Doors and Windows

Thanks to the awful wind and rain we've had for the past few days I've made a start on the pop up project based on Jill Reidy's talk and photos. A good excuse to revisit my photos and memories of warmer weather

 

Find the Lady

The theme for NWBA this month was ‘Puzzle’ and the theme for PAS was ‘Inspired by...’

I was struggling with both but while I was watching a repeat of Jonathon Creek I saw him fiddling with a magic box and thought you could put a book in that and it grew.

The idea of the box seemed to fit well with close magic and card tricks. ‘Find the lady’, a card trick con, fitted with the idea of disappearing.

I thought this worked well with the idea of the turn of the century (19^th)travelling show sideshows  and circuses . I found copyright free images of clown from around this era and made cartes de visite with the clowns on them (very often photographers produced these cards with celebrities of the day as a money making exercise) to use instead of the number side of my playing card inserts. These are all men.

 It’s not enough to produce the book out of the magic box, to ‘Find the lady’ you have to dismantle the drawer to find her hiding underneath.

 

 

Every.....

At one of the November meetings of the Art Society we launched our new project/competition, “Every line, every shadow, every shape, every curve (and every colour)”.

Jill Reidy, a Blackpool photographer, came to show us how she uses these elements in her work and she kindly agreed to let us use the photos from her presentation as a starting point for our own  responses.

I chose this image (follow this link if you want to see more of her work).

I think probably because it reminded me of a painting I made years ago based on this, and similar, photos I took of the pier and prom.

I like the long thin structure of the pier so I decided to make a series of long thin studies from my old photos. I deconstructed a book I’d made out of leftover edges of printing paper (it seemed the right proportions) and started to play with media.

And then added other responses on the back.

I finished rebinding the book this afternoon.

 It’s a sketchbook not my final response, but it is helping me see the possibilities.

 On Boxing Day we made a trip to Blackpool to get some more up to date photos of the ironwork structure. The tide was in so that scuppered that idea but the light was beautiful and moody.