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!