Streetland 2011 - Titles and Descriptions

I'm taking part in the brillliant Streetland Festival this weekend. Streetland is a festival of community and the street and will see visual art, live art, music, theatre, food, walking tours, street games and cinema all happening in and around one small street off Victoria Road, in Govanhill.

We'll be showing a new project for the first time as part of our event "Titles and Descriptions - Be a Statue".  Come along and join us if you are in the area, Govanhill around Westmoreland Street from 12-4pm. 

"If they were to build a statue to you in Govanhill what would it say? We want to know your thoughts on the "street", the things you like, your favourite places, your secrets. We want to know your stories of the area, your hopes for the future or your memories of the past. Join us as we travel round Govanhill recording the stories of the people we meet; take a piece of chalk, write your message on the board, climb up the steps and become a statue. Or take a title from our suggestion box and then try and become that phrase.

 

Its a little bit of street theatre designed to get people into the spirit of interaction and hopefully thinking about the area, the community and their place in these."

[Lots more images of the results here.] 

Pecha Kucha @ GSA

Last Thursday I gave a short talk at the Glasgow School of Art as part of a Pecha Kucha event. My talk was on the writing of James Gleick in particular his excellent book "Faster: The Acceleration of just about everything". In this book Gleick explores our species obession with time and how our modern lives are ever more crammed with 'things' and our pace ever quickening. Ironically enough I was almost unable to make the whole event as my day filled up with other work and I ended up in a meeting 45mins away just before it all started.

Fortunetly I was able to make it just in time for the second half and managed to catch some very interesting talks about 'Failure', 'The New Glasgow Society' and a fascinating talk about collecting old 'Railway Crossing Signage'. As very enjoyable event organised by Neil McGuire and I look forward to popping along to more next semester. 

Here's a small snippet from the talk. If you want to read the same concepts argued in far clearer and creative ways then I highly reccommend picking up a copy of James Gleick's book and having a read.

As the speed of our transport and communication ever increases we have all bought into the ideology that "Time is money" and that we need to "save time" to "make time".

Technology has apparently released us from the shackles of daily toil, we no longer need to break our backs tilling the fields and robots run our factories.

We have created a new concept "leisure time" and a highly charged phrase "spending ones time".

Modern conveniences have allowed us to travel quicker, to cook faster and to find out the latest news be its from friends or live feeds from war zones on the other side of the world.

We have moved from letters travelling for weeks by ship, to messages by telegram, to the blurry eyed wonder of the obsolete fax, to the all singing and all dancing email with ever greater demands on the size and speed at which data can transfer and how quickly we can download the latest song.

Products these days are all about the instant, the express. We have no time to wear in a leather jacket, we want pre-faded, pre-worn, instant history.

Our fast remote clicking TV's with their 500 hundred channels promise us five minute makeovers and guaranteed diets that work in just 3 weeks.

We are in the age where products don't compete to do things better they compete to do things quicker. narrowly saving us vital nanoseconds like Google's new insta-search which searches out results in "real time" as we type.

This constant ambush to "free up time" has the opposite effect on our psyche. Never in history have humans been more in control and had more options over how they spend their days and yet we are now ever more aware of the passing seconds, of the grains of our lives falling by. We have turned life into a race.

What have we achieved?

How do we compare?

Have we wasted our time?

 

Don't look a gift card in the mouth

A large box arrived at the end of last week full to the brim with lots of lovely new cards. Didn't realise I'd made so many designs until I laid them all out and it became apparent I had enough to open my own card shop. Here is the small selection that actually managed to fit onto our coffee table. Now all I have to do is put in the envelopes, seal up in plastic sleeves and get them posted off to the various stockists.

Drawing (on) Riverside

Above image "installation under construction" by Jim Dunn

The very talented Ann Nisbet has work in a new exhibition that opened in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow this week. Entitled Drawing (on) Riverside it is an exhibition of the work of Patrica Cain who has been carrying out a series of studies into the construction of the new Transport museum on the banks of the Clyde. The show consists of her brilliant paintings and etchings and four very interesting collaborations with other artists.

