Sugar

A couple of drawings for a possible Zizzi sugar bowl comission - Teaspoons obligatory!

New Drawing

Between painting restaurants, stage scenery and children's faces for school plays I'm trying to get up some momentum to really work in my own ouvre for a while- ultimately with a view to be able to put the 'studio practice' back in an actual studio again! Even when space resources are scarce I always feel it's a bit of a cop-out when I pilfer Glasgow Herald fashion shoot imagery without a hint of irony but it's all keeping your hand in, isn't it? Here's a pencil and ink I think I've just finished - more than a hint of Charles Avery about it.... but not as good of course!

Zizzi, One New Change, St Paul's

Had a great time making the work for the opening - if only all jobs could be this rewarding! Here are my own photo's of the work over the four days but official press release images can be seen on Zizzi's facebook page: www.facebook.com/#!/wearezizzi . Loved also the seemingly infinite supply of prosecco royales by the last day! I think it enhanced the work. Many thanks to all the staff there.

And one more for luck...

You can never have too many final designs

Zizzi, One New Change Pitch Accepted

My pitch for Zizzi One New was successful and the preparitory sketchwork is ongoing ready to be transferred to acetates. The venue opens next week on October 28th!

Table setting

Dining with Pudding Lane, Bread st, Oat Lane, Milk St, Honey Lane and Poultry - A St Paul's Cathedral jelly and a Millenium Bridge toast-rack take pride of place. An OK idea but not really what I'm aspiring to for the final pitch

Concepts

Some new sketchbook based possibilities for another wall painting project, this time based in London. Aubrey Beardsley-inspired to complement the Dickensien, Fin de Siecle Vibe I felt the place was going for. Still early days but my Sept 6th deadline is fast approaching so will need to step up a gear to meet it head on. Imagery includes Victorian market-goers with headgear to match placenames and Victoria astride a Millenium Wheel Penny-Farthing with a crown fashioned on the fire of london Monument. Watch this space...

Second Helpings- more Zizzi sketchbook work!

My eyes may have been bigger than me belly when I uploaded these! But if you go to the restaurant you can see ifyou can spot how these ideas worked themselves into the final images.

One big consideration was whether or not to attempt any Mackintosh/ Mockintosh motifs - I huge part of the Glasgow art school eperience (so I'm led to believe) but maybe tiresome for the locals. Some Mackintosh rose motifs did find their way in (they were very useful for covering extra surface and filling gaps) but my versions are attached to thorny stems and are dropping their petals so that they are not necessarily being elegised. Trendy students are a given!

Zizzi, Cresswell Lane, Glasgow- Tella Vuota Event

From the 12th to the 13th of August I was part of a team of new artists and Illustrators asked to decorate the walls of Zizzi restaurant in Cresswell Lane, off Byres road in Glasgow's West End.

As cringeworthy as it is, I've posted the address of the Video invite that we all filmed to publicise the event below - Katy's statue-hug is my personal highlight of the video whereas I seem to be loitering motionlessly around the Botanic Garden's public toilets behind The Kibble Palace - very sinister.

The Gardens are just up the road from the restaurant, as is Oran Mor - the site of Alasdair Gray's ongoing mural of Cistine Chapel proportions. Hopefully not Gray's swan-song, I was lucky enough to view it first hand thanks to a very obliging Oran Mor employee called Gordon, who didn't object to the gallous request. It seemed logical to me that elements of both should appear in what I hoped to do.

Having been exposed so much to Lucy Mckenzie's work at college - and through her curatorial work Gray and John Byrne - I wanted to adopt a little their decorative, flat, graphic vernacular. I wanted to try painting and drawing with their Glasgow accents so that I could make my motifs specific to Glasgow without relying on visual cliches- difficult for an in-about-comer. I wanted a local Zizzi diner to be comfortable amongst the images, not exasperated by them.

This is some of my sketchbook work to whet your appetite for the project!

Zizzi, Cresswell Lane, Glasgow- Tella Vuota Event

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJAdZeM77-c

Child's Play

After a successful degree show I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to work at the Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh as assistant to Julie Roberts. It was really a very enjoyable experience working alongside Julie to create a wall-painting for her exhibition, Child, which opens 30th July and runs to the 29th of September over the Edinburgh Festival.

In this sizable solo exhibition of drawings and paintings Roberts has portrayed children who experienced points of crisis in their lives and includes herself and her own siblings among this number. Using a pallete of gentle domestic colours and patterns drawn with compelling intensity, Roberts brings together a collection of young vulnerable people lost to history.

Dandy Andy

Ive started reading Who is Andy Warhol? ( 1995, McCabe.C, Francis. M & Wollen.P eds.) to help get me some new perspectives on screenprinting and repetition and I came across a really interesting chapter discussing Warhol as a dandy and/or Flaneur - super, I love a bit of Dandyism.

The difference between the Baudelairian figures of theFlaneur and the Dandy (according to Lombardo) is that while the former has an insatiable curiosity and excitement for life and all things social in the modern metropolis, the latter (though also a creature 'married to the crowd') is blase, indifferent and 'cool'. His commitment to this attitude is absolute - akin to Stoicism.

Lobardo suggests that Warhol embodies both characters not only in his life but in his work. His passion for the commercial, celebrity society and the imagary of everyday modern life alies him with The Flaneur yet the means by which he mediates this - the emotionally cool and distancing screen print/ repeat - reflects The Dandy.

I do like it when ideas seem to come together! If you are interested in Scottish artists dealing with ideas of the Dandy and the Flaneur check out Alex Pollard and Clare Stephenson

Work and Displays

Let's get the ball rolling with some more images of my work - I have a series of portraits of art students in progress and have been experimenting with screen printing recently. Was curious to see if the flattening and repetition of images made the figure more iconic or anonymous, creating tension with very individual portraits. Wallpaper repeat print links all the work together in a language of decoration but I feel myself wanting to concentrate more on characters than very formal pattern.

Calvin's Wardrobe- First Impression

Welcome to my blog - Calvin's Wardrobe- named partly for a particular eca student without whose idiosynchratic, vintage style my work would not have taken the shape it has, and partly a a nod towards north-eastern presbiterianism on which I could blame my work ethic and economic style!

My first solo display outwith of college opens at The Lot on Edinbugh's Grassmarket this Monday, see my flyer for details