Luke Best, Krets gallery

The unrivalled Mr. Best has an exhibition, opening this weekend at Krets gallery, Malmö. More here.



He's showing new, large drawings, alongwith hand–appliquéd cushions. Very exciting. Luke is so good with commercial work but the moments too — when he goes after drawing process, concocted out of a circling set of personal marks, forms and props — are so interesting.

Morocco: Found, Made

Final post on Morocco and a notemaking process to take back into the things being made back home. Ceramics has knocked me healthily sideways, regarding the behaviour of glazes, shrinkage and knowing when to let it be. Don't want to lose a natural tendency to worry something into shape but it can be offset.



Some of the colours here resonate with stoneware glaze tests; violets and purples especially which have surprised me. Also, not so clear on this image, manufactured surface repeats subjected to erosion.





And knotting. Was playing a while ago with remembered lashings and unfamiliar ones, such as the Monkey's Paw.







This last image is an improvised brush used by a boy we met, who made and painted something to give to my boy. He did it just because he wanted to. Best moment.

Morocco: Washed Forms

Back now in London, always somewhat disorientating after neighbouring the Atlantic for two weeks. Time there does give vent to overview of one's work and one's conduct as a maker, a teacher; moreover as a father, a partner. That sounds pompous but it happens.

In terms of making, there needs to be more of it bearing relation to the speed I think. Not that all the ideas are so good that they beg to be realised; just so that the intent is clear throughout the rendering. And so that I stop having people hang on too long for the result. There is such a discrepancy between design, art and craft lead times; it's tricky to know when one is slow or not but at the moment I want to quicken.

Reading was judged right this time. Often take away the wrong book but gained a good deal from Hyphen Press' God's amateur: the writing of E. C. Large, which I'd taken away from the live reading by Stuart Bailey at Somerset House a few years back. Bailey's essay, on re-reading, resonated here this time; particularly his notions of low modernism and of a nowaday supplanting of experience by convenience.

Also a collection of Graham Greene's short stories. Coming to him late on, like ignoring the obvious or resisting the forcibly recommended. And in terms of process logic, James Langdon's concise iteration of Ulises Carrión's texts on the book; as he says, "potentially a manual for making and using books".

Morocco: Seen Surface

Morocco: Found Colour Notes

Coming to the end of another stay in Aglou, near Tiznit, in the Souss-Massa-Draâ region of Morocco. On the doorstep of the Atlantic, an empty beach with tidelines of salt- and sun-bleached organic and synthetic matter.

Combing and collecting colour has become something to look forward to each time. It's had a significant effect on my attitude to and use of colour; something I've considered to be a struggle. Local colour; colour arrived at through the action of one agent upon another; elemental wearing of processed forms — variegations therein make so much more sense than the burnt umbers and cadmium reds of My First Acrylics Set.

Same applies to the varieties of battering to a recurrent form.

A Rack for the Box

A rack, which sits a layer of found forms on top of the stacks and bookwork, is just about there. Each layer changes the character of the whole; certainly how it might be read as a functional, learning or play thing.



It also signals for me that I need to start to author more truly spatial and dimensionally weighted works. Not at the expense of imagemaking but as a logical next step for the language. Ceramics has only added to the feeling.



I'm so used to making marks on things; it's a slow uptake to understand that the things are the marks.

Last Layer

Drawing the last layer of racks for the sourced stumps, needles, sticks, rubbers and egg–timer glass to go in the boxes. Each spurt of forms gains its own character, partly because of the time taken over this project, spliced in between other works. These are a little bit hammer anvil stirrup, a little bit universal bicycle wrench.

Book, Pad, Pick, Needle, Stump, Chalk, Pot, Dish, Tin

Further Consideration

Nail Bars

A print for the excellent Hato Press, instigated by artists in residence efdeay, for their Tic Toc Pop Up Shop; details here. Open for 24 hours (over three days), 24 people were asked to conceive and produce an artwork for Risograph print, within the span of 24 hours. Edition, of course, of 24.

My selected colours. The image is coming from lines of thought that bond everything in progress at the moment. Bar structures from Handwerk — fingers, piano hammers and graphic notation to sound in working a chair design for Andrew — Bibendum belly bulges, crisscrossing hatching, ambiguous instructional code for ROLU — and more loosely, from recently going to and fro up and down the Walworth Road for Ceramics class. Feeling dazzled by nail bar displays; no pun intended but I can't put my finger on it. Off–the–meter innovation. And caramel, black and gold three–piece suite ludicrousness. Been trying to find a calligraphic, almost whimsical stroke in the linework; a little bit queasy, even.

That's also fed by the calligraphic briskness of Vanessa Bell's Omega Workshop textiles and this, recently discovered on Tell You Today. From Writing & Writing Patterns (1935) by artist, educator, author Marion Richardson. She is fascinating, all round, for someone whose week is split as mine, between Make and Teach and Make. An archive of her work, I think, at Birmingham Institute of Art & Design. Must go see.

Connection then, to screen manifestations of synthetic sound. Here, a Lissajous curve.

And here, Arabesque (1975) by computer–generated animation pioneer John Whitney, with sound by Manoochelher Sadeghi.

Under Consideration