Project: Alice... Tea, Tearooms, Pigs, and Cats

Slightly more detail on the "Alice" show... first off, we have a few pics in the tearoom.  Been a little while since we've done an exhibition like this, but then we started off showing in Tearooms and Cafes so it was pleasantly nostalgic.

We've put up a mix of work-some of the older Cumbrian Coast series which hasn't seen an airing for a while (for local interest), and the rest newer series which are ongoing.

This includes Amy's long running "Light Trails", Bens "Inflate-Deflate", and some of the "Underwater" series.  There's also one from last years "Project Intercity" too, and part of the reason for putting this work up was to motivate ourselves to shoot some more on these projects now that the "Alice" work is out of the way.

Nice surroundings, a pleasant tearoom with friendly staff and good food and drinks- particularly recommend the Chocolate and Guiness cake...

Why IS a Raven like a Writing Desk?

And so, outside.  As a kind of warm-up for the project, the first bit of work that Amy did was a spot of customising with ceramic paint of a tea set.  At the time of the project starting Ben was still working in catering, and when the Tearoom was re-equipping, all the old ceramics was given away, except for the items which were damaged or chipped and cracked.  Perfect fodder for this project...

Interspersed throughout the flowerbed, the effect should be nicely subtle over the next few weeks as the flowers bloom.

Alice was just beginning to think to herself, “Now, what am I to do with this creature, when I get home?” when it grunted again, so violently, that she looked down into its face in some alarm.  This time there could be no mistake about it: it was neither more nor less than a pig, and she felt that it would be quite absurd for her to carry it any further.

Amy followed this with a small take on the Pig Baby from "Wonderland". 

Production of the piece involved using one of The Childs soft toys as a base- it was wrapped in Clingfilm then layers of selotape, before the toy was removed and replaced with scrunched-up paper, and more selotape used to provide rigidity. 

On-site, and this small piece was installed in a flowerpot, nice and high up.

Its pretty lightweight though, and so it has since been secured with fishing-wire.

"Well!  I've often seen a cat without a grin," thought Alice; "but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!"

On a related note, one of the smaller pieces Ben has done for the show (as a break from the Jabberwock).  There was a requirement for the Cheshire Cat in the show, and naturally a wonder about how to do an invisible cat...

The solution was to use the same technique as Amy, only this time a somewhat more cubist shape for the cat.  Lots of clear boxes and packaging acetate assembled into shape, glued together, then wrapped in a lot of selotape.

Oddly enough this was the most difficult one to locate in the show, as it needed to be somewhere that would allow the reflection in the mirrored eyes/mouth to show.

The smile and eyes incidentally were done as space-fillers on the Laser Cutter at Bens current work (where there was a gap of otherwise unused space in a corner).  Reasonably effective, but obviously doing them at odd times compared to the rest of the piece means they don't quite fit, but hey-ho. 

A number of people have commented he's a bit sinister, but then that's how he always came across in the book, so it seemed fitting.

...this time she found a little bottle on it ("which was certainly not here before", said Alice), and tied around the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words "DRINK ME" beautifully printed upon it in large letters.

And finally, a little piece and a genuine Victorian bottle.

Next time, some of the bigger pieces we've built for this show...

Alice in Wonderland... in Ambleside

Well, it has been quite a while since the last post, but for the very good reason that we've been working like mad on the "Alice in Wonderland" show.  The deadline for the show arrived at the same time as a lot of real-world stress and distraction so it was a bit of a manic effort to get this project over the finish line, hence the lack of updates, but it feels great to have got it there.

We're going to be posting a lot of in-depth entries about each of the pieces we're showing, but this post is by way of a taster for the show.  We have a bit of an ongoing relationship with Rydal Hall and the Lakes Collective, as a friend and fellow former Cumbria Institute of the Arts alumni, Clare, regularly invites us to get involved.  We tend to enter one or two smaller pieces for shows; this represents our biggest involvement with a show at Rydal Hall to date...

The theme for the big Rydal Hall sculpture show this year was the "Alice" books, specifically "Wonderland" and "Looking Glass", and artists were allowed to interpret bits of the books they liked.

