The Carson House Elite

Ladies and Gentlemen, I would be proud to present the new blog, if it was well prepared and succinctly executed, as this little corner of sino-consicousness has been. However like all things, to procrastinate in anticipation of excellence might as well be bum arsed laziness, and so I press ahead with roughest of roughness save only its beautiful monicker...

The Carson House Elite 

It is intended to fulfil the equivalent function of the beloved Shanghersey diary, whether that objective is manifest in reality only time will tell. Please support as best you can, the odd visit every now and then would be warmly received.

Regards,
The Elite

The End...

I am back in England. Fairly soon this blog will no longer receive updates... however a new blog will be running somewhere, plotting artistry of all kinds on these fair shores... details soon- thank you all for watching so far- its not over yet, but beginning a new life soon...


PS Hi Riona!

Visual Lexicography- a worthy collection indeed

Props to Jimbob for managing to get visual lexicon, a great new magazine of artiness and designerliciousness off its arse and into the ether...

Can't believe he actually went with my lousy image either! No accounting for taste is there!

It's really really hard to get something from conception into reality, whether you are a designer, artist or musician- I know all of these creative types, and have spent long hours in discussion on that difficult path that ultimately leads to the physical manifestation of that delicious initial concept.

I wish him the very best of luck in getting much attention for that lovely mag... good work James!

Sunday at the Park

Sketchbook from a Sunday at Jing An Park...

another busy day

Have been fairly busy of late. Have discovered a sense of impetus since checking the calendar and realising its 5 weeks to go. SO I have been working late, grinding through the cache of my poor old photoshop and taking advantage of spare time at my teaching desk to churn out a whole new series of artworks and developments on existing ones. The banknote series made it into school, where I spent yesterday lunchtime screenprinting over them by hand, in a couple of colours and sinking the classroom out just before my Year 7 class came in. Then I finished collage-ing the remains of my favourite old roadside purchase book, an old chinese mathematics tome complete with algorithm and log table appendices, while my Year 8's busied themselves with computer games this morning. Then I spent some time finalising what I had started in the midnight hours of mon and tues, a series based on some of my diana shots .

Thus tonight after a hard days teaching (6 lessons non stop with no free's) I packed the banknotes into a taxi truck, piled Iggy into the front and headed off to Steven's to have them framed... After both falling asleep in the cab on the way, Ig and I drearily got ourselves together and collected up the heavy aluminium mounted pieces to Steve's ever able and accomodating assistant Cecilia...

Not content with that for a days work, I humped ig into another cab and hot footed it down to Xietu Lu to sort out the printing of the new Paper Postcard series.

The service was faultless as ever, as my trustworthy printlady twiddled and squished my sizes to get the most out of my 1.1m sheet of Epson Matte Acid Free Archival Fine Art stock. Ig by this time was losing the plot, but showing him how a tape measure retracts in exactly the same way as a light sabre at the flick of a switch semed to keep him occupied and he never complained once bless him!

My day still not complete, I dropped Iggy at home, then biked it round to Ash's to show him a proof of his new commission, and try and negotiate professional mounting in Thailnad.

In fact, by the time I got home, although it wasnt late I was pretty shattered, and quite surprised I had the energy to make pack lunches for the family and then bother to write this. Its all for the sympathy vote I guess, though I must admit I bloody love it like this and wouldnt have it any other way...

saturday afternoon project

Took Matilda with me on Saturday afternoon- the project with SHAW finally got underway on a drizzly saturday afternoon, whilst very very hung over. Matilda and I both had our sketchbooks, a camera, and we both accompanied Shaw into various  random houses in California garden near Shanghai University. Managed to do portraits of 6 people and 1 alsatian.

The best fun though, was playing 'dares' on the way home- Matilda went into strangers houses, I put my hand in a dirt filled flowerpot, plus lots more random randomness. 

More plastic fantastic

Probably my favourite of the series, a tryptich shot at dusk. A real fucker to scan though, as its impossible to know what it's supposed to look like :)

New work - plastic lens in HuangShan

These represent the basis of a new series based on but not exclusively using Diana photographs taken in Anhui at Yellow Mountain. Unintentionally they form works in their own right, but that is mostly because I used the wrong setting and didnt wind on far enough- hence they are all mushed over each other. I dont mind that too much though...

Holidays

Saturday. The move back to England has precipitated some panic buying... the opportunity to pick up handbags, jeans and software that would be otherwise beyond financial means has proved too difficult to resist. A sneaky basement at the bottom of a lane house, by prior agreement and surreptitious rendezvous only, provides kelly with several soft well named handbag specimens and a nice Gucci wallet for me.

Sunday. Dinner party for fellow artists and loafers. Lamb from the veg lady (Wulumuqi Lu)- the source of the finest fresh produce in the whole of Shanghai- good enough for Craig (Mr Willis) Willis who is also a regular customer. Great conversation, SHAW turned up and unleashed a proposal for our new project... watch this space. All started well, then the loafers turned up to finish the wine and keep us awake for a few hours.

Monday. Happy Valley- a Chinese theme park with rides that put Alton Towers to shame... however the queues were huge so we spent time at the kids rides...

Tuesday. Collected the prints from the printer and delivered them to Stevo at M97- the finest photographic gallery in China- nay contemporary art gallery in China..! Awaiting me there were 6 awesome looking prints that had been beatifully mounted on aluminium- my latest project. Popped in to see my gallerist and made a few preparations for Saturday's show...

and then returned home to spend the afternoon on the concrete balcony better known as 'the garden' to our kids, drinking a cool one with my beautiful wife. Oh happy days!

