Dredging

All Images: North Leicester, November 2019

The rain's been so relentless this Autumn, and my virus-depleted energy levels - so reduced, that I've failed to 'own the conditions' on two wheels very much at all.  Thus, when the precipitation abated for a weekend, and my personal snot-fest finally dried-up - it felt like a real novelty to get back in the saddle for an hour or two.

Whilst the raindrops were largely absent, the ground is still thoroughly saturated - making a degree of splash-back and mud-splatter inevitable, as I traversed the banks of the river Soar through Leicester.  It was an enjoyable enough diversion, nonetheless - and nothing my own cycle sustained could match the ravages wrought on these bikes dredged up from the river bed.

The seemingly freelance, magnetic salvage of such debris seems to be a popular activity, these days - with similar tangles of corroded and befouled metal punctuating the riverbank at increasingly regular intervals.  I chatted to a passing river-walker about that, just as I finished taking these shots.  She expressed concern at the perceived eyesore - but that mostly just served to remind me that, one person's eyesore is another's intriguing subject matter.  I'm long past such conventional distinctions between the 'ugly', and the picturesque, in any case.

Anyway, in the long-run, I think I should be grateful to the dredgers - whoever they are.  Given the ever-rising water levels - anything that aids the water flow - keeping the river between its banks, and out of people's houses (including my own), is to be applauded - I suspect.

'Constructed City' 5: Hi Vis

All Images: 'Constructed City' Screen Prints (Work In Progress) With Associated Equipment,
Leicester Print Workshop, November 2019

My 'Constructed City' project continues to progress, albeit a bit slowly.  Fortunately, that's mostly for practical reasons - rather than any lack of motivation.  The decision to make this my first primarily print-based project, means practical work must mostly occur at Leicester Print Workshop, for now - which in turn means weekends and school holidays.  Slightly frustrating though that may be - the fact I'm wishing there were more hours when I could crack-on, is an encouraging sign that I'm fully engaged with this project, and not just dabbling.  Physical energy might desert me a bit faster these days, but it can still flow from mental motivation.  The fact is, I've happily toddled off to LPW for several Saturdays in a row now, with very little procrastination at all, often after a tiring week at work - which definitely feels like a good sign.  In fact, my most recent hiatus was the result of the Workshop's recent weekend takeover by Leicester Print Festival events, rather than any reluctance on my part - and I'm already itching to get back in.

Another reason for that, is the fact I'm writing this at one of those moments when I've just encountered my first proper bump in the road with some of these images.  The intention has always been to allow them  to build up through intuition, and out of the process itself - rather than according to some tightly prescribed plan of action.  Consequently, I'm feeling my way, both visually, and in terms of what I might actually achieve with  screen printing (and it's important to remember that I'm still a relative novice in that field).  My creative muscle memory, visual understanding and general printing chops, are far less developed here, than when it comes to, say - painting, collage (or even cardboard box wrangling) - which means I'm bound to take plenty of wrong turns as this project advances.

In this case, it's fair to say that the pleasure I took in the way a transparent layer of bright, cadmium yellow unified what was already becoming a rather tangled complex of preceding layers in some of these prints - was tempered by the fact it raised its own complications.  The reality is, these early statements were originally intended to lay down a kind of modulated ground, over which bolder statements might ultimately float - but have already become much stronger than intended.  The yellow tied things together encouragingly - and is a pleasing referent to the bold, hazard primaries so prevalent on construction sites, but it still felt too strident for the intended purpose.  It also departed from the more modulated qualities of the yellow-shrouded scaffolding imagery that actually inspired it.

Central Nottingham, May 2019

However, the real uncertainty arose when I attempted to knock things back with another layer of transparent white - itself pulled through a completely new stencil.  I instantly realised that white should probably have been mixed into the yellow ink, rather than as a separate layer, and that yet another layer of new imagery was possibly causing as many problems as it solved.  It's fair to say that the behaviour of cumulative layers of transparent colour (particularly where lights over darks are concerned), and of disparate layers of imagery - are things I've yet to get fully to grips with in screen printing.  They're only intrinsic to the whole blinkin' process, after all...  

   

And that's pretty much where things stand - at least until I can get back into LPW again.  But if that sounds like I'm a little discouraged - it really shouldn't.  As I said, the desire to learn experientially, and to allow things to progress organically, were built into this project from the get-go.  Making a best guess, getting it wrong, then finding a new left-turn out of the resulting impasse, is actually a fantastic way to learn, and to develop those creative muscles I hinted at above.  Comfort zones are to be avoided; the learning phases are always the most vivid of any activity; and anyway - the learning isn't ever supposed to stop, is it?  To be honest, it really just mirrors the way I've increasingly tended to operate, in my 2D work - at least, in any case.  The ability to relinquish over-clenched control, to willingly make mistakes - then find some form of, possibly unexpected, resolution in the solving of those mistakes, is something that has actively advanced my work, in recent years.  Once you're smugly convinced you completely know what you're doing - that's the time to really question your practice.

