A Morris Border (not Border Morris)

Here's a hearty little project from earlier in the summer, for my morris men in Southampton.

King John's Morris Men wanted a new poster for dancing dates. I thought it would suit a dense border with plenty of details to pick out, taken from dances and songs, along with assorted rural, maritime and alcoholic titbits and ephemera.

Here, because you want to know and because I want to tell you, is a full contents list:

• At the top:
• Roses - for The Rose Tree In Full Bearing.
• Hops - the importance of beer cannot be overstated.
• The KJM badge - a portcullis, representing Southampton Bargate, above water.
• At the bottom:  hollyhocks, wheat, trout and watercress (very small), more hops, tankards and a barrel being rolled out - as in the song Roll Out The Barrel.
• At the sides:  an oak tree (on the right) and an apple tree (on the left, complete with ladder and scrumper), containing...
• Bells - Ring O' Bells usually ends the King John's running order and Haste To The Wedding is included if we feel up to the challenge.
• A shepherd's crook - Shepherds Hey features in several morris traditions.
• Rifles - there are several shooting dances... including Shooting.
• A fair - for Jockey To The Fair and the Hampshire song Taro Fair.
• A mill - for Maid Of The Mill and possibly Milley's Bequest, which I may have misunderstood.
• A ship - well, this covers various maritime references and several shanties featured in the KJM singing sessions - John Kanaka, Sugar In The Hold and many more.
• Piglet - a plaster pig's head - is the King John's mascot, who comes out from time to time to cause trouble among the audience.
• The pony, hound and cow are decorative but add to the rural idiom...
• ...and, for a spread of birdlife, a seagull, falcon, woodpecker...  and the other kind of kite.
• In the centre:  the accoutrements of the morris - a top hat, stout shoes, sticks for clashing, bells for jangling, hankies for waving, the fool's brush and bladder (for tickling and bopping respectively) and our main instrument, the mighty melodeon.

Now, there are several dances that we do but that I couldn't work out how to draw, at least at such a small scale:

Bonnets So Blue, Balance The Straw, Getting Upstairs, Bean Setting, Broad Cupid, Saturday Night, The Vandals Of Hammerwich, Cuckoo's Nest (I should have got that one in), Old Black Joe, Beaux Of London City, Sheriff's Ride, Nuts In May... and whatever Trunkles are.

They all deserve drawing, as do these, although we don't dance them at the moment:
Lads A Bunchum, The Captain And His Whiskers and The Old Woman Tossed Up In A Blanket / The Old Woman Who Carried A Broom.



Look for King John's in the Southampton area and sometimes roving farther.  There are monthly singing evenings and around Christmas there will be mumming and border dancing.  First, on 15th September, KJM is hosting FOLK DANCE SOUTHAMPTON, featuring numerous visiting dance groups in the centre of Southampton and a ceilidh in the evening.

A Flag For Riverfest

Up in time for Riverfest:  my flag at Riverside Park.

Ace local jamboree Riverfest is on tomorrow (27th May) at Riverside Park in Southampton.  Here's the website.

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to come up with a design for a flag!  My artwork has often been about Southampton (see these drawings for a songbook); I love fitting local detail in and I'm all about activities on the water (even if I haven't participated in a while), so it was a perfect job for me.  Plus a flag is a step up from bunting (see my hand-printed bunting for the mayor).

Ideas for the Itchen

The brief:

• a flag
• the S shape of the Itchen
• the bridges
• activities on the water
• the communities either side of the river

I tried a few things with layouts, borders and text.  The bottom right one looked best, albeit without the area names and "Riverfest" and with colours to match Riverfest's existing graphics.

What to put where

Now came the proper layout - what to put where; which of the various little drawings I had tried to fit in where.  The colours were to be applied on the computer, so I drew in black but the green, yellow and pink had to be balanced right.


Here is the list of real things shown or at least represented.

In the river:
Dinghies, a barge, a rowing boat, kayakers, ageing hulks, swans and fish.

The pen drawing

Around the river:
Kayaks, fenders, Woodmill, more hulks, a lifebelt on Cobden Bridge, the railway line, buoys, the marinas, the cycle path, the ancient Cross House, the willows of Riverside Park, the miniature railway, the strange castle house, the ruins of Roman Clausentum, a pear tree (for Peartree Green, up the hill), the Woolston Ferry (the "floating bridge" that was replaced by the Itchen Bridge in the 1970s), a rope and a chain (so nautical), gulls, a dog and a duck.