Ann is one of those artists and worked with Patricia to create an architectural installation which drew on both aspects of the new museum, the shipbuilding techniques of the Clyde's industrial past and Ann's own practice on understanding and exploring "the inherent processes".

You can see a selection of construction images (as above) of the main piece here and can follow Ann on twitter for news on any cupcoming events/ talks here. The exhibition is in the main exhibition space and runs until the end of August.

Drawing (on) Riverside

An exhibition by Patricia Cain
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
15 April–14 August 2011
11am-5pm daily

Adventurers' Club - Spy

I was really looking forward to this one as it was the original character I started doodling that started me down the route of putting together the greatest adventurers into one team. This little chap has the charm and skills of a cross between the best of Bond and Nick Fury. Unflustered and armed with an array of gadgets and packing a Walther Pkk, he is a good man to have on your side in a crisis.

Links

Illustration by John Holcroft for the Guardian

Bond comic by John McLusky (I think)

Robert McGinnis - Thunderball promotion

Michael Gillette illustrations for Penguin Fleming Anniverary series

Aston Martin DB5

Walther PKK isometric

Retro Cover of Nick Fury by Evan "Doc" Shaner

Cover of Planetary issue 'Cold World' by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday

A life on the ocean wave

Adventurers' Club - Deep Sea Diver

A Jacque Cousteau type, excited and full of a child like passion for the sea and its creatures. With a little french gentleman's moustache and armed with trusty trident should any of those pesky sharks decide to take a closer look. But what should he be called?

Links

Jumping Jack by Little Robot

Poseidon sculpture holding a trident

The Holy Diver by Matt Kaufenberg and Joe Dellagatta.

Deep Sea Diver

Sea Horse from WesAnderson's The Life Aqautic

Adventurers' Club - Sea Captain

A slightly Napoleonic character used to living life on the rough seas. All suggestions for characters names welcomed.

(Hmm all the individual links have vanished to my russian dolls process posts!! I shall add direct text links to each of the image creators when I get a minute.)

The Greatest Lie

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

I Googled "the greatest lie" and discovered that apparently its "Evolution". This site in particular has a long list of "articles" from "experts" making their unrefutable case. Damn that Charles Darwin and all his Scientific theories lying to me all these years, makes me feel very silly.

Also of great interest is this site http://creationmuseum.org/ where you can see how dinosaurs and humans actually lived happily side by side, Flintstones style. You learn something new everyday.

[Images above are from our Himptology exhibition at the Arches in which we reflected on ideas of belief and belonging by forming our own "religion" centered around ideas of creativity not a deity, on creating not creation. With 80's singalong on a ukuele, a full bluesgrass choir and sermons from artists, architects and scientists about their practice. What a waste of time, could have just played the Flinstones movie with Dan Goodman. Would have been a nice tribute to Liz Taylor too. I blame my science teachers for filling my head full of lies.]

Congratulations

Good news to wake up to today.

Just heard from the Paris based half of Hole in my Pocket that we now have a little Himp Junior to join the team. The little guy was born late yesterday and both mum and baby are doing well. He obviously takes after his mum and not his dad though, as he arrived early.

Really looking forward to meeting him, a little trip to Paris is in order.

Lumberjack: Such Beautiful Music

A little bird duet design for a wedding card from the new series of Lucky Pine Sawmill cards I'm working on.
A great deal "cuter" and possibly more twee than my usual work, but it is spring afterall so maybe that's ok.

Lumberjack - Checked Shirt

Second little taster for the Lumberjack character I'm playing with. Though he has made an appearence in clay and painting form before.

Wacom Lumberjack

I got a Wacom Tablet for my Bday and its pretty cool. Will take some getting used to but quite fun being able to draw straight into the computer in almost the same style as using pencil and paper. The above is my first attempt at drawing something small with detail and its turned out ok. Currently creating a new series of gift cards and prints about this little fellow, will see if I can make some of them competely using the wacom tablet.
I'm away to play some more.

(PS - not sure why the image is not appearing above, just started doing that today for some reason - still there if you click.)