While Im at the keyboard...

A few shots from the visual sketchbook - recent trip to anhui...

Shaaaaaw

Just finalised a meeting with Shaw, after procrastenating and his busybusiness... the arrival of the head of the british council (to open expo) has precipitated an action- hopefully we can thrash out a project on sunday,  that will engage her attention (if we eventually get to entertain her) and it will be gloriousness for all! Expo good for something after all!

More champagne!

gotta love google ads

was checking my spam while something downloaded, when google piped this little beauty into my virtual world...

Spam Swiss Pie - Bake 45-55 minutes or until eggs are set

 

God I love the internet

Selling Meat in JingDaZhen

tick tick tick

As time slips by, I am drawing ever closer to the end of my stay in Shanghai. As such it occured to me for the first time last week that the SHANGHERSEY blog will effectively become redundant in 2 months, and I will have to embark on a new one about living in Derbyshire. Somehow I guess it will lose its appeal, as it will be very difficult to make Matlock sound interesting when compared to the otherworldliness of this crazy town...

Animated water

click this to see the animation






This old guy was using a specially customised plastic tube to write on the stone pavements and street furnishings with water. Its a practice that I have heard of before but never seen- scholars used to do it to save on ink and paper- the art of calligraphy is more of a physical ritual than an act of writing... so writing in water made perfect sense. The artist song dong appropriated this method for his piece in times square

Visual sketchbook- ANHUI pt. II

Visual sketchbook- ANHUI pt. I

More hot air

UK at the Shanghai EXPO is where I am currently also blogging about just about ferck awll. Writing for a living must be shit. Good job I do it for free :)

Spring almost sprung

Its almost here- after fits and starts, the odd false alarm- spring is almost upon Shanghai.

Disaster tart cards

Accompanying the watercolours are a series of custom designe cards depicting services that indulge the user in the joys of destructive acts...

Loss

Sometimes there comes a vacuum in ones life which is precipitated by the absence of some physical or emotional thing, and like any vacuum, objects, feelings and emotions surrounding it are sucked into oblivion. Losing something precious, not getting a job, an accidental misfortune- all these things can engender such a sense of loss and darkness.
The loss can be physical or emotional, tangible or somehow unquantifiable. That is common to us all and to an extent part of everyone's life. What can frustrate one more however is the draw and demand on ones inspiration, or general disposition, that such a loss creates. It can be very hard to summon the energy to explore ideas, to turn the insides out, extrapolate them, reflect them, think of every other connotation in order to establish the pinnacle of creativity… when your soul is clouded by a vacuum of loss.
It is also, however, in itself a source of inspiration. Many of the greatest works of art- music, literature, painting- are direct responses to tragedy, loss or misery. Somehow, their creators, when faced with the dark cloud, the negative space or the draining sensation, summon their will to not only overcome but to feed off and be driven tby the vacuum. It belies a remarkable sense of creativity to be able to do this, and not all of us are capable of reacting in this way. For the rest of us, stamina, grit and determination are all we have at our disposal to evade the vacuum, and to return to normality and inspiration.

more newbies

These studies will form part of a conceptual piece whereupon they exist as museum pieces violated by small tart cards, which are poked into the frames and advertise destructive forces of human nature... will upload the cards later

The Joy of Destruction

Thanks to the conceptual input of my better half, I have managed to veer slightly away from the seedy and obvious interpretation of the theme, realising instead a proposition that was first introduced to me during a Year 10 GCSE lesson at Tec...

New Show

Libido Mortido will investigate the contrasting instincts of creation and destruction, (love and loss, passion and pain- by my interpretation)

This is a sketch for a new poster based on 'tart cards'- which I have since discovered exist only in UK and are irrelevant to the wider audience. blast!

Planet Dearth

Not much to inspire the written word- or more a lack of time with which to tease worthwhile phrases from the ether of my mind. There is stuff (out)in there, but its just finding the time to eek them out.

The new exhibition also is a pressure, but coming along nicely. An evening at the gallery-studio last night with the whole family in tow was actually a pretty productive time and the kids enjoyed making nut and bolt toys, tanking around the gallery on skateboards and crashing into valuable artworks with dirty fingerprints... kelly was an inspiration to my painting, helping (as usual) to devise brilliant theme for a series of paintings- but I dont have time to explain it now. Hopefully I can post some visual evidence when the works are complete...

More Blogg...

I am actually live and direct on the british governments very own website...

New images

More Dianography... local urban sketches...

Don't just leave it...

Is it a characteristic of a creative soul to find inspiration in the new, but to wane once the novelty has worn off? It is with me, and thus the Don’t Just Do It project has lain untouched for months… so I have decided to try and revamp a little, starting with some header artwork- not quite a brand, but a handy visual to trot out where necessary…

Just need to find a wordpress skin to accomodate it now…

Project development..

Working on the 6ism project for the Gallery… This means lots of writing and producing content, without much time… Have thoroughly enjoyed playing around with this for the spalsh page, and a flag aswell…



The Republic...

Have got stuck right into some beautiful cuts of the Bodoni font, I think they’re by those geniuses of typographism, P22 but I may be wrong…

Here’s a clip of the splash…




The site is becoming a collaboration of writers and thinkers more than artists, but that is kind of the point… keep an eye on the wiki for updates :)