To the west:
The 1960s buildings of Southampton University (Maths and Faraday), City Gateway ("the fag butt"), one of the gasometers  and St. Mary's Stadium, the mosque and churches (Highfield and St. Mary's (and St. Denys, which I now realise has no spire)) and various generic residential and business areas and parks.

To the east:
The clock tower at Bitterne Triangle (it was originally in the city centre), the Centurion industrial park, the new development at Woolston, the obelisk in Mayfield Park, the towers of Thornhill and Townhill Park and more churches (Ascension and Peartree) and other buildings of all sorts.

In the corners:
Oak, hawthorn, bracken and nettles.

BONUS INCLUSION FOR EAGLE-EYED SPOTTERS:
The flags in the wavy divides either side of the river spell out (as well as they can in only black and white) RIVERFEST and SOUTHAMPTON!

In full colour:  the Riverfest flag ready to print

The final image went off to the printers last week, to be put on a flag of six by four feet.  Today I was glad to see how well it worked blown up from A4 size.  The parks team came and put it up on the flag pole and here I am holding it!

Flying my flag

See you at Riverfest.

Clock Tower and NST City

Axis Towers:  my screenprint for a weekend of two tours.

At the weekend I went on two tours in the cultural quarter:  two places that form an axis around Guildhall Square, as shown in this quick print in honour of the two.

First, Southampton's long-talked-about new arts centre.  While the complex will hold a few different arts organisations, the one on show was NST City, the Nuffield Theatre's new venue in the city centre, in addition to the copper-topped wonder remaining up at the university.

It's really a lot grander than I expected and, although it's not finished yet (we were in hard hats) I was impressed by the ambition.  There are two theatre spaces, rehearsal spaces, a bar and café and lots of room for milling about.  It's a full-sized regional theatre and genuinely exciting to see, in advance of its opening later this year.
The entire development, Studio 144, is up for an award (Daily Echo) and it's being talked about in lists of new developments in the art world (The Arts Newspaper).

Being on second and third floor level, overlooking Guildhall Square, afforded views not seen since Tyrrell & Green closed, across to the side windows of the art gallery and council offices.  I got that view in reverse the next day on a tour up the Civic Centre clock tower.  These run one or two weekends most months and can be booked through Sea City Museum.  I won't spoil it too much - there were all sorts of stories.  It's spiral stairs from one level to the next, up to the inside of the clock and then up to the bells.

I've been looking at the clock tower all my life and I've drawn it many times, often trying to find new ways to represent the Civic Centre's many aspects in one image.  Here's one, from a Christmas card design in 2013.

My Southampton card design, with the Civic Centre on the right.

Just a few pictures from the clock tower tour - you can go on a sunnier day and take better photos.

Museums And Gallery

Visit Southampton!

The latest leaflet of Southampton's Museums and Gallery Activities is on the street now.

I had a lot of fun fitting as much as I could into an image for the cover.

The focus is a composite of the three attractions, Sea City Museum, the City Art Gallery and Tudor House & Garden, standing at the waterfront, with other sights of the city nestling among the abundant greenery that is one of Southampton's secret weapons.

As an aside, I miss the old tourism slogan, "Southamptons More".  I'm not sure how long it was in use but I remember it on leaflets and buses in the early 1990s, around the same time as the "Sir Buzz-A-Lot" character saying "Keep Southampton Tidy".

One of my favourite things to draw was a caricature of Burne-Jones' painting of Perseus battling the sea monster to free Andromeda.  The monster's serpentine body loops all around Perseus from all angles and it's fun to follow the lines from tail to roaring head.

There is a bonus feature to this cover.  That is to say that it holds literal 'Easter eggs'.  It's the springtime issue and there are some subtle and not-so-subtle nods to the season of bunnies, flowers and eggs.

Here is the full image.

My image comprising the three council attractions in Southampton.

Southampton Songbook

Music Services at Southampton City Council have further confirmed their excellence by producing a book of songs, all written by locals in response to an open call, timed to celebrate fifty years of city status.  It has been distributed to libraries and schools, along with a CD of recordings.

The contents of Southampton's songbook.

I was approached to provide some illustrations, with my 2012 circular pieces as a touchstone.  I started by isolating sections from that, but made a few new images too.