Craft House Concept

Pleased to say I have another couple of stockists in Edinburgh.

A selection of my cards will now be availible in the Fruitmarket Gallery which is one of my favourite shops in Edinburgh, the book shop is brilliant and it is always very difficult to browse without purchasing something.

Over in another part of Edinburgh Craft House Concept a new and rather lovely little store has also just become one of my stockists and will be selling a different series of cards and a couple of my illustration prints. To launch their new spring collection they are having a little celebration this Saturday (19th March 10am - 7:30pm) with some tasty cakes, craft demonstrations and 20% off all stock. I'd reccommend all Edinburghers to take a stroll along. See their website for more info.

Crafthouse Concept
31E Minto Street

Edinburgh

EH9 2BT

E is for Elephant

When I started doing these little Etsy Alphabet Treasuries with the hidden shapes I realised the most tricky of all to complete would be "E". If it was possible to pick 15 objects then no problem but as we only have 12 to play with you will have to forgive me if the shape doesn't quite reveal itself as well in this one.

E is for Elephant

"E, the first letter of the alphabet, is the most common (or highest frequency) letter in the English alphabet (starting off the typographer's phrase ETAOIN SHRDLU) and several other European languages, which has implications in both cryptography and data compression. This makes it a hard and popular letter to use when writing lipograms. Ernest Vincent Wright's Gadsby (1939), is considered a "dreadful" novel, and that "at least part of Wright's narrative issues were caused by language limitations imposed by the lack of E."^[7] Both Georges Perec's novel A Void (La Disparition) (1969) and its English translation by Gilbert Adair omit ‹e› and are considered better works"

 

High fives as usual for first to say what they see.

Harmful Rumours

D is for Dog

The fourth in my alphabetical tour of Etsy and you have prob got the idea by now, but again there are virtual high fives to those who spot the hidden shape in the images above.
"probably developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. The equivalent Greek letter is Delta, ‹Δ›."

D is for Dog

Pick Me Up London

Last year we were down in London around this time and managed to catch the first Pick Me Up exhibition of illustration and graphic art at Sommerset House.

There were some great things including screen print of a little girl with boxing gloves which we bought from Concrete Hermit. One of my favourite things was the books by Nobrow Press, especially the work of Jon McNaught in his little book Birchfield Close. Nobrow Press will be back in Sommerset House this year and will have copies of their cool new book A Graphic Cosmogony. I had a little flick through a copy when I was in the Fruitmarket Gallery the other week and its very cool. 24 artists take on tales of the creation of the universe with some stunning grahpics.

Pick Me Up is back on this month - click here for more info and click here for tickets though you can prob buy them at the door like we did last year.

Somerset House Trust

South Building
Somerset House
Strand
London
WC2R 1LA

Warnings from the Future #01

Dear readers, I'm looking for a bit of feedback.

I'm about to place an order for more Gift Cards but I'm struggling to narrow down the list of cards to print. All my different stockists currently like and stock different cards but to make things simplier I'd like to reduce the range down to 20 or so instead of the current 40+. If you have a minute to spare, please have a flick through the images on my flickr and leave a comment (below or direct on the image) to say which ones get your thumbs up to be kept in the range. The ones with the most votes will make the final cut. The ones with the least will go retire on a farm in the country.

As a wee incentive to give your opinion, everyone that comments will get put into a prize draw to win a print and cards from my Etsy.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

New Glasgow Society

Sounding like something from a retro imagined future the "New Glasgow Society" is relaunching this weekend in its little premises at 1207 Arglye Street. They are a good an interesting bunch of characters and highly reccomend going along or catching one of their upcoming future events.

The New Glasgow Society is an organization established in 1965 for the general betterment of the urban environment of Glasgow. The birth of the Society coincides with proposals for the insertion of the M8 through the Victorian fabric of the city. But it’s never been purely a preservationist group, the Society has a long history of supporting and actively promoting new projects which were seen to be of benefit to Glasgow, and, during the 1960’s and 70’s, used their considerable influence and membership of over 1500 to make their thoughts known to the powers that be.

