What is the importance of history ?

This will be a full on making experience.

Finally the installation of this mosaic arrives, my car is a mobile tool box and packed to the gunnels.

The contractors have built me a scafolded canopy 6x6m to work under if it rains?

This I did not have to pay for, they did it for me after a half remark about weather effecting work etc. They do have more resources than me, they are building a town after all. But it makes me feel good they are prepared to do it, I dont know if they will bill the local authority or if it is a gesture?

Its a big task and I feel a little like joseph bouys when sharing the room with a wolf. The unexpected is gonna come my way and I have to be up for it. Gladitorial combat with sods law. Perhaps I’ll catch him when he’s asleep.

What is the importance of history?

I still can’t tell you. But it is very important though.

Is art about documenting and recording?

Is it about anything else?

How do you make art?

Does it go like this:

collect

edit

balance

and make.

None of that’s particularly historical. So the answers remain alusive still.

I am waiting to start another mosaic. It is Historical. But what is really occupying mind in those emptier periods is I have got to install this Witney mosaic. It has to fit in the site made for it. I have got to make it fit.

It probably will fit. But if it dose’nt…… WOW…… I’ll be using my ingenuity.

I had a friend once, who said, ‘ The measure of a good craftsman is how they solve problems when things go wrong!

shut up, your making me nervous.

Finished the fecker

finished

finished

finished

finished

finished

finished

finished 6 weeks or so before the rescheduled installation date.

So would have just made the original schedule. Got to cut it up for storage and transportation though.

Glad I was not tested out, it would have been very close.

I said I could not do a great, super fab local job as I was ‘too busy’…a week later the deadline for this job got moved back. What do you do, behave like builders and plumbers do (allegedly) and spread your self too thin and deliver everything later than you are supossed and develop thick skin get the work done while it is still around. Cos who knows, there may be a lot less of it, because of a possible double dip recession and the next government which might be a Conservative one. Or behave responsibly and build good relations with your clients, in the hope of recomendations and good reputations.

and anyway I dont mind because I got another job about history now, do I continue it in this blog or start a new one?

Cosmo is on patrol around the garden.

spending so much time on the computer is this a good thing or a necessary evil?

and the chain snapped on my bike causing the largest two sprockets on the block to bend, wondered if I put them in the vice could I straighten them?

And the hedges need cutting ….well badly..and the washing needs pegging on the line cos its stopped raining.

and I’ve got to install it as well. Which will be a conciderable test of my abilities. But in some ways the best part of the whole job.

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I think I am lucky in some respects with this medium of mosaic. It impresses people, particularly the building and construction industry. I went to a meeting with project managers a few days ago, they were impressed, the paving masons in Newcastle were impressed as well. I think because there is a craft/skill element to it, workers in various trades can understand the work and see it beyond just a picture. This helps if there is a positive vibe, contract managers are willing to help and provide support and resources for something they see as worth while. Not some crazy arts project that needs to be removed because of vandalism after several weeks.

This has helped a lot as the public also are not alienated by it. I have had many conversations on the street with people about the decline of skills and craftsmanship, the lower cost implications for mass produced kack, the need for kit form prefabrication, bolt together, money saving, off the peg low quality, corner cutting stuff that brings buildings, architecture and goods in general to a point where people dont find it acceptable. It would seem people do appreciate quality in whatever form it takes. Car repairs, building and decorating, well maintained public parks, after sales services. Is it as simple as doing things a little slower, and not needing such immediate results due to expectations from ever increasing techno developments.

So welcome:

welcome to the machine.

I have not been working on this mosaic as I been installing my mosaics and someone elses sculptures in Newcastle.

I have had a great time. Working with lead artist Charlie Carter and the paving masons on a team of construction workers in Newcastle.

The week has been a whirlwind of work and play including SWAT team raids and a hired van less than a year old with a water leek and green grocer businnes that uses the street as a open air ware house, which causes lorry mayhem in the street. And the truly most amazing reaction to a piece of public sculpture I have yet encounterd?

When I was sticking the mosaics onto a stone bench, one of the green grocers comes up and says,

‘What have we got a piece of Paki sculpture for’?

‘What makes you say that’

Because look, these are colourfull and got stripes’????????????

He said exactley the same thing when we bolted a piece of sculpture to the pavement close to the shop where he works.

He say’s, ‘Im white, he’s white, your white, so why have we got a piece of Paki Sculpture that we dont want’?

He went on to tell us his views on some of the residents of the area, using several words I had actually forgotten existed, and insisted he was’nt racist!

I really thought I had seen it all, but I was wrong, and this takes the biscuit. There is actually a more complicated issue behind these remarks, than it first appears. Even so..a real eye opener.

I am very pleased to have been involved in this project and hats off to my friend Charlie who has spent the best part of two years trying to make things better in this area of Newcastle.

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