The bottom-right one is a journey down the Itchen and Southampton Water from rowing at Riverside Park to container ships in the deep channel.

Four pages of images for Southampton songs.

The statues, if you are wondering, include John Le Fleming (looking down from the old town wall), Palmerston, Andrews and Watts (in the parks), King George III and Queen Anne (on and in the Bargate), "Adam and Eve" (in Cossack Green), the quarterjacks (on Holyrood Church), the Anthony Gormley diver (in the art gallery), Danny Lane's silhouette sculpture (outside BBC South) and the red lion (on the front of the Red Lion on the High Street).

I'm On A Teapot

I feel a bit like Eric Ravillious - my artwork has been put on crockery!

The design that I made for Southampton Solent University a couple of years ago was always intended for plates.  This year the project was pushed through at last and, beyond my expectations, expanded so dramatically as to include a mug and a teapot.

Prototype printings, on crockery!

As for the design:  the borders (there are two, for the outer rim and for the bit that dips down) show a lot of tall or long things in Southampton.  The centre is split into several sections representing Southampton's history and symbols, the university's history, the art school, the maritime academy at Warsash and the figures that the university's main buildings are named after.  Here goes:

Buildings at East Park Terrace

• Sir Christopher Cockerell, who invented the hovercraft at Thorneycroft in Southampton
• Lord Mountbatten, Baron Romsey and celebrated elsewhere in Southampton
• John Everett Millais, pre-Raphaelite painter, born in Southampton
• R J Mitchell, who designed the Spitfire at Southampton's Supermarine Aviation Works
• Michael Andrews, mayor of Southampton, who sadly died in a seaplane accident in 1998
• Herbert Collins, suburban and garden city architect, prolific around Southampton

Buildings off the campus and student halls

• Sir James Matthews, educationalist, councillor, and post-war town planner in Southampton
• Lucia Foster Welch, Southampton's first female mayor
• Emily Davies, women's activist from Southampton

It is very satisfying to see the artwork printed out and to see that it printed well.

Southampton's Coat Of Arms

Southampton's coat of arms.

Here are the arms of my home town:  three roses...  red and white...  hearty and unfussy.

Of course, the coat of arms is displayed here and there around the city.  I remember staring at the one on the wall of the scout hut, with a strange woman rising out of the top of a castle.  You can find several versions online (including this page of postcards and cigarette cards).  There are a few variations, chief of which is the ambiguity over which way round the red and white are, with the counter-charged roses.  I've seen a description that left the matter open, to the effect of "three roses on a shield that is half red and half white":  with three roses divided between two halves, you can go either way.

The official description, here at the council's website, is more specific, and blames a seventeenth-century herald for drawing it up wrong and causing confusion.  But is the figure on top a queen, or is she Lady Justice?

Recently it has been my turn to draw the coat of arms, on a Christmas card for the mayor.  In the past I've made a few experiments, such as this linocut for a border, showing the elements of the coat of arms - the roses, lions, ships-on-a-sea, castle-on-a-mound and the "quene in her splendour" holding a sword and scales - all processing out from the shield.

My linocut of the figures from Southampton's crest.

Drawing the whole crest involves working out the mantle (the fabric floating either side of the helmet) and getting the ships and lions right.  Having spent seven months in Venice, and possibly spent a total of seven months of my life looking at books on heraldry, I might have hoped to be better at drawing lions by now!  The final piece includes six in total - including the two that are smaller than a fruitfly, either side of the dome of the Royal Pier building.

The project took a few drafts and conversations, concerning what the mayor wanted and what I like drawing.  We ended up with an array of buildings around the crest.  I can't draw a bunch of local buildings without including Wyndham Court, and I was sad to have no space for the Harbour Lights cinema.  The quarter-jacks of Holyrood Church are a favourite; the Red Lion pub's half-timbering is fun to draw [an aside:  last night I enjoyed Jonathan Meades' 1998 programme on Worcestershire - here is his barrage of half-timbering].  Buoys and container ships are another essential element.

The bridges circling the coat of arms are the Itchen Bridge, Cobden Bridge and the old Redbridge.

Southampton!  The mayor's Christmas card for 2013.

To finish, here are two of the various old badges available for the London & South Western Railway Company, using (without permission!) the arms of London (top left), Southampton (bottom left), Portsmouth (bottom right), Winchester (centre right) and Salisbury (top right).

Now it's time to make my own Christmas card, and I must live with the niggling fear that I got something wrong in the crest.