"The aims of the Society are;

• To promote, encourage and stimulate public interest in, and care for, the beauty, history and character of the city of Glasgow and its surroundings.
• To encourage high standards of architecture and town planning in the Glasgow region in co-operation with other interested organisations where appropriate.
• To encourage the preservation, development and improvement of features of general public amenity or historic interest.
• To pursue these ends by means of meetings, exhibitions, lectures, publications, conferences, publicity and the promotion of schemes of a charitable nature"

To find out more go here - http://www.newglasgowsociety.org/

C is for Cat

The third in my alphabetical series of all things great on Etsy. As usual there is a very easy hidden shape above to spot. Virtual High 5's all round to those who spot.

"C comes from the same letter as ‹g›. The Semites named it gimel. The sign is possibly adapted from an Egyptian hieroglyph for a staff sling, which may have been the meaning of the name gimel. Another possibility is that it depicted a camel, the Semitic name for which was gamal."

C is for Cat




B is for Ball

The second in my series of alphabetical treasuries.


"B is the second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is used to represent a variety of bilabial sounds (depending on language), most commonly a voiced bilabial plosive." I have no idea what that means...

Hope you can tell the word in each choice above. You should hopefully also be able to spot a pattern in the layout of the coloured items. First to spot wins a virtual thumbs up.

Here is the link: B is for Ball

28 seconds in

http://vimeo.com/19628026 from Tomi Vollauschek on Vimeo.

Adventurers' Club - Soldier

A retired major from Victoria's army? A bit of a aged Flashman type, full of stories of his heroism and adventure in far off lands though I think we might have him being a little less Caddish than Flashman and a little bit braver.



A is for Apple

I've decided to put together a treasury once a week on an alphabetic theme. First up funnily enough is A.

"A is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha. It can be traced to a pictogram of an ox head in Egyptian hieroglyph."

Hope you can tell the word in each choice above. You should hopefully also be able to sport a pattern in the layout of the coloured items. First to spot wins a virtual high five.

Here is the link: A is for Apple

Adventurers' Club - Safari

Next figure down will be an Alan Quartermain, Dr Livingstone type character all dressed is beige and yellows ready to face any perils that the desert or jungle might through at him. Armed with his trusty blunderbus I think he will be pretty safe.

Adventurers' Club - Arctic Explorer

I've started work on a new set of Russian Dolls called the Adventurers' Club. As it might be a while before I get them all finished I thought it might be fun to show some of the process and thoughts as I work my way through their design. Also think it would be fun to come up with a little bit of back story and names for each of these characters so will have a play with that too.

First up is the character I think will be the biggest figure, the Arctic Explorer. Really like the idea of making a new set which uses a minimal pallette of colours and I'm always a sucker for Arctic Blue, just looks so peaceful.



Folksy Interview

The nice people over at Folksy HQ did a little interview with me the other day and they have justed posted it onto their blog site. Click here to have a read.

The Folksy Blog is full of interviews with talented makers of interesting things, so I was delighted when they asked me to join their list. Have a wander through some of the other interviews and find out more about the people behind your favourite shops.

Godwin's Law - Religion

Godwin's Law - Religion from Allistair Burt on Vimeo.

The film is titled Godwin’s Law and was made for an exhibition at The Arches in Glasgow in 2010 reflecting on ideas of belief and belonging.

Godwin's Law states that the longer an internet forum discussion continues the likely hood of someone mentioning Hitler or Nazi's increases. The first person to mention either loses the argument.

This film is a religious "discussion" between atheists and some theists using Speilburg's 1993 hit movie Jurrasic Park as a framework. Neither group do themselves many favours and reveal more about themselves and the way humans are willing to interact when there are no personal reprecussions.

The film was one of the central pieces in our 2010 exhibition Himptology. 

"Bringing their thoughts on faith, belief and belonging to The Arches, Hole in my Pocket form their own religion and ask you to become a true believer. Our religion stole parts from all the popular religions but explored art/ design and creativity rather than creation."

The Worlds strongest man