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Doncaster Art Fair

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Doncaster Art Fair:

Cost £25 for the stall – a good size corner of The Queen Crafthouse in Doncaster – £65 for transport as I make big work and the car is too small.

I displayed two of my big paintings, framed to 150cm x 90cm, two framed paintings at 100cm x 100cm, 1 framed tomatoes painting at 90cm x 45cm and I built a browser out of mdf to hold a selection of big and small work.

Art fairs are always interesting in that you meet other artists and people you haven’t seen for ages, mostly out of context so that they don’t know what to say other than ‘is this yours?’ or did you do this?​’ You are also in a position to eavesdrop the variety of opinions about your work expressed with no regard to your presence, ‘the perspective is all wrong in this one’, ‘who’d want enormous tomatoes!’ ‘O, I don’t like these’ and so on.

At the same time I got a lot of very nice comments and questions about location and process. But my work is too big for sale at an event like this, and my selection was not focused enough to attract attention. I picked up a lot of advice about doing these kind of events, making sure you have a range of (domestic) sizes, price everything up clearly, greetings cards are a useful item to carry for small sales and follow up business. The majority opinion in the venue I was in was that you don’t know how successful an event it was until later on as people can and do contact you after the event having thought about a purchase.

The picture below got a lot of attention and I gave out more than forty cards, so who knows what might come of the occasion. My favourite comment of the day was from a man of about my age who was with his wife and another couple who he turned to to say “we do like art, we’ve just put a Kandinsky in the downstairs loo.”

Wordsworth avenue 7:15 am

Wordsworth avenue 7:15 am

Studio Build TWO

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Studio 071118

A full day at the studio. A full day means arriving at 11:00 and leaving at 15:50, I am retired after all.

First off I stretched the paper in the foreground, I’ll be interest to see how this dries given the lack of heating and fabulous ventilation. The time is an hour ahead on this photo, I couldn’t be arsed to change the time when the clocks went back. I moved on to constructing the panels for part one of the installation.

I cut all the wood first, twenty eight short lengths and then moved onto assembling the panels. I got the timing down to fifteen minutes a panel when my portable drill finally charged up. Before that I was putting the screws in by hand, each panel has eight 100mm bullets and fourteen 25mm bullets. The photographs illustrate the very simple production line approach.

An aside for today about the electricity. The supplier is e-on and their standard tariff is around 15.75 pence per KWh. The meter read 277 when I took possession and read 283 after today’s work. The advantage of having only one socket to power everything from.

The video is here so you can hear the noise the rain makes on the corrugated roof.

Friday 9th November. Arrive at 10:45 am with a view to completing as much of the structure as I can. Obviously someone has been in on Thursday as the lights come on when I enter the building. As it’s Axisweb’s rental I have to accept access by them and the landlord without prior notice. This could be either and maybe I won’t see the visitor I’m expecting today.

I made eight frames today to add to the six from Wednesday, each frame uses 4×2.4m C16 CLS 3×2 (48x75mm) at £3.10 each length and one sheet of whiteface hardboard at £7.75, so £20.16 per frame plus screws. Eight 100mm bullets costs about £1.70 and sixteen 25mm bullets are 23 pence. So £22.09 x 14 is £309.20 for the whole assembly. You could say £310.00 including the electricity.

I’ve got one spare frame to test the surfaces for the internal finish and I’m still toying with having a door. There are also a few spots that will need extra screws to lie flatter. You can also see how dark it is, 15:30 in November.

Here ends week one of the new studio!

Studio 091118

Studio Build ONE

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This is the new studio I got through Axisweb. A 2,800 sq. ft. light industrial unit for £30 per month. Obviously it’s not only my studio but I am the only one in it at the moment. The space is the biggest I’ve had access to for a good while and has come at a good time for me.

I have been working towards building an environment, with interactive elements, since 2005 when I completed my MA. I was always stymied by the need to earn a living leading to a lack of space and time. Now that I’m retired I have the time but didn’t have the space and couldn’t afford a commercial rent so I applied for an Arts Council grant under their Develop Your Creative Practice strand. I was unsuccessful in the application but then the Axisweb studio came up and I thought why not do it anyway.

The project can be seen here https://www.ian-latham.com/geranium/geranium.html where there a series of developmental animations of 3d models. I will write more about the space itself in a different post, this series will plot the physical and practical process involved in building it and its more open companion piece.

As a reference point for the studio space artist groups in Doncaster are offering spaces through the council that measure 4.5 x 2.5 metres, that’s slightly bigger than half the blue tarpaulin in the close up picture, for £15 per month.

Spaces like this have limits you accept and work around. This space is essentially a fifteen metre square with a 5x4mtr corner office. The corner office has motion sensor triggered lighting and two wall heaters that have timers attached. It has four double wall sockets and is carpeted. None of this useful for me at all. The rest of the space has no lighting and one double socket next to the electrical consumer unit. There is no heating either. The space is well lit by six large skylights, clear corrugated plastic by the look of it, and is usable during daylight hours. I have had to invest in extension leads and adopt a very considered practice – never leaving anything plugged in that’s not being used, taking time to put away equipment between uses as I move the sockets near enough to the work – to be able to build. The other downside to AxisWeb spaces is that you have a 21 day notice period from either side, so if the landlord rents the space you have to leave quickly.

I took the keys on October 26th , and moved the equipment in on Tuesday 30th. Materials were delivered on Monday 5th November and I built the bench in the picture below that afternoon (yesterday as I write). Stay tuned for more as time passes.