ADDENDUM!
(two days later)

Alterations!

The Sea Inside

Philip Hoare in the my work last year.
With apologies.

Philip Hoare's "The Sea Inside" was published this Summer.  As he's from Southampton...  and the book is about the sea and Southampton...  and Southampton is all about the sea...  and illustrators are all about the sea...  a project came about, involving the school of art at Southampton.

(Last year, when I hadn't met him, I included him in the "writers" section of my "People Of Southampton" piece.  It's not a great likeness.  I gave him the tail of the whale, for his celebrated book "Leviathan - or The Whale")

The exhibition came together in time for the start of the new student year, but it began in March or April.  It was a bit hush-hush at first, because the book wasn't out yet.  We had excerpts to work from...  I'll give you the description from the exhibition:

The Suburban Sea is a collaborative art project between three organisations:  Red Hot Press, Southampton's Open Access Print Workshop; Southampton Solent University's Unsinkable Press and Students at Norges Kreative Fagskole in Oslo, Norway.

Taking inspiration from the opening chapter of The Sea Inside by Philip Hoare, artists from each organisation were asked to respond on a single sheet of Somerset Paper.  This was then passed on to the next organisation and given to an artist or student to work on again - this time responding to both the initial extracts of the book and the work that was now on the paper.  After the second artist had worked on the paper it was passed on again.

It proved to be an interesting and, at times, challenging project asking artists to work blind, to challenge their existing practice and to explore new mediums of working.

We hope that you like the results.

My "first layer" of a collaborative piece.

"Working blind" really is a strange challenge - leaving space for the next artist, who might respond differently, and hoping that they wouldn't obscure what I'd done.  Working on top of someone else's layer was even harder.

I picked the excerpt that described swimming in Southampton Water (he does it every day), and fleshed it out with vignettes of life on the waves:
"The water is so clear it scares me.  Fish jump up as though they'd dropped out of the clouds.  Everything is rising to the surface, summoned by the light, slowed to the sea's heartbeat.  The water brims like an overrun bath.  I push out through the stillness of the standing tide, my hands creating the only ripples."

The piece on the wall with another layer on top.

Only at the exhibition / start-of-term celebration did I get to see what happened.  Some of the pieces (including two more that I worked on) had three or four layers.  My first had only one layer on top, which I'm pretty sure is Jonny Hannah's work.

Experimental illustration from Southampton School Of Art & Design!

A few of the collaborations in the exhibition.

Look at Philip Hoare's blog - Leviathan Or The Whale.

Southampton Planning

Here's an artefact from the background work for my degree show, back in May of last year.  I was researching critical appraisal of the city's architecture, particularly addressing modernism.  Owen Hatherley's "The New Ruins Of Great Britain" was a big influence on the content of the project.  Another was Jones The Planner's two blog posts about Southampton - "Southampton Dreams" (July 2011) and "Oi Southampton Masterplanners!" (April 2012).

Mainly for my own reference and development of ideas, I drew the second of the two, copying the photos and writing snippets of the text.  It takes in the legacy of historical styles, the effects of the twentieth century, recent attempts at regeneration and the city council's master plan.

My drawing / Jones The Planner's blog post.

The blog is still turning out long and rewarding pieces, about Exeter, Bristol, London...  and Stockholm and Copenhagen!

Southampton's Arts Paper

Issue 5 of SOAP

The latest issue of SO.A.P. has been distributed, featuring updates about lots of projects and groups in the area.  It's a free paper that comes out a few times a year.  There are updates on

• The Wool House Project, open for numerous art and community events until it gets turned into a brewery (Daily Echo)

• City Eye and Southampton Film Week, 2nd -10th November

• The Artsouth installations across the South, 7th September to 1st December, including one at Mottisfont.

• Sotones Music Co-operative

• Ejectorseat Festival - plans for next July in Palmerston Park

and plenty more - all behind Johnny Toaster's great cover images of Southampton.


The centre-spread poster this time is a display of my drawings from Copenhagen, with some flouncy text that I wrote about sketching on holiday.

Centre spread by me!

Here is SO.A.P. on Facebook.  Go out and pick up a copy!

Southampton Mosaic

Here is Southampton's newest bit of public art (until the rhinos appear all over town in a couple of weeks' time).  I found it today, on a detour through the old town, right around the corner from the Hamtun Street mural by Henry and Joyce Collins.

