A place to put things

AHHH! ARRR!.. ARRRRT!.. MY BRAIN.. ART.. HURTS!

AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!

Ahem..

I am a multi disciplined artist working primarily in a 2d visual format. Here are some things I've done; a little peek at the swirling, ceaseless, ideas maelstrom. If you will.


You are cordially invited to take a look.


Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Loonar City


Loonar City, this was what I came up with after a short while spent pondering an email that requested artists to come and make an instillation for a festival of lunacy (a film festival, put on by compass film, held in an old coroners court and one time mortuary for suspicious deaths).

The idea revolves around the idea of lunacy as a relative thing depending on your perspective. So one person's idea of madness is another's genius plan, one woman is clearly insane another is wonderfully eccentric. So what if such characters that push to redefine the boundaries of madness were all to live in a city that allowed them to live out there crazy lives to the full?

My plan was to make a 3d version of this city of the mind where within the cities buildings would be little dioramas that revealed the secret worlds of the cities inhabitants. I'd never done anything quite like this and wasn't quite prepared for the work load that ensued.

Making the instillation was lots of fun. Just to work on a big scale made a change. Ive always liked making things since I was a kid and made castles and monsters out of cereal packets, but this time I got to make things on a room filling scale.

It was great to work instinctively with materials available ( I scouted round town with a trolley and picked up anything that looked interesting). Not having enough time to fuss over things but just doing, flat out hour after hou, was refreshing. Saying that, an artist is never satisfied with what they've done; I would have loved more time to explore more ideas and to make Small and fine details.

The slap dash sprawling cardboard monster that came forth from this hectic activity surprisingly came together at the last possible moment as something approaching a finished piece.

Seeing as the creation was called loonar city and made for a festival of Lunacy it was appropriately mad and received enthusiastically by a few (probably also mad) people.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Im as busy as I want to be

Loonar city, an instillation I did for the
lunacy film festival.


The last three weeks have been a shit storm of busyness for me.
So when my dad recently said " I'm as busy as I want to be" when asked about his day to day activities, this sounded to me like the way things should be and made me think of my life of late, which has been exceedingly full and stressful. Did I choose it to be so?

Well not exactly, Ive had a whole host of personal problems piled on top of which I've been helping with a squatted social centre, helping with the organising of a Christmas market, trying to put a news letter together, planing for an exhibition and making an instillation for a film festival.

To illustrate the point it took me four an a half hours to find a spare few minutes to brush my teeth a few days ago. Even when I finally managed to slip away an attend to said teeth, someone managed to track me down and ask me about things while I was brushing, I was a stressed and agitated teeth brusher I can tell you.

Now I could go on whining about my stressful life, but that would be pathetic and bedsides, yes I did choose to be this busy. Not quite in such a mind bendingly, head fuck way, but I do want to live a full life and things will calm down. So overall, on average, I'm only a bit busy. If not I would be very much dead by now.

In fact given the choice between excessive thumb twiddling and hectic chaos Id go for the chaos every time.

I think its good to be busy, just make sure your busy doing what you wanna do an not what someone else wants you to do. And once in a while ask yourself "am I as busy as I want to be?"

There will be more about just what it is that's been keepin me busy when I'm not so damn busy!