Graham Rawle

My thanks to Graham Rawle for his kind response to my email following a recent talk that he gave at UWE. I have always enjoyed Grahams work since seeing 'Lost Consonants' in the Guardian some years ago and the content of both his work and talk had a real relevance to both my current work and collections of ephemera that he and  I had both collected in childhood. Anyway, Graham was good enough to reply to me and comment on my work and with regard to my Beatles 'gum card' digital collages he sent me the image here - 'McCartney Rabbit' made from an image in his Beatles Scrapbook.

Graham also sent me a link to Run Wrake's animation 'Rabbit', the imagery in which relates closely to my 'Dick and Jane Bristish Tour' series of collages.

Check out Grahams work. I particularly like 'Womans World' and 'Niff Actuals' and current work towards his latest book 'The Card'.



Thanks once again Graham and good luck with 'The Card'.

automata cards

Following discussion of my work Tuesday with regard to bringing motion to my collage work I have been looking for examples of automata in relation to collage or period image. Not having much luck finding examples but did come up with thsi example of a greetings card by Hallmark. Here's a link to the video about the card: http://youtu.be/RcJKGW28OrI

Dick & Jane's British Tour

A new series of hand built collages, to get back into cutting and gluing, depicting 'Dick & Jane's British Tour' - visiting some British counties from an old encyclopedia from the beginning of the last century. When working to a theme, some basic rules for for the content of the collage allows for some coherence when building a set. The series of seven here are really sketchbook pieces using no more than six elements for each collage. Other than this being 'Dick and Janes British Tour', in each collage there is some enigma; what are the characters looking at or discussing and what relevance do the other images/elements have? Who knows... I will follow up with a few more before considering some alternative themes and content.

Abstract photos

Boats

Stairs

Walls

Following on from earlier abstract, graphic images of signs, street art etc I am continuing with the theme of abstract and layers with another series of images from a visit to Spain. All images are framed at the camera stage ie no further cropping and aim to create balanced compositions of textures, colour, lines, layers and in the case of the boat images the type element from the boat registration details. My focus on composition of abstract images through the lens is, I feel, an extension of the approach I take when composing/building collages. The images here are a sample that I have recorded in thumbnail form. At a later stage I will choos further criteria to select sets that I will print at larger sizes. My intention is to continue with this direction with photographic images alongside my more illustrative work. Another outcome from this approach is that I am also collecting images of textures and distressed surfaces which will have potential as layers in digital collage in the future. Therefore this approach can be seen as a means if defining graphic abstract image for display as well as a building library of texture/colour/distressed surface resource for future work.

Water and Rock

Rock and Pool

BABe at Arnolfini - books

Below are the books which were at the BABE event last weekend. I forgot to photograph them before I submitted them for the show, so now that I have them back I've been able to photograph them. Both are folded from one sheet of A2 paper with and added hardcover like those published in an earlier blog from 2010. One book based on a collection of some of my early collages, the other on photo's taken on a walk on the Welsh coast near Llantwit Major earlier this year. The photo's were all framed at the point of taking, ie not cropped later and concentrated on the composition of comparative rock formations, lines, planes,squares, circles etc.

Website development

Well the website is coming along. I've already had one re-design and would refine again although time won't allow. The main pages are built and I now have to just process all the files for the main gallery images. My own lack of technical knowledge of Dreamweaver tends to slow things down - so my thanks to Oli Timmins for his patience in guiding me and advising on additional scripting to make things happen.

My aim was for a simple site that allowed for each piece of work to be selected from thumbnail galleries and viewed in a separate window. I prefer this approach so that each piece of work has to viewed in its own right rather than in a slideshow, such as in 'Lightbox'.

Displayed here are some of the main pages to give an indication of how it's going. I hope to make the site live before the end of July if possible.

Peepshow Collective - Graham Rawle

Following some initial back round research on Graham Rawle prior to his lecture at UWE this week I came across a link to the Peepshow Collective, a group of illustrators from Brighton Uni. I was interested in the work of Miles Donovan from the collective who uses a 'collage' style with his high contrast digital illustrations. The illustrations are built up from individual image elements which have been put into threshold, giving the opportunity to build the illustrations in limited colour pallettes. This is an interesting  approach for me to consider in preparing hand built collages into print.

Beatles Gum Cards

I have managed to complete the first set of four Beatles 'gum cards' digital collages. I had wanted to build a set of hand made collages from these old, 1960's cards which I collected as a kid. Whilst I don't retain a full set of these cards in the original folder (so there's no monetary value attached) I still couldn't bring myself to cut these little gems up. The original cards were all poor quality print in reality so I have not tried to suggest any otherwise in the digital prints.

I will make further sets of these in the future, although they are a personal indulgence in terms of period, imagery and 'The Beatles'!

Fountains of Wayne Illustrations

I have now completed the set of three digital 'collages' illustrating Lyrics from Fountains of Wayne that I set out to achieve to further explore the notion of illustration as opposed to purely work for self. Having completed the third one - 'Stacy'sMom' - I reviewed the earlier two pieces of work and realised that I was not being as 'illustrative' in the earlier two. ie. I had not included sufficient visual links to the lyric narrative. Working in this way, to illustrate a piece of text, brings the additional consideration of conceptual interpretation of the narrative. In my hand built collages and earlier digital collages I was considering imagery, and in particular image/element placement and the overall visual aesthetic. When building this illustrative set I have had to consider, not only whether there is an aesthetic balance, but also is the content sufficient to relate to and illustrate for the reader association with the narrative of the song. This brings an additional creative dimension and begins to control the collage content. ie. I cannot just indulge myself purely with the visual aesthetic as with previous work.

This is now beginning to alert me to the differences between personal work and work that might be considered for commission or once again returning to the old friend... the 'brief'!

'Stacy's Mom'

'Mexican Wine'

'Survival Car'

Peter Blake - collage/print Rooks moor Gallery, Bath

Having just dropped in to the Rooksmoor and Rostra Gallery in Bath yesterday while passing,  I was reminded how much of Peter Blake's screen printed work has its beginnings in collage. An exhibition of his more recent prints are based on collaged environments; famous city landscapes, eg Place de la Concorde in Paris from an old etching collaged with dancers and characters from different eras. Seeing this work prompts me to reconsider developing my collages for screen prints, something I have neglected recently in favour of developing digital and illustrative outcomes.