The artist, Joanna Dewfall, does a lot of participatory projects, and this mural comes out of workshops at Tudor House (see this article on the Tudor House website).  From the plaque:

This mural was designed and produced by artist Joanna Dewfall, inspired by ideas from local people.  The design celebrates the city's iconic buildings, maritime industry and cultural diversity.
The central panel made by Joanna (dewfallmosaic.co.uk) is a snapshot of Southampton in the 21st century.  The border symbolises key features from the city's past and present, and was produced by local people.

I'm enjoying picking out details and references.  It's a great addition to any walk around the town.

Bunting Update

A quick update on the current project - which I've been referring to interchangeably as bunting, banners or flags.

Here are some of the fruits of many hours of screenprinting.  It was going badly; it got worse; and this week it got much better.  I think I finally got the right mixture of paint and medium, and the right scale of pull (individual instead of three at once).  I've had numerous trips to Fabricland and carried great volumes of cotton around town on my bicycle, often at the same time as poster tubes.

Of the good prints, this photo shows just an eighth.  There are many more that didn't come through so strong.  Maybe they can go in less prominent positions.  One hundred and nintety-two is more than enough for the main area.

Await photos of the hanging!

Aspects Of The Civic Centre

In which I am commissioned to bring gaiety to Southampton Civic Centre.

My plans for the southern entrance (for the council chamber) have been approved!

The bunting that I posted about last week is to go around the double-stairway and balustrades.  I have much Photoshop work to do, and then happy hours of screenprinting.  Here is my rough sketch.


On the other side of the complex, Southampton City Art Gallery is currently on Hampshire's Lego Mania Trail.  From 28th March to 9th June, seven museums across the county have special Lego models.  Southampton has one of the "floating bridge" that ran across to Woolston until the Itchen Bridge opened in 1977.  It is built to the scale of Lego people, and is based on L. S. Lowry's painting, of 1956.

The other displays are pretty good at the moment.  The west circuit of rooms is really eye-popping.  I had never seen "Togetherness" by Lisa Milroy (whose "Melons" is one of my favourites in the gallery), a busy melee of geishas and mounties that justifies a trip on its own.

Sadly, the opening hours have been cut to 10-3 on weekdays and 10-5 on Saturdays.  At least the council now has a My Journey website to make the buses and cycle options clearer.


I'll leave you with a lot of text:  a description of the gallery collection in 1964, from "A Survey of Southampton and Its Region" (Edited by F. J. Monkhouse, Professor of Geography in the University of Southampton), a hefty book that I bought the other day.  It is very thorough and discusses the present state and future predictions for the port and most other aspects of the town (which became a city between the book's writing and publication).

The "Aspects Of The Civic Scene" section includes "Museums and Art Galleries" (by P. S. Peberdy and M. A. Palmer, Curators of the Southampton County Borough Museums and Art Gallery).  Here is the full text on the Art Gallery.  The first time I read through, I did it aloud, which got steadily more challenging.  The bold type is my own.  It really is an impressive collection and setup.  It's fascinating to see the new, post-war names coming in.  Most of the description is still true.

The Art Gallery

Southampton Art Gallery is now twenty-five years old; opened in 1939 as the final section of the Civic Centre buildings, but damaged during the War, full activity could not be renewed until 1946.  The eight rooms and large Main Hall have now been redecorated, equipped with up-to-date lighting, and are being provided with suitably designed modern furniture.  The gallery itself and most of the permanent collection largely owe their existence to the bequest of Robert Chipperfield of Southampton, who died in 1911, which provided a substantial part of the cost of building.  A income of some £4000 a year from this bequest has enabled a wide collection to be built up.  Some of the purchases made in the 1930's, before the gallery was opened, would not be possible now with the spectacular rise in prices, particularly in the field of French Impressionist painting.

For a short period before the War of 1939-45, Southampton possessed one of the wealthiest galleries in the country, for in 1932 a further bequest from another leading figure in Southampton - Frederick William Smith - augmented its income, and serious buying from both bequests began about this time, in anticipation of the building of the gallery.  In making purchases Southampton has been fortunate in having, by the terms of the two bequests, the advice of the Directors of both the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery.  Purchasing policy has not been rigid, but has been governed to a considerable extent by the state of the art market.  Just after the War it was possible to concentrate on British painting of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, while at the same time buying fairly extensively recent and contemporary British painting.  This still continues although an attempt is now being made to secure a small number of Continental Old Masters to form the nucleus of a collection before it is too late.  This is particularly important, since the removal of two extensive long-term loan collections has left the gallery very weak in this field.

