The Moneytree Exhibition

I’ve been so pleased to have been included in The Moneytree exhibition at Hamilton House Gallery in Bristol.

The exhibition was brought together by Lara Luna Bartley in collaboration with the CoResist Collective, and features artwork about the financial and banking system.

The Moneytree Exhibition, Hamilton House, September 13th -19th 2018

Lara was kind enough to share some pictures of the exhibition space. Other artists featured are Jane Lawson, Darren Cullen & Mary Millner.

Lara Luna Bartley was the teller at the ‘Bank of CoResist’, printing banknotes which audiences could ‘borrow’ at 0% on a very long term basis, provided they would become a member of the bank for a small fee.

This concept resonates strongly with me, as I consider my money works to be ‘lent’ on a (very) long term basis as well, with the option to exchange.

Mary Millner’s House of (Post)Cards featured postcards of the Shard and other centres of financial power balanced like a house of cards.

Jane Lawson’s 4 metre long digital print How We Got To Where We Are shows the timeline of the global financial system.

Darren Cullen’s Pocket Money Loan Posters are spot on… prompting that uneasy double-take. The state of dysfunction that we’re in when it comes to our use and abuse of credit means that we’re never quite sure what next, new low is possible.

The exhibition marks 10 years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and featured a discussion with economist Tony Greenham entitled “Money, Trust and the Art of Local Banking”.

Promise 12/25. Screen print on Lloyds Bank cheque, 2017. | Screen printed cheque — I’ve decided to make my own money. I’m asking you to trust in me.
For money to exist, there must first be trust.
Money requires relationships, because since money is a measure of exchange, there must be someone else to exchange with. When we hand over money in exchange for something else, we don’t necessarily have to trust the person we’re buying from; instead, the trust lies in the institution behind the money. The more of us who put faith in the institution, the more value the money has.
What if we were to ask others to put their trust directly in us instead? As human beings, our trustworthiness only runs so far… but maybe being honest about that makes us more reliable than banks and governments, that present themselves as being strong and permanent, but still regularly let us down.
My currency art isn’t offered for sale as much as for exchange, if you trust me.

Studio Notes – Acrylic & Charcoal On Canvas

This is a story of experiment and of failure. Oh well!

I don’t paint on canvas. I haven’t done in a long time. The texture of the weave just gets in my way and interrupts the fine detail that I’m trying to achieve. I prefer my surfaces to be smooth and to have texture develop only where I place it, unless I’m painting on a minimally textured watercolour paper – it’s usually the kind of surface that contributes to the feel of the work without sticking its nose in where it isn’t wanted.

Another material I don’t use much is acrylic paint – it’s never tempted me across from oils or watercolour. However, I have used it in sculpture recently, because of its quick-drying nature and the chance to use it as a 3d material.

Experimenting and letting go

As I had a few pre-stretched canvases that had been given to me years ago, I thought I might as well have a go at using them for experimenting with different media as well as for filling space on my own walls at home.

Drawing with charcoal on canvas came to mind as progression towards some monochrome paintings I’m thinking of doing.

Body 1 - Charcoal and graphite pencil drawing on canvas

It’s not the first time I’ve used primed canvas as a ground for drawing, as I’d already done a graphite piece.

The weave of the canvas seemed to be an inviting surface for charcoal drawing, so I started by scaling up a smaller sketch by gridding, and then losing patience and jumping straight in. Pushing charcoal and graphite around the canvas with my hands was fun enough, but I just wasn’t feeling happy with the resulting image.

The problem was, once my family had seen it, they loved it. Fair enough – we’re allowed to like different things and different kinds of art; they enjoy stuff that looks like stuff, and that’s mostly what I do, but I need a few more layers that this piece just didn’t have. There just wasn’t enough tonal variety and not enough subtlety.

Just to see what would happen, I worked in some golden-yellow acrylic paint to frame my subject. It was better, but not convincing me that it was good. It had gone towards those ubiquitous superhero canvas pictures – a really dangerous spot to end up in.

Still, it ended up on the wall in our living room, gnawing at my insides.

I left it for a month and eventually tried to bring it back around, but couldn’t. I just didn’t like it, and I had to start negotiating with the family to replace it with something else.

