journeys

Someone said the other day I looked like I was on a mission in this picture. I probably was. Its taken back in 1968 outside 22 Seymour Street where I was born , when t-bar sandals and dickie bows were all the rage. Someone obviously tucked my shirt in for that photograph, but wasn't quite quick enough to catch the picture before I set off again!
There's a few journeys I'm on at the moment with my art, I've just set the ball in motion on an idea I've worked on for the last 2 years, my Kenny Dalglish sculpture, and you can read about that on a separate blog.
Theres a couple of ideas I've got out there, but competitive art commissions can be very laid back about deciding, so it was good to have the time to prepare for the start of my Kenny campaign, and I did it at Madelaineartz Gallery in Liverpool City Centre, where she annually hosts  her Mad About Liverpool Exhibition. I missed the opening by the mayor, and the music, and the speeches, I got in just in time to find out that I hadn't won the raffle though. There was a prize for best artwork, which was jointly won by another Kenny Dalglish artwork. It was quite incredible, David Foster had used nails to re-create his, 31,950 of them, one for each minute he played.
So I'm hoping that with his popularity, once the medal goes to the stadium after the exhibition, the project will start to take off.
I've twice bumped into someone I worked with a few years ago this week. We were having a chat about some pictures I took at the time, and talked today about a project he's working on, where they will fit nicely into. Some great shots, and some of the subjects are quite well known now, locals too, so fingers crossed there, a nice paid gig for a change. Bit of money next week from some shadowboxes I'm making to infill a fireplace, only requirement is their superlambanana fits in one of them. I watched the original getting made funnily enough, as I was making the sets at the time on a Brazilian film called Maua, and had my workshop space at the old Bryant and May factory in Speke. They were making it in a unit at the side of the old factory, and I saw it at various stages from the steel armature, but missed the painting stage.
I've been asked to be the Official photographer again for this years Wirral Studio Tour, I know what I said last time about it, but I took some great pictures of  Tommy McHugh, you can see some of them here, blogged about, on what would have been his birthday His story is amazing, and theres something I want to work on, but the time's not right yet.. I got that from it last time, so I said yes when they asked, of course I would, and it was great to be asked again.
I'm waiting on the council for the sculptural mural I'm doing in Hoylake, planning has had to be sought, so I'm not holding my breath, and I'm guessing spring there.
I missed last nights opening, because I was sat outside talking to someone who lost his brother at Hillsborough in 1989, and he was telling me his story. He volunteers at the Hillsborough Justice Campaign shop outside Liverpools Football Ground, where they sell goods to help fund their Campaign, and offer a place to meet, and talk. After listening to him, I looked on their website again at more of their stories, real and personal ones and read them. There are interviews and stories, documenting their campaign for one thing, Justice. Quite how they had the strength after 20 years to carry on is unimaginable, but they did, and when they chanted for what they sought to Andy Burnham on live TV, finally someone listened to them. The Nation should hang its head in shame on what they've been through, and what they were forced to do in getting there. An Establishment Cover up from the top, and a smear on the fans, the City of Liverpool, and its people.These people exposed the liars, and were the inspiration behind the words of Deliverance, a poem I wrote, displayed as an artwork. You can see it  on this blog post.  I was reading some of the poems on their website, real accounts, expressed from the mouths of the people who were there, and who witnessed it for themselves. They have created Social History, and have allowed the floodgates to open for other recent injustices and scandals, and their voice deserves to be heard repeatedly, and at every level in society, until Justice is served on all those implicated in the cover up. If you never have before, please read their stories http://www.contrast.org/hillsborough/
some are no longer here to tell theirs, they died of shattered hearts. And they continue to do so, three commited suicide last year alone.

I was just reading what somebody wrote about my work Deliverance,

'In Deliverance, by combining poetry with sculpture, Terry has managed to capture the spirit of the city of Liverpool. Political, contemporary and poignant, this is a relevant piece that manages to capture the zeitgeist of the city in the wake of the recent Hillsborough findings. Liverpool is a unique city, and this piece is uniquely Liverpool in its approach and execution.'

So I'm looking at what forum I want to display Deliverance this year, and will start to look for the right opportunities.

get Kenny at the Kop

I've got 3 pieces of my Liverpool art at an upcoming exhibition called Mad about Liverpool, which opens Thursday 17th January, in Madelainartz upstairs in Clayton Square for her Exhibition Mad About Liverpool 2013, and my campaign got a mention in the Echo, which has just advertised it. I'm going to launch a mini version of my St. Kenny, which will be priced at £70. Half the money will go to The Hillsborough Justice Campaign (HJC), who have a shop opposite Anfield. The plaques will be for sale at their shop as well as Madelainartz. I've been campaigning to get my sculpture put up at Anfield for 2 years now, and hope to sell 1000 miniatutures of my St. Kenny, which will allow me to one day see a 12 foot version of my  Kenny in stainless steel and granite at the Kop. Anyone who buys one will be helping me in sponsoring the sculpture at the stadium. I set up a FB page, or @dalglishhh on twitter and hope one day to set out what I've been wanting to achieve for 2 years. Ambitious, but as Shankly said, 'Aim for the sky and you'll reach the ceiling, aim for the ceiling and you'll stay on the floor.'
Here's the very first test cast in bronze finish, I'll do a pewter tomorrow. email me  dalglishhh@gmail.com  if you want to help me get Kenny at the Kop.

colours, on a wet wetland day

One of the many delights washed up on the Crosby shoreline. As blue as the grey blue day.

