All That Mighty Heart

Random Inspirations

Peter and his knowledge of machines

Old photos (he has worked at The Engineerium for 30 years)

Archives East Sussex Archives’ Ledgers, diaries 1876-1900’s for their imagery and Victorian turn of phrase.

Ham Baker and Co catalogue, makers of waterworks machinery.

Russian Theatre especially Shepyanov’s ‘My Friend’ 1932

The Art of the Engineer beautifully exact

Paolozzi , early collages

Charlie Chaplin (Modern Times)

Union Carbide Silicones, adverts drawing on photos (Fortune Magazine, 1950)

‘Promptitude’ a pub sign I saw walking home. I’ve never noticed it before.

I’m reflecting on all my interests that, through working habits and getting trapped in a certain process, have stopped finding their way into the final work- writing, forging links and threads, photography,design.

A need to create last week, after being encircled by ever changing mind maps, saw me drawing machines on sheet metal. It provided a lesson in exactitude! and a reminder of Victorian precision! Not to mention how long it is since I’ve worked on a finely detailed still life. Now I’m trying to draw like a machine. At the same time I’m mechanically moving round and reordering the images and material I’ve collected to find that heart.

Engineers Report Book 11^th April 1874

Gentlemen, I beg to report that I was at the Goldstone works yesterday and the Number 1 Engine was working well.

Your Obedient Servant, M Johnston

My Notebook June 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen, I beg to report that I was at the Goldstone works yesterday and can inform you that, following the tiptoeing through archives of crumbling Victorian cuttings in the County Archives, I revisited the works with a new found vision of the museum in its previous incarnation. I t has been a few weeks since the news that funding has been allocated and explorations have been initiated. Proliferations of mind maps encircle me in themes from inspirations, to locations to lifestories. I now have the task of drawing out one thread.