Not directly linked to "Alice", but we're showing some photographs in the Tearoom; mainly local interest or more recent projects than we've normally shown, such as the underwater pictures.

Starting with the "Alice" theme, Amy began her exploration of the theme with some cracked and damaged crockery rescued from the skip at Ben's old job, which she mended and painted quotes from the books onto.  They were placed in one of the flower beds.

Amy then got a tad more ambitious with the creation of the 'pig baby' from the book (the baby Alice is holding which gradually changes into a pig). 

Similar in style, Ben's first piece, the Cheshire Cat.

But the main item Ben has spent some months creating, a Steampunk Jabberwock (as per the request by Clare when the idea of us joining in the show was first mooted)... its about 8ft high and weighs a ton.

The main piece produced by Amy, the arch of playing cards.

And finally, the Rocking Horse Fly pieces scattered around.

There's going to be a lot more, both here and on the model making blog, in coming days (as well as some posts on 'normal' photography we've managed).  So apologies for the lack of posts recently, but as the forthcoming entries will hopefully show, the amount of work which went into the bits we made for the show should demonstrate just how busy we've been...  If you're passing Ambleside in the Lakes any time in the next couple of months, why not drop in and see the show- a lot of artists have made a lot of very nice pieces, and its free to visit and look around.

The Feb 2016 Gala on the Worth Valley Railway

 

 

Wow, another long stretch between updates… I know it must look like we’re up to nothing at the moment; the reality is the big sculpture project we’re in the middle of isn’t quite ready to post about yet, so in the meantime, more railway photography.

 

 

It was the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway Winter Steam Gala over the weekend, and now being in a job where I (Ben) have weekends free, it seemed a good opportunity to get back out taking train pictures.

 

Saturday dawned dull and grey, and without much enthusiasm I set out for a favourite local location, alongside the river Worth about five minutes from home. A few years ago this location was deserted, and I’d get it much to myself during galas (mainly because the derelict, semi-developed, semi-abandoned park there is a bit of a haunt for local druggies, teenage ne’er-do-wells and people walking scary dogs). Now though any gala sees about a dozen people there, so I ended up relocating to an arguably worse position and in so much of a rush that I hadn’t noticed the camera was on the wrong setting. Cue one depressingly blurry picture from a bad angle, and a feeling that I ought to give up this photography lark.

 

A bit later in the day saw me, the two eldest Childs, and my father in law out and about in the rather more scenic Haworth-Oxenhope stretch, briefly meeting up with an old mate of mine who I used to do quite a lot of railway photography with back in the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 A nice wooded location, if somewhat muddy, but I was hampered by a number of factors. The lighting was poor (flat white Tupperware-lid sky), and this impacted on the camera. Our D90 was a good SLR in its day, but its day has definitely passed, and as soon as HMRC stop taking so much emergency tax off me we’ll have to invest in a new digital SLR if we’re going to keep this game up. Added to that was the ever-present huddles of other photographers (loads this year!) who’d bagged all the best locations, and a general slightly scruffy appearance of the line at this point, and it frankly proved to be a bit of a somewhat uninspiring day.

 

 

 

Feeling somewhat annoyed by it all, on the spur of the moment I decided to head out to get a night-time shot with the last train of the day, another attempt at the night-trails type long exposure abstracts I shot on the railway last year and the year before. So spur of the moment in fact that I’d forgotten that the tripod was bust, but I figured I’d improvise. The shot turned out a little odd because the wind blurred the trees on the right, but with a slight tweak of the contrast it gave a very abstract shot, depressingly the only one of the day I was properly happy with (and which proved this camera might only be good for this sort of abstract shot these days). As if to counter that happiness, shortly after the train had passed I remembered why only idiots go into this bit of park after about 11am, when on the path out I was accosted by a couple of hooded teenagers swaggering into the place. By chance they thought I must be one of their mates as nobody else would dare go onto ‘their’ patch in the dark, and by the time they realised their mistake I’d legged it. Thank god it was dark. Still, adrenaline rush.

 

 

Sunday was much better- today would be a mass family outing actually riding on the trains. We were on the first one out of Keighley, a vintage train hauled by the newly-restored Taff Vale Tank loco, number 85. Being so immersed in Steampunk projects at the moment I have a soft spot for this sort of loco, and there is something wonderful about riding in vintage compartment stock, a slight sense you’re in a period Sherlock Holmes detective story.

