Songs with Sunday in the title range from excellent to dire and in my opinion there’s probably a lot more towards the dire end! The first song that came to mind was, of course, the Small Faces’ “Lazy Sunday Afternoon”, quickly followed by Lionel Ritchie, but you wouldn’t want to get that stuck in your head. Blondie’s “Sunday Girl” would be tough to shift too! But today’s winner is Finley Quaye with “Sunday Shining”
Today’s piece was created in the Waterhall Gallery in Birmingham. Nice quiet space where the current selection of pieces from the city’s collection is themed round still life. It has a nice series of Jim Dine screenprint/collages in there. I popped into the Gas Hall afterwards to have a look at the West Midlands Open which I found massively disappointing. I cannot believe that our second city and the surrounding area could not produce some more exciting or interesting pieces. It mostly seemed a little dull, staid and derivative. Most of it would not have seemed out of place in a show from the Seventies. I place the blame on the curation and it really wasn’t displayed or lit to bring out its best. There was only one piece I thought I might like to have on my wall and three others that I thought had interesting aspects. There were quite a few well executed pieces and some superficially attractive stuff but nothing to stretch or stimulate.
A piece of music that has stretched and stimulated me for 40 years is Jefferson Airplane’s “Won’t you try / Saturday afternoon” – this version is from Woodstock
Today’s piece got transported all the way to the West Midlands this evening. It’s an interesting one that has set me thinking about some new techniques to experiment with.
I am still on about music and days the week and I’ll add a video of someone’s version of “Friday on my Mind”. I can’t really do Bowie because he was featured yesterday. I thought about Springsteen which has its own flavour. But the original Easybeats’ version is probably the one.
Today’s artwork is a first for the project. I have not used the medium or approach before to date.
Continuing the songs-with-days-in-the-title theme today we have a laid-back David Bowie. It’s a nice version though we didn’t really need the intro thank you David.
I always feel the echo on John Lee Hooker tracks has an eerie air and today’s piece (if only I could talk about it) has something unsettling about it: so they go together. Eric Dolphy and Charles Mingus playing “Wednesday Evening Prayer Meeting” would have been a good choice but maybe too cool for the piece. I don’t know. As to the Simon & Garfunkel thing “Wednesday Morning: 3am” is a disappointing track on a disappointing album really and the artwork is definitely not that!
Now there’s a thing, having got caught with this thing about music with days of the week, and having loads of songs with Monday in just popping into my head, I decide to carry on and do Tuesday and my brain offers up just two songs! Monday I’m spoilt for choice: Tuesday I am scrabbling around te vague recesses of my mind. Isn’t there a Tori Amos track? I can’t quite get it. Paul Kossoff? No, access blocked. So that leaves me with Cat Stevens’s “Tuesday’s Dead” and “Ruby Tuesday” and Melanie has to be the version (though I am quite tempted to just put up a live version of “Sympathy for the Devil” because it’s a much better song!)
So here you go:
I know I hinted at Cat Stevens but I might save him till next week.
Well and the piece? I never know what is going to happen. Today I had a meeting at the Arts Centre about #Collage365 and this one. It went on a lot longer than I thought so I had limited time as i was going to go to the Film Society. I decided to miss that, sadly, so as not to get stressed about this. The work that came out was unexpected (and took longer than expected) but very interesting.
On the envelope of today’s piece I hinted at two pieces of music – the Mamas & the Papas “Monday, Monday” and The Boomtown Rats – “I Don’t Like Mondays”. I suppose I just let my brain churn up some old memories and I sort of assumed the songs were very different. Then during the day I came to realise the songs were not very different. The Mamas & the Papas can’t cope with Monday’s because of an association with events that happened on a Monday, whereas Bob and the boys seemed from recollection to have a dystopian view of the whole week and Monday was just an example day singled out for destruction as an example to the rest of the days!
Now that I have had a chance to refresh my memory and view the YouTube clips i see that I was both right and wrong. There is something deeply menacing in the Mamas & the Papas. There’s a touch of Star Trek and it’s so clean it looks unreal (in my memory they were all flower power and druggy!) I suspect that in their choreography they trace out a message to the alien death ships in geostationary orbit above us. The only reason we were not destroyed was they had better things to do that watch pop TV. They don’t seem upset that this unnamed woman (we presume) upped and left. It’s actually Monday afternoon specifically they find untrustworthy – there was no warning in the morning of what was to be!
For the Rats it’s a very different story: it’s not just Monday afternoon that’s the problem, they feel the whole day deserves shooting down! And is there menace in their dystopian song about death? No, they are all such cheeky, friendly softies. It is quite clear that there is nothing to fear from this bunch – though had the alien battle cruisers above been watching and had travelled back in time they may have put us all out of our misery of having to watch years and years of Bob Geldorf being famous for being Bob Geldorf and blown the planet to pieces way back then!
And how are they the same? They are both so clean! Their meanings are apparently the opposite to their presentation. Worst of all, once in your head it takes an incredibly long and annoying time to shift them from your brain!!!
Of course you won’t have that problem with #Letter365 No 228 as the whole enterprise is thoroughly forgettable:
Well that headline is a lie. It’s just trying to add a bit of drama. I spent a decent amount of time at the studio today. I had hoped to do a bit more sorting but really needed to try out working on something much bigger than usual so I can assess the best way to set up the studio. So after sweeping out and cleaning some fo the drawers of my recently acquired plan chest I created a paper work area about 2.8m by 1.2m. I was going to leave it at that point so I could get the #Letter365 piece underway but well…I had to try out something!
There was never any intention that I was going to force such a large (in any case as yet unfinished) piece into the envelope. My #Letter365 artwork today is more modest in scope and somewhat more refined I would say.
For a change I am showing a larger view of the double-mouthed post box I have been using of late. There is also a return to a picture of the back of the envelope:
It’s a shame I cannot talk about the process of making today’s artwork and why it was like a visit to the opticians in some respects, but I cannot give the game away. Mind you there are so few people actally looking at this blog – let alone reading it – that it really wouldn’t matter much anyway! What I will say is that I really enjoyed the way today’s piece came together. I will say it is a return to more familiar ground and it me in top form! Ha!
I would talk about the printer but frankly I’m bored with it all and have other things I would rather do. I was going to say I have other fish to fry but you may have thought I was having problems printing because I was using a fish.
I have been in a really low mood today. I do suffer from depression and have been pleased that despite the death of our cat and feeling unwell and a number of other stresses, I have not been attacked by the black dog for quite a while. But this cold/cough/sore throat/flu/sinus/toothache bug or bugs that have been bugging me for weeks had ground me down. I am just so weary at a time when I have lots I want to do and this had made me frustrated. A number of things I try to avoid have got in over the last day or two as well. So all in all it is no surprise that I am down today. Whilst it is a pretty low mood, I do not feel that the black dog has come to stay. He has been sniffing around for a few days and has nudged open the door today to see if he can come to play, but I think I am just physically exhausted and I’m feeling just ordinary low rather than starting to be invaded and inhabited by the alien being of depression.
Anyway, my state meant that I have found it difficult to do much today. I had some correspondence to catch up on, one item of which was in the “usually avoid” territory so was not helpful. The rest was pleasant enough or necessary but I still found it took ages for me to do even after using up all my avoidance strategies! So the day went by without getting to the studio and I ended up really not having the energy or interest to go to the studio this evening. Instead I lit a fire in the Pig Barn (my old studio in the garden) and did something completely different; something I have not done previously in this project; a totally different approach to making images and even though tempted to stick in a bit of tried-and-tested technique I resisted and stayed with the vision and am pleased I did.