So, by the next time I report in, I should have already found some kind of improvised  solution to this little glitch - and will probably be blundering cheerfully into the next fine mess.  Of late, one of my recurrent mottos has been, "when all else fails - tear it up, and collage it" - so I guess there's always that solution, if all else fails.  All joking aside - the whole aspect of collage (or possibly something more akin to constructed assemblage of separate components), is something I suspect will become a pretty key feature of this project, as things develop (its certainly hinted at in my sketchbook).  However, it's too early to get into all that now, so I'll save it for future posts - once there's actually something meaningful to report.  

Music Re/View 7

All Images: November 2019

It is easy to become selfish as a listener of music / While curled up in the fetal position in the closet at midnight / Let’s be clear – if you’re not used to ‘difficult’ music, this is not for you / Consider yourself warned / Retaining clarity – this new album is different, once again, from the majority of what has gone before / At first, it seems painfully simple, and perhaps missing the explosions of sound one might have enjoyed / in nature documentaries / Its pace sets a dramatic tone, like we're about to meet our maker / But the devil is in the details, and once one begins to peel away the layers / Scavengers may feed on the decomposing meat for months / don't be conventional / You will need time / How much time is left? / despite the music’s severe linearity / It unfolds like a flower in one of those slow-motion shots / after a traumatic personal loss of some sort / It shouldn’t work. It does. Go figure.

The announcement of a new album earlier this year was certainly a cause for celebration, but also apprehension / Imbued with cult-worthy status and cryptic vision / The World's Strangest Band has existed on the outer fringes of the music scene for almost 40 years now / They’re much easier to respect than like / surveying the landscape they travel through with a wicked eye / We too might have perceived the difference between terror and strangeness / have they accepted the joy and peace in fizzling out / Are they venerating such a breakdown / just dimming the lights and pouring red wine / or bursting out in explosive surprises / In the best new music, after all, to create a third entity is the idea: 1+1= 3 / it’s also another example of the band’s central problem / they pivot and move away / while replacing the shock value of references to slavery and rape with the quotidian drama of relationships / there’s definitely something in our brains – maybe that base reptilian part at its darkest core that desires / A bullet through the head of one still so young!

these post-rock monuments reach up from the depths, grab you by the throat and slowly but surely pull you down / into the bottomless abyss / It’s whatever you want it to be / shimmering, flickering multi-guitars and electronic drone feel misleading / and not exactly gloomy or forbidding – resonantly oblique is more like it / things can’t be this simple / I’m naked and drifting / The Jodorowsky-like atmosphere of this buzzard chant is so visual / Boom! It breaks into gargantuan multi-instrumental waves of rolling tympani, chorus and sundry other stuff / they allow her to play the massive church organ, and then she creates these amazing sounds / It’s not like the herky-jerky improv you would expect with some jazz / The addition of what sounds like children’s backing vocals, tubular bells and buzzsaw synths only amplifies / vast spheres of empty space that can inflict a useful sort of claustrophobia / She’s such a positive, jolly person / circling circles of orange/yellow/brown/beige/black/red / and then she comes up with this demonic music.

The lyrical themes here are all familiar by now / His songs catalog human misery—violence / comfortable / degradation, abusive sex / beauty / death / and other equally Parmenidean topics / with an unflinching eye / The verses can be confessions, which become incantations via much repetition / It’s deeply disorienting, recalling the ramblings of a mad man or a soothsayer / There is a nihilistic fatalism constantly at play in the words uttered / there is a nihilistic fatalism constantly at play in the words uttered / he evokes the kind of weary tragedy endemic to sad drunks and wastrels / Salvation is an illusion. Negation is the only certainty / the skeleton then becomes a source of sustenance to mussels, clams, and microbes for years or even decades to come / Printed out, it wouldn’t surprise me to find the words sliding off the page, or bleeding into the page like blotting paper / They exist in a class all to themselves.

I never realized just listening to an album could be as physically and psychically draining as this is / The world is not going to get any brighter / Even when there’s no longer a band. Not really… Except there is / a gathering around firelight / we realize immediately in that we’re still very much in the presence of / a band who just can’t stop / It’s like a soundtrack to exploring some abandoned, centuries-old / sonic skyscrapers / filled with expensive furniture / Few can graze a concrete product / And now there’s this / haunted-house version / on the beginners slopes / You’ll be back. You won’t be able to help yourself / in the grand scheme of things / You know you want / this type of output