electric angel /design for life

limestone journeys – the artwork

here’s the limestone journeys artwork i blogged about last week on display for the ‘festival of the environment’ at creswell crags visitor centre in derbyshire. there were some great comments about the artwork, not least the postcards written in character as ice age cave dwellers.

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if you’d like to read about the different sections of the artwork and the activities that led to them being created you can download an info sheet here.

cathedral of steam

you’ve maybe noticed the odd railway reference on this blog, or the enthusiasm for working on railway-related artwork. another such opportunity pulled into platform 1 recently when we were commissioned to create public artwork as part of the derby city of invention project.

our contribution to a series of 12 works displayed in the city was this image inspired by derby’s railway heritage, and in particular, the world’s first purpose-built roundhouse (a building housing a turntable and circular arranged tracks to fix and house locomotives). you can read more about the project and our musings on the importance and sheer impressiveness of this building on the projects website. original photograph by andrew cowell.

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.

take a slice of scarborough

things may have seemed a little quiet lately from creative coast – the north yorks coast creatives network we help run, but actually we’ve been busy running two projects engaging with the local populace.

one is helping NYBEP with roll out of a primary school enterprise challenge, more of which later. but here’s the first fruits of our main project – ‘we love scarborough because…’ – in which small teams of creatives have been teamed with local residents to transform the windows of empty shops in the town.

here are the results of myself and writer lizi patch working with young people from schools based on the north yorkshire coast who are studying on the schools creative and media diploma.

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as the premises we were transforming were previously a cafe, we took conversations over drinks as a starting point blending in memories of growing up in the area and snippets of overhead conversations. lizi teased these out in a creative session that involved scratch-performance and the discipline of telling a story via text messaging.

we returned the following week with some initial design and illustration ideas based on this imagery into which the young people designed their text, concrete poetry style. what you see on these pics is largely their work, just typeset in a cohesive style.

if you’re in town, you can see the windows on northway, just past the stephen joseph theatre. thanks to all the talented young people (who are credited on the windows) and to course leader spencer williams for a very enjoyable and productive experience. also to colin ellis estate agents and GBR phoenix beard property services for their enthusiasm and permission for the project. 2 more shops to follow by other creatives…

houdini operator

we were delighted to be invited to transform a junction box in leeds city centre as part of ‘junction’ – a project by situation leeds that had its official launch yesterday evening. there are 10 boxes that have been given a make-over by artists and designers between leeds railway station and the headrow along park row.

we like the mystery of junction boxes – stoic immobile structures that quietly keep our towns and cities running connecting phone lines and ensuring traffic lights work as they should. but we thought what might actually be going on inside there..?

our box was a collaboration with john wedgwood clarke. junction is run by leeds met university gallery and the culture company.

sea swim

i feel privileged to work on a lot of the jobs we do, but being able to play with beach huts down on the sea front is possibly the most fun.

this is the first stage of a typographic artwork as part of ‘sea swim’ – an imove project connecting sport and art in surprising ways. these beach chalets have been lent by scarborough borough council to the project as their HQ, not just for changing into wetsuits, but for writing poetry, creating art and in time, exhibiting the fruits of the project.

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as the project finds its rhythm more text will be added. these initial letters are created in chalkboard paint so look out for group swim times, nuggets of info and lines of poetry cropping up on them over the coming months (a visualisation of how the full artwork might look using temporary text from the original sea swim proposal is shown below). as the project is about creativity and documenting the act of swimming we have this idea that everything created or collected could be an artefact with it’s own number as part of an obsessive curating regime. and so we awarded the chalets the coveted no.2 slot (no.1 being the sea itself…)

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you can pop down the chalets and find out more about the project this saturday any time between 10-5 and you’re invited to join the group for a plunge at 10.30am and 3.30pm. no athletic endeavour needed – it’s all about the experience of being in the water. to find the chalets just wander past the spa at the south bay and look for the big letters… john wedgwood clarke will be running a free creative writing workshop from 10.30am-12.30pm as part of the open day. to book a place, email him at seaswim@btinternet.com – bring a photograph of you swimming as a child!

(oh, and by the way – i didn’t paint all that by myself, don and jason are the professional signwriters, they just let me lend a hand so long as i promised not to spoil their nice brushes. more hand-painted loveliness coming soon…)

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.

a glimpse into the process

some photos explaining the production process resulting in the glass & mirror panels that rachel welford and i are producing for york NHS trust.

this is just one stage in the process – the first panel in the series has already been installed in one of the new lifts in york hospital hospital. for that first piece we sent artwork to a specialist glass company to carry out the manufacturing, but with the subsequent panels we felt we wanted more control over the process. hence a long day yesterday was spent at the sign-makers creating vinyl masks on two sheets of glass and two mirrors ready for sandblasting.

above: probably the most minimal photo we’ve posted on our blog. if you look closely you can see the design cut out of vinyl. the design uses photographs taken by rachel which together we adapted and added typography to.
below: ‘weeding’ the vinyl – peeling away sections which are not part of the design.

above: rachel weeding the top layer. each complete panel will be made from a sheet of glass with an etched and painted design layered onto a mirror also etched with a design to create a complex layered image.
below: applying the vinyl mask to the glass. the uncovered glass will be sandblasted, then the vinyl removed (another day of back-breaking work) leaving the leaf shapes and text clear.

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above: smoothing down the vinyl to ensure a sharp etched image.
below: front layer of the second panel. this is opportunity to view each as separate graphic designs – when complete the effect will be much more subtle and the dual layers will partially obscure some of the text. the intention is that the designs encourage multiple viewings by patients, visitors and staff of the hospital.

if you go down in the woods today…

…you’ll discover artworks created by pupils of graham-raincliffe schools federation.

rachel and i have been delivering a creative partnerships enquiry project with the schools, responding to a desire to engage year 7 pupils in creative thinking and project-based learning. the 11 week project is based around the process of responding to, designing and delivering public art commissions that rachel and i have collaborated on such as the scarborough-whitby railway line artwork and our current series of panels for lifts in york hospital.

the focus has been on the nearby raincliffe woods with the intention that the skills required to arrive at a full proposal for an artwork cross over much of the school curriculum demonstrating how subjects don’t exist in isolation to each other. for us as artists/designers that involves generating ideas within a defined timescale and to practical restrictions, understanding materials, budgeting and time management skills and being able to explain your ideas visually, verbally and in writing to other people. and so writing, drawing, team-working, research, negotiation, decision-making, building and blogging have all featured with the young people – exactly how rachel and i work together.

following a visit to yorkshire sculpture park, to the woods themselves with a countryside officer and workshops in the schools, the first building session in the woods took place this monday with a quarter of the cohort. these are photographs of a few of the prototypes of artworks that will be the subject of full proposals.

monkey steps

‘monkey steps’ was a playful temporary site-specific artwork devised for the crescent gardens art trail in september 2010. it adapted an existing wind of stone steps into a game that i thought kids might enjoy doing as part of the trail. it encouraged them to follow instructions and make choices that might deliver them to the top of the steps or frustratingly send them round in circles or straight back down again.

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on some steps were cryptic messages or instructions that you hoped you wouldn’t land on – in reality, the instructions were worked out so you these steps were omitted completely but it appeared as if there was every chance of being told to wait there indefinitely or climb an impossible number of steps (it was impossible to see how many steps lay ahead from the bottom).

the work had to be removed at the end of the day so was created with water-based paint – application was hindered somewhat by the previous night’s heavy rainfall and a lot of mud… but very dirty jeans aside, it was good to have created something fun and squarely aimed at kids for the trail and was good practice for future commissions, once of which includes a kids play area.