Sculpture is also within the gallery's purchasing policy, and a start has been made here, not only with small bronzes in the gallery but with a Rodin figure on the Art Gallery forecourt.  It is hoped to add further sculpture outside as opportunity arises.  Finally, a sum has been allocated from the rates to purchase a small and highly selective collection of pottery to include pieces typical of their period and style from some of the major ceramic epochs.

The strongest section of the collection at present is British painting from about 1700, with an emphasis on the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.  The most outstanding painting here is Gainsborough's full-length portrait of Lord Vernon, first exhibited in London in 1767.  Slightly earlier is the Reynolds of Cornet Nehemiah Winter, painted in 1759.  There are two portraits by Romney and a Lawrence of Archbishop Moore of Canterbury.  Landscapes include Richard Wilson, sea-pieces by Turner, Morland and de Loutherbourg, a large J. C. Ibbetson of North Wales and an interesting late landscape by Wright of Derby.  In the nineteenth-century rooms are one or two pre-Raphaelites - Holman Hunt, Burne-Jones and Ford Madox Brown; amongst the earlier pictures here are a John Martin of 1812 and a large Etty.  One of the two Tissots is certainly the finest painting in this room, which also contains a portrait by Sargent.  British painters of this century include a strong representation of the Camden Town Group, centred on Sickert (one of whose rare self-portraits the gallery possesses); Gilman, Gore, Bevan and Ginner are all represented, in some cases by two or three examples, as well as more obscure painters like Malcolm Drummond, and associated artists such as Wyndham Lewis and Augustus John.

There are several paintings by Wilson Steer, and the next generation of painters forms another strong section of the collection, with works by Paul Nash, Matthew Smith, Stanley Spencer and Gwen John.  More recent painters include Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Victor Pasmore, Ivon Hitchens, John Bratby and Roger Hilton.  This section has recently been augmented by the splendid bequest of Mr. Arthur Jeffress, which includes ten Sutherlands and five Pipers.  This bequest also greatly enriched the small collection of French nineteenth- and early twentieth-century paintings, of which three most important are a large early Courbet-like Sisley of 1867, a Camille Pissaro of Louveciennes dated 1870, and a 'white period' Utrillo.  Paintings by Delacroix, Corot, Tissot, Boudin, Forain, Harpignies, Bonnard, Vuillard and the Douanier Rousseau are included, as well as several by the Belgian surrealist, Delveaux. 

Amongst the Flemish painters are a pair of early portraits by Van Dyck and works by Goossen van der Weyden, Jordaens and Joos de Momper, while the Dutch School includes landscapes by Philips Koninck and Isaac van Ostade, a J. D. de Heem still-life and a portrait by Nicholas Maes, as well as an interesting Cesar van Everdingen.  The earliest picture in the gallery is a triptych by the fourteenth-century Florentine painter, Allegretto Nuzi, and the Italian section also has good examples of Sophonisba Anguisciola and Desiderio, and a characteristic Salvator Rosa landscape which it is interesting to compare with those by Francisque Millet and Gaspard Poussin amongst the French School. Bronzes by Maillol, Rodin, Degas and Epstein, and a few British water-colours and drawings, complete the collection as it is at present.

Giant Southampton Bunting

Here's something I'm working on for an event at Southampton's glorious Civic Centre next month.

Britain's appetite for bunting hasn't quite been exhausted by frequent festooning throughout 2011 and 2012.  I'm making something between bunting and banners (and maybe some banners too, for good measure), adapted from my Southampton images from last year.

Today Pete and I made prototypes, for a meeting next week:  three different arrangements, on two types of fabric.  It's was a few months since I last did any screenprinting, and I was rusty at every stage.  With all the printing beds taken, we did it on the floor, with mixed results.

Painting A Trunk

...that's what I have to do in the next few days.

Hepwrights Vintage in Bedford Place, Southampton ("One of the UK shops you NEED to know" - Glamour), needed someone to decorate a large trunk.  It's to be taken to vintage fairs, markets and other events, as an advertisement for the shop.

The proprietress has just dropped it round and now I have a week or so to cover it with information and "loveliness".

Whimsical Vintage Lifestyle!