What was wrong with it?

The drawing was off.
The composition was poor.
The subject’s pose was wrong – not engaging enough.
The rendition of the form was too flat.

Basically, it was a rushed experiment and no more.

What it’s taught me is that it’s great to play around and do different things, and it can be very enlightening, but you don’t have to commit to everything you produce. If the work isn’t up to scratch, it’s not up to scratch, and it can exist as an opportunity to learn. I think that I will keep some things in mind, like drawing on canvas and incorporating controlled bursts of colour, but there will also have to be more of my usual, more careful process to make me happy enough to release something into the world.

The experience won’t go to waste – I’ve learned that I love these colours together as well as the nature of the marks.

I’ll keep this canvas and rework it to give back as a finished piece, with the slight trace of the original drawing adding to the story. Once I’m happy with it then I’ll share it here.

Studio Notes: block printing & casting ingots

I finally made prints from the block I carved, but I haven’t yet shown them as a finished edition for sale. So this is a bit of a quick preview!

Edit – find the prints here.

Block printing for the first time in the studio

A friend of mine was getting rid of a desk, so I pinched it to give me a separate surface that would be perfect for cracking on with the printing. It was great, but I still covered all of the available surface and ran out of room. I just can’t work any smaller…

Hand rubbing with a baren

At first I really struggled to get a satisfactory print with my plastic baren, so I substituted the back of a stainless steel measuring cup. It worked fine, but what I didn’t expect was getting hot fingers from holding the inside of the cup as I rubbed it over the block!

As there was no room for stacking wet prints, I used some old skirt hangers that I’d been saving just for this purpose, along with some doubled-up space-saving hanger thingies.

Alternative drying rack — My version of a space-saving print drying rack.

Casting aluminium ingots

We got the furnace fired up again to melt more cans and make more ingots in readiness for casting our finished projects.

In all honesty, it was a bit of a pain not jumping straight into casting the end products, but I didn’t even have a finished prototype of my coin sculpture, so there was no point in rushing it.

Our first aluminium ingot – we cast 5 during the second melt.

I sacrificed a donut-shaped muffin tin for the cause. It was worth it as I never seemed to get anything out of there in one piece anyway, and the ingots come out as cute mini metal rings!

Coming soon…

I’ve got a coin prototype that I’m almost happy with and some new coin prints to add to the store. In between these projects I did a bit of graphite and charcoal drawing on canvas and played around with combining it with acrylic colour… so yeah, lots to share next time!

Rise Of The Bots: Why Your Auto DMs On Twitter Aren’t Fooling Anyone

Rise of the bots: why your auto dms on Twitter aren’t fooling anyone

If you’ve spent any time on Twitter, you’ll probably have come across the automated Direct Message, or auto DM.

They’re supposed to be a tool to drive engagement and make new followers feel welcomed. Well, I’ll cut this post significantly shorter than it could be by getting to the point: they’re annoying and no-one likes them.

Some of the most annoying are the ones that essentially go: “hey, thanks for following me on Twitter! Now go follow me here, there and everywhere else, and now go read my blog or buy this thing”. Cheeky or what?

But you’ve been told you should be doing it? Wha? Who should you believe?

A confession: I’ve done auto DMs myself

Yep, I myself have set up auto DMs on Twitter in the past. Why? I read some advice somewhere online that made me think it was a good idea.

Where did I get that advice from? Probably a company that provides auto DM services. Makes sense, right?

Why did I stop? I got very, very little engagement back from those messages, and I would guess it’s because I just came across like every other bod who uses bots.

I’ve even read that they’re not all bad, as they provide an opportunity to start a conversation with someone who might not yet be following you back. But wait – that person’s sent an automated message because they don’t want to start a conversation themselves. They’re probably too busy, or most likely, they don’t check their DMs because they’re also swamped with auto DMs as well.

Adding a “mistake” to look more human? Don’t bother.

week* not qeek, oops - one of the worst auto DMs on Twitter. — Not so convincing after you’ve seen three or four people make the same “mistake”.

There must be some diabolical mind behind that automated message service that, right at the end, purposefully misspells “week” as “qeek”. Then, instantly, it sends a follow up message that says “week*, not qeek, oops“.

