The Final Cut

Tony Curtis goes yonder.

Mogzilla.

Wahey! I see that the Bostin' Heroes issue Black Cats and Bostinmobiles is now available in tantalisingly serialised form on the Bostin' Heroes website.

It's all lettered up and shaded, and Matt's done a very fine job on it. You can breathlessly follow the Heroes' perilous cat-based adventures here.

Crossing Borders

Crossing Borders seems to be a fine organisation, and everyone we spoke to yesterday was very positive about it. They publicise and support artists local to the Scottish Borders, such as the Open Studio Art trail that's on this weekend. We had a prowl around on Friday, and it was an eye-opener.

Anne Collin is a jeweller in Swinton, who has a studio that made me frankly envious, produces fantastic jewellery and likes beetles, which is a mark of fine character.

Gill Walton is a painter of portraits and still lives who lives and works near Birgham in a renovated cottage with fantastic views of the countryside. She was encouraging her visitors to make self-portrait heads in clay, which we did and it was fun, and she had a large and interesting collection of wasps. Her studio, I might add, made me frankly envious.

I wanted to see this

but it had sold. The pears on velvet were splendid too, though.

After a quick sandwich on a park bench in Coldstream we had a look at the Craft House gallery, where Tom Davidson made his second appearance in the day. Anne the jeweller had a piece of cut lino above her mantelpiece in her studio which attracted my attention. Showing willows on the Tweed, it had come to the end of its print run and was being thrown out so she bought it. It was eye-catchingly intricate work. The Craft House gallery had some of the original limited series prints, and they are fine work in every sense of the word.

Sunset at Edge of Wood, Tom Davidson.

The colour judgement, draughtsmanship and technical skill are just extraordinary. I mean, just look at it! Tom Davidson has his own gallery (his own gallery! I'm, frankly, envious) in Earlston, which is about a forty-minute drive away, and visitors can apparently gawp at work in progress. We're up for a good gawp one day soon, and as soon as I know more, dear reader, so shall you.

So, bloody hell. It's good to see that there are people living and working and succeeding, and it's very exciting to have gifted practitioners like this right on our doorstep. It's intimidating, too, as I spent all day making comparisons. The answer is to keep going. Practice. Improve.

The very idea of crossing borders was interesting, too, particularly at this time when so many of our teacher friends are facing the last weekend before going back to school. I miss the money, but that's about it. I've crossed the border and I'm not going back.

A Dig in the Ribworts

Ribwort.

Yesterday was day one of the Crossing Borders Open Studio weekend here in the Borders, of which more in another post, but suffice to say that as well as being a fantastic day out it was a kick up the arse to get on with doing good work.

To that end, I've had a selection of vegetation wilting in a tumbler of water in the kitchen for two or three days now, and if I don't get on and photograph it it will all expire and have lived for nothing.

First one, the first plant portrait I've done in a long time, is the humble ribwort plantain.

Three Parts Oddness to One Part Peculiarity.

The LaFarge cement works near Dunbar. Lovely for a bit of a sit down.

Why turn around and look at the sea when this spectacle unfurls its refulgent majesty before your awe-seared gaze? Unknown gentleman and lady, I tip my hat in salute to your nonconformity.

Gloria! Gloria! Ba-da-daddle-addle-ah, ba-da-daddle-addle-ah.

Gloria.

Twenty-two days after I finished the preliminary character sketches, this morning I scanned, tweaked, saved and sent the tenth completed page of 'Here Comes the Neighbourhood.' Matt has been in touch with the editor of NBC Vol. III, who "likes the sound of the story," which is encouraging.

Overall I'm quite pleased with it. From drawing the panel frames to finishing touches, I'd say each page has about ten hours work in it, and (as usual) I could give you a list long as my arm of things I wish I'd done differently or taken more care over or could do better next time and so on and on, but given that we were up against the deadline of the end of this month for submitting the final thing, I don't think it's bad. I've a pain in the joint where thumb meets wrist which may or may not be related to pretty much twenty two days continuous drawing, and to which I've been applying frozen peas. (Art. My God. The suffering. And they say those Chilean miners have it hard.)

I think it's a good story. Matt has heart and wit, and I like that. I'll link to an online version sometime soon, but hopefully to something more exciting like an actual paper version you can exchange money for. I mean, howay, look at Gloria there - look at that face. Look at those novelty spectacles. What editor could resist?

Tower of Power

We were on the beach at Coldingham the other week, collecting sea glass and generally breathing in the briny splendour when I got the inevitable sub Goldsworthy itch. It was very absorbing, and interesting to feel how the sense of balance in the structure changed with every stone I put on it. I had four or five collapses before I got one I was happy with. I artfully arranged the photo so it looks like a teetering head-high behemoth, which it was not; had you been close by when it crashed down into gravity's embrace, it could have lightly bruised your knee.

I'd like to say that I built it deliberately in the eye of the advancing tide so that I could capture the moment of destruction, but I hadn't noticed that the tide was creeping so close, nor that I'd built it on the highest part of the beach and we had to wait for about forty minutes for the waves to finally get to it. Don't get too eager about the video; it's stop motion, and decidedly unspectacular, but at least it made me want to go back and give it another go. (You might spot that the top fell off, and I went back to re-stack it: the whole thing went only seconds later.)

Clever bugger, that Goldsworthy.