...BUT I'm off to Manchester for the weekend, so there's a risk that the trunk will end up covered with little Lowry figures.

The Mayor's Parlour

Today is a big day.  I'm going to meet the mayor of Southampton and see his parlour.

I hope I'll get to see the Silver Oar of Admiralty for the first time.

There are pictures here at Town Sergeants Of Southampton.

Pictures:

• The "mayors" section of "People of Southampton" from my degree show, last year, showing some of the list of mayors that goes back to 1217.
• Sketches from newspaper cuttings in the city archives, featuring the three maces; one of Basil Spence's buildings for Southampton University in 1966; and photos of two kings and two queens visiting Southampton - George V and Queen Mary, and George VI and Queen Elizabeth.

I should mention The History Press's "Not A Guide To" series of little books about different towns.

"Not A Guide To Southampton" has just been published, written by a local writer, James Marsh.

It's partly personal and partly official and it's full of information that I didn't know about my home town.

I got mine at October Books.

Graduating

My degree course finished in June 2012, so this one is a little late.

My degree exhibition:
SOUTHAMPTON.  All of it.  Well, as much as I could fit onto three metre-wide discs of paper.
I wanted to talk about the city's architecture, development and mythology.  From the idea of a map, the project became three separate pieces:  Places, People and History.

The process involved a lot of drawing, research and photography around town, mixing standard tourist facts with little details that I remember hearing about Southampton over thirty years here.

The borders are lino-printed by hand and the rest is a jumble of ink drawings and text.  I wanted to keep it light and immediate - which is tricky when every mark is final.

To round off the display, I etched two sheets of brass with similar images, for brass-rubbing.


The show was held at Solent's new studios, which were then opened officially by Sir Peter Blake.  I met him, but had no idea what to say.  I won a prize for drawing, selected by Paul Osborne, our life drawing tutor - an astounding honour for me.

Solent Illustration had a stall at D&AD's New Blood fair at Spitalfields Market.  For me, it made up in part for our London exhibition falling through.  I was awarded one of the thirty "Best New Blood" rosettes.

Since then, my three pieces were framed; put on show in the Solent Showcase over the Summer; then bought by the university; and now are at Quay Arts, Newport, Isle Of Wight.

Meanwhile, a similar piece -  a plate design for the university - is on display at the Wightlink terminal in Yarmouth, Isle Of Wight, along with other work by graduates from Solent's creative courses.


Here are some close-ups:

Tag Tool and Philip Schlee

Right now I'm preparing for the opening night of "Drawn Together, Drawn Apart" at Southampton City Art Gallery.  The exhibition presents the Philip Schlee Collection - new to Southampton - and makes connections with works already in the gallery collection.

My role is to draw with TagTool, a newly-released iPad app for drawing and simple animation.  The images will be projected live in the gallery's lecture theatre.  At the moment I'm the first up, followed by five other artists.

Several of us did a similar thing in November at Lighten Up in Guildhall Square, Southampton.  I have always loved the Civic Centre and the art gallery that is inside, so I was excited to be projecting onto a part of it.  I drew a lot of pieces from the gallery collection and was soundtracked by an electronic musician, Natalia Data.  There are some photos at the BBC website.  Here are some screenshots of what I put up:

I did some in advance and some live.  I'm often surprised by the results of a very quick copy - the challenge is to accept the unpredictability.  The portraits of women all came out looking much grumpier.  The huge beard is that of Lorenz Herkomer, painted by his son Hubert, a Southampton artist in the 19th century.

Tonight I have a longer session and I'll be responding to the Philip Schlee Collection.  The exhibition is about the role the drawing (preliminary drawing) plays in artists' practice.  I'll be playing with the different approaches to drawing and construction.

Drawn together, drawn apart: The Philip Schlee Collection of Drawings
18 January - 21 April 2013

From Southampton City Council:

The Philip Schlee Collection brings together drawings, prints and paintings by 44 artists working between 1920 and 2004. It includes examples of life and observational drawings, landscapes and compositional sketches.
Drawn together, Drawn apart reflects the eclectic nature of the collection and of the artists’ own approaches to drawing. The exhibition includes work by, Gillian Ayres, David Bomberg, Christopher le Brun, Roger Hilton, David Hockney, Peter Lanyon, Henry Moore and Paul Nash.
Philip Schlee (1924-2001) assembled the collection, with the assistance of his brother Nick Schlee, between 1992 and 2004.