This might get you, but not after you’ve followed the second person who makes the identical “mistake” at the end of their message. After the third person makes that identical mistake… well, it’s suddenly more sad than funny.

What to do instead of auto DMs

Lots of people will tell you to simply be a human and engage with people on Twitter to build your following.

Well, they’re right. However…

The fact is that most of us are busy, and becoming increasingly more busy hammering away at every social media strategy we can to give our blogs and businesses a fighting chance in this competitive online space. We’re stressed. We can’t do it all. So we look for easy options.

What do I suggest?

How about taking a bit of time to check your feed and retweet something that catches your eye? Or comment? Or even just like someone else’s tweet?

Oh, and don’t bother starting a DM by apologising for sending it even though you know they’re annoying. If you already know it… just… stop.

Automating social media without being totally fake

The fact is, you can’t be online all of the time, and I’ve even taken an extended break from promoting my work on Twitter because I just wanted the headspace back.

I recommend RecurPost for automating some aspects of social media (including Twitter, as we’ve been discussing). It’s easy to use and has a free starter plan, and leaves no icky feeling whatsoever!

Studio Notes: Building A Bucket Foundry

Studio Notes: building a bucket foundry

This week in the studio we started a long-awaited project: building a charcoal-fired backyard foundry in a bucket. Now, most of my projects carry on over several weeks, if not longer, but this project is definitely not a one-week wonder.

I think there will be several more weeks of updates as we refine and add to it, but this week we made a start of buying and scavenging all of the pieces, putting them all together and testing it out.

For the fuel, we used regular lumpwood charcoal, bought from the pound store for £1 per bag, of course.

The galvanised steel bucket and old wastepaper bin we used to form the cast.

The bucket

We picked up a galvanised steel bucket (like this one) and small plastic paint kettle from The Range in order to cast our refractory cement and form the body of the forge.

The refractory cement we used came in a 25kg bag, and we got it from a local foundry supplies merchant. (I know, what are the chances of having one in my neighbourhood, right?) They also sold us a huge bag of oil bonded sand and a graphite clay crucible.

The crucible

The crucible itself cost £30… we were happy to get a decent one and not attempt to DIY it from some salvaged steel, as we plan to do it properly (as properly as can be done in a bucket) and don’t like the idea of a crucible failing.

The lid

We made a lid for the foundry by pouring some of the cement into a circular frame and embedding some scavenged handles into it. A bit of extra cement went into a plastic food container and made a handy slab that we used to cover the lid entirely.

The central hole was made by placing a plastic cup onto the board before pouring the cement, but it crumpled under the weight and left a wibbly outline. It took a fair bit to fill the bucket, but there’s still plenty more left over for more projects – maybe a small kiln?

Studio Notes: Building a bucket foundry. — Drilling the air supply port *after* casting was a bit of a nightmare.

Powering the furnace with a hair dryer

We were told (by YouTube) to connect up a hair dryer via a pipe and steel tubing to blow air into the furnace. The problem was, the hair dryer got too hot when taped to the pipe, even with holes cut into the tape.

Blowing air directly into the steel pipe worked, but it didn’t get very hot. It was only when we abandoned the pipe altogether and blew the hair dryer directly into the air port that we got the foundry hot enough to bring the crucible up to temperature.

First firing – tempering the crucible

Firing up the foundry for the first time was exciting, but we knew we weren’t going to start melting any aluminium straight away. We had to temper the crucible first – bring it up to glowing red hot and let it cool down again.

The heating process took a lot longer than we wanted it to, because, basically, we had to figure it out as we went along. The air supply issue was critical to the foundry heating adequately, and when we got the right amount of air blowing in thanks to the hair dryer being up close, it really took off.

Cooling down took all day though, and I’m not kidding – even into the night, the foundry was hot! The handle was cool enough to carry it indoors though. That residual heat came in handy for lunch though – I managed to cook an egg on the top of it and even cooked hamburgers in a flash, before our separate barbecue could even get up to temperature.

It looks as though metal melting days will be barbecue days as well! Next step will be to start melting our scrap aluminium and casting into ingots.