 

 

A quick word on the trains though- the Worth Valley have been suffering a bit lately with motive power at gala events, with them unable to bring in visiting engines due to Bradford Council not wanting to shell-out to mend a bridge, and Notwork Rail being funny about trains arriving by rail. This years gala also saw several home-fleet engines out of action, meaning the whole gala was in the hands of only five locomotives. But the railway did a brilliant job, it was a nicely varied fleet of engines and it was a very enjoyable day.

 

 

Star of the show for us was of course "Big Jim", the American S160 loco. This was one of many hundreds of these engines built in the Second World War for service around the globe, and a lot of them stayed running post-war in countries like Greece and Poland. This particular loco came from Poland in fact, and though it is very much out of character for a railway trying to portray itself as a 50’s midland-region branch line, it is a very popular loco with enthusiasts, and with me and the Childs in particular. For starters whenever it goes past the house blowing its chime whistle it sounds like we could be in a Wild West film. Then you have the distinctive livery, the general look of the engine, the power… it’s definitely the favourite of our kids, and they liked seeing it on so many trains during the Sunday.

 

 

 

 Probably its best appearance for us was on the non-stop service in the afternoon when it came barrelling through Ingrow West station, whistle howling at all the people stood a little bit too close to the edge of the platform.

 

Happily the camera was coping a lot better with the lighting on the Sunday which meant it was a bit easier to get pictures. The only loco I didn’t manage to get a snap of this time was the 4F, mainly because it was hauling a lot of the trains we ended up riding.

 

I also took the opportunity to do a couple of the long-exposure tunnel shots again.

 

 

And so to the evening- I like nipping out to photograph the demonstration freight trains if they run, but due to the locomotive shortages this year it was only running on the Sunday evening, late in the day and in fading light, so I figured another arty long exposure pic might be in order. By this point the timetable had slipped a bit, so unexpectedly we got to see "Big Jim" in the twilight. We also got stared at with a slight but palpable sense of loathing by some neighbours who hadn’t realised I was a railway enthusiast up to this point, but hey-ho (there seems to be two kind of people on our street- those who like the railway, and those who get annoyed that a few times a day steam trains noisily pass, as if it was a secret when they bought their new-build houses there was a decades-old preserved railway running through the middle of the estate. I suspect it’s the kids of those families who spend many a happy summers day lobbing bricks at the trains). But I digress and rant.

 

 

By the time the goods train did arrive, the lighting was a bit awkward- too dark for a decent ‘normal’ shot and too light for an abstract light-trails shot. I tried anyway, and believe it or not but there is a train in this photo. Still, even if I couldn’t get a proper picture of it, it was nice to see.

 

 

So overall, a not too bad weekend of photography and fun riding the trains. If anyone connected with the railway happens to see this I’d like to congratulate them on another enjoyable gala, particularly given the trouble they had organising it all again this year. The family enjoyed riding the trains, and I managed a few nice pictures, particularly as I haven’t had opportunity for much of this sort of thing lately. It’s also reassured me personally that I can still enjoy photography, when I can fit in in around the various other pressures we’re dealing with at the moment (and also the fact all our art-related work of late has been sculpture-based, leaving not much time for photography). It has however once again proved that we really, really need a new digital SLR and that I need to kick HMRC up the backside to get me off this punishing emergency tax code I’ve been stuck on since last year…

 

 

 

 

Keighley in the Snow

 

A somewhat unexpected snowfall gave a chance to nip out on this morning and get a few pics before it all melted.

 

 

The snow had the usual effect of making the area look nice.

 

 

An advantage of the snowfall was that it made the area a little harder to get to for other photographers, who seem to have colonised this spot on the rare occasions recently I've had chance to nip out for train shots.

 

The diesel railbus was working the first train of the day to Oxenhope.

 

 

 

The usual experimental shot with zooming... as the D90 becomes increasingly obsolete, I'm trying to use it for slightly more abstract stuff...

 

 

 

And then home.  First chance for a while to get out and snap some pics, and nice to be able to make the most of the snow.