the project at www.lovemelivewithme.com

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.

a superb end to our [tiny] poetry series last night with rapper james koppert. james was honest, funny, angry, political, questioning, self-depreciating, heart-breaking. the evening finished with some freestyling in which james took us from a play on words with ‘electric angel’ to a fly on the gallery wall and out to the yorkshire coastline.

john allsopp was in the audience and took some footage – you can watch it here.

it’s been hugely enjoyable to put our gallery to use as a [tiny] performance venue and the enthusiasm of the poets and audience has been fantastic. question is, what shall we put on next…

thanks to wordsmiths felix, mark, john and james and to all who came. good, good evenings.

btw, you can catch john w clarke performing by the grotto as part of the crescent gardens art trail tomorrow. he’ll be reading for about 20 minutes at 10.30 and 12.00.

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.

“… a rap artist and a street poet using words and rhythms as a vehicle to express anarchic musings and unstructured passions to challenge the listener to challenge their own thoughts. a recent review described the poet as being “an angry chav crossed with a modern day Shakespeare” who rather than reads his poetry explodes his words directly (sometimes literally) into his audiences faces”

click here to hear james in action: www.myspace.com/theedgerhiphop

8.30pm. drinks on the house.