General
Speaking As An Artist…
2Tonight was the opening night of the Frankophilia exhibition at Salford Uni. For those of you not in the know, this is a tribute to the late, fantastic Frank Sidebottom who died earlier this year.
I was doing a project earlier this year to take weekly self-portraits. One of them was my tribute to Frank – a pseudo-Frank head made out of a cardboard box with a drawing of a face stuck on the front. Despite it being, frankly, rubbish, it was noticed by the woman organising the exhibition. She asked if she could use the photo, and I was delighted. When she asked if i still had the head, even more so. After much checking that she did realise it was a cardboard box with a bit of paper stuck to it and not an actual artwork, i sent it off and she seemed very pleased.
Tonight, we went along to see it unveiled. The exhibition is great – some very talented fans have put together some excellent artwork. I came away inspired to make something or draw something or do something creative. Frank always made the daftest things seem joyous – making things for the pleasure of making things, not for any greater purpose. Everything in that room was made by a fan, for no reason other than that they enjoyed doing it. We need more of that.
Oh and as well as the creations of talented artist, there was this load of bobbins
Halfway
1Day 15 – about halfway through the blog month. I’m starting to find it really tough. At first, it was fun to get back into blogging, and i had enough ideas to keep me going. The last few days have started to be difficult. I’ve found myself staring at a blank screen for an hour willing some idea – ANY idea – to come into my idea. Even when I have managed to get going, I’ve found myself halfway through and thinking “this is utter, utter rubbish”. I’ve resisted the urge to go back through the posts and see if that sentiment was correct.
But that, I think, is the whole point of the exercise. Silencing my internal critic is proving impossible, but learning to ignore it my be the next best thing. I’m almost getting the hang of it, to the point that i’m starting to wonder if i could do a musical version – maybe recording a song a month or something – to break the bad habit i hate most.
Finding the time for a blog a day is trickier than i though. I’ve even found that there are a few posts i wanted to spend more time on. Hopefully this bodes well for the future. I’m already trying to redo my whole website. Spent the last few hours trying to set up PHP/Apache/MySql on my home PC and swearing, but in a good way
The One And Only Truly Original
0Yesterday’s arrival of my cool frankophilia poster meant a trip to IKEA for picture frames. Frames plural, as I also have a pile of recently acquired film posters to display. I’ve been staring at blank space over my fireplace for yonks and never really found what I wanted.
Nice, eh?
Next is either The Cat From outer Space or The Secret Policeman’s Ball. I’ve wanted to get proper film posters for along time, and found a guy at a film fair with a basket load. I’m not sure of their origin or background but i got 6 for 15 quid, good quality, full size, good condition. I’ve seen websites selling them for 50-60 quid. No idea what the difference is.
Even though I have no intention of selling them, I hope they AREN’T rare and exclusive items worth a barrel load of cash, as I had to trim the edges off to fit them in the frame, which would probably have knocked a bit off the resale value. Annoying that as far as I can tell ALL film posters are about 30×40 inches but NO picture frames are quite that big.
Anyway, Frou-Frou claimed the Snow White one so no doubt she’ll be showing that off soon.
A Mystery
2Unusually for me, I was up and about quite early on a Saturday. I had a post office card saying there was a parcel waiting to be collected, as it had been too big to go through the door. As our sorting office is helpfully open from 7a.m. to 12 Monday to saturday, I had to be up in time to get there
Most of my mail goes to work, where our long-suffering office manager will bring the latest delivery from Amazon or Play.com to my desk, so a parcel I wasn’t expecting, too big for the letterbox coming to my house was a really mystery.
By the time I got to the bus stop, I was thinking maybe a long-lost relative had died and left me an Egyptian Sacrophagus or a pre-war Martin or some sentimental little keepsake for old times sake. Then a more realistic prospect occurred to me. I previously trekked to the delivery office, in the rain only to discover that the “unexpected parcel” was a flyer for a local music shop. A fact I didn’t discover until after I had paid the excess postage and shortly before everyone in the vicinity of the sorting office learnt a range of Glaswegian expletives.
So with some trepidation, I waited for the nice post office man to bring me whatever it was. Turned out to be a tube (treasure map? Dead Sea Scroll? ) containing the Frankly (ha!!!) fantastic (it is, it really is) poster for the Frankophilia exhibition at The University Of Salford, which the lovely organiser promised to send me. I have an “exhibit” in it (if you can call a carboard box with a bit of paper stuck on it as an “exhibit”), so you should all go and see it.
And if you ask me nicely, i’ll let you see my framed poster. Looks a bit like this (but more brilliant).
Go Team !
2I’m off out to a film night tonight so I’m not likely to be home in time for a daily blog. Barely 12 hours since my last one. Yoinks. Who has a life so exciting that enough things happening in their life between midnight and noon to fill a whole blog post? With the exception of Keith Richards, obviously.
Highlight of the day so far has been our weekly free lunch. Once a week, the company pays for us to have a takeaway lunch, to promote interaction and team spirit. What actually happens is a whole lot of moaning about where we get the food from. It’s a fine balance between something tasty and exciting and the not-overly-generous budget. As the office vegetarian (it’s an unofficial post), occasionally have to suggest that we not get Big Joe’s Steak, Chicken and Beef Surprise all round.
Second place highlight was finishing the anagram solving program I’ve been working on in my spare time for a work contest. No prizes or the like – just the raw thrill of fiddly coding, baby. oh yeah. Sometimes it’s good to remind yourself about the side of the job you loved in the first place. So much of my day gets taken up in meetings and documents and fixes and generally not writing any code, that it’s surprising relaxing to just code for the sake of it. As someone who starts a million projects and never finishes any of them, the deadline of a competition gives me an incentive to actually sign one of them off.
Third place? well, it’s Friday, innit. That’s a prize in itself