Colourful over-wintering, as pink as my daughters wellies.

Dead-Head yellows

Found treasures, from former greens.

Witnessed on the type of day you can leave your mark, for others to follow.

McRings, 2012

This was a personal statement, on this, an olympic year, and what it meant financially.

'' ‘McRings’ invites the viewer to explore the interactions between publicly and privately funded events such as the Olympics, and asks them to examine the eventual economic returns and consequences, and who they favour.
Constructed from cooked and dehydrated french fries, and resin bonded into 5 hoops measuring 4 feet across in total, the golden ‘olympic rings’  sit atop a suitably scaled  ‘french fry’ holder.''

This is what I said about the piece when I first advertised my exhibition at The Albert Dock earlier in the year. I exhibited as an Independent, and I posted it here.
Two local papers ran it, getting a mention in the Liverpool Echo, where I was honoured to be on of their two picks for the Long Night of the Biennail. The Wirral Globe ran a photo, and gave me a little write-up. 
It was certainly talked about at my Exhibition, and I felt it went down really well, with a lot of positive responses to it.
I made it in response to stories in the press of independent bakeries, sweet shops, even a wool shop, being threatened with legal action, as they had formed hoops with their own goods in their shop windows. I bookmarked one at the time, you can read about it here. I made the rings from real french fries, which quite ironically, were the official food of the games. Four months on, and with their resin treatment, they still look same and are still free of mould!

Propagate

Nature as I have tried to intimate,
 is never quite where we see it.
It is a becoming as well as a passing,
 but the becoming is both within
 and without our power.''

 Loren Eisley Sept 1907-July 1977.

And that quote summed the piece up for me.
The original inspiration came from a run down early 19thC house near mine, which had gradually fallen deeper into disrepair. A neighbour opposite told me the old guy was an eccentric, and he lived in one room only. The house was overtaken with nature quite unbelievably. I photographed it when there were trees growing from the roof, and will present those pictures one day, together with Propagate, and represent the whole story with a sculpture. This will be the first of four sculptures in a series Bluette, and its form will be a starting point of explanation.

We used to call it the blackberry house, we'd go to pick the fruit, and ferret right through the overgrowth . It's been completely restored to original lately. I really miss the jam!
I took some litter from the New Ferry Butterfly Park, among which was a can I crushed into a cube. I grew a seedling from there, and tried to immortalise it 'growing' on the can, representing how nature will always take over anything man-made. Frozen in time within a resin cube, it looks as fresh today, as the day it was cast. Set within a railway sleeper, (the butterfly park is on the site of a former rail-goods yard), the piece is finished with the quote you see above, printed on a found chip wrapper, and clear cast into the form of a found paper plate. Its been happily nestling in, and product of its environment for the last 18 months, and I'm happy its still conveying its message as clearly today as then.

looking through windows at whats important

I was living in America when I got my first computer. I remember it was late 1994, was the very first pentium, and it ran Windows 3.1! It had a 9.6 modem, and gave me the opportunity to sample the delights of the web, totally different to todays experience. I had a day off mid-week, and I was listening to some Christy Moore. I'd come across a website set up by some ex-pats, (following a search on the then mighty search engine Altavista), and it provided lots of links to 'home', so I was browsing, when I saw a link to a site devoted to Liverpool. I was downloading a picture of the Albert Dock (line by line), when one of my favourite tracks, Nancy Spain, started to play. It's always been an emotive song for me, but this time, overcome by the emotion of seeing my home town, the emotions spilled over into tears. I'd been living in the States for almost 7 years by that time, and not once had I ever experienced homesickness that induced this response. I phoned people, had lots of visitors, got sent soz-mix, Marigold stock and malt loaf regularly, and had too many  English and Irish friends out there to make me miss home. But that day, miss home I did. I must have played Nancy Spain 5 or 6 times,  all the while stirring at a place that was home, a picture, on a screen, an image so powerful that I cried for what must have been 10-15 minutes.
The photo above was taken through the velux I put in the old roof section of my workshop. Being an old roof, I decided to strip the whole thing off, and start again, and I wondered at the time if I'd done the right thing! Same with the rear wall of the old brick section of the workshop, that too had a hole knocked in it, a lintel installed, and a window that looks out on the most fantasic of views. There's a picture of that in a previous blog. The workshop is still not fully complete.....well they never are, are they.....but the hard work  has been done, (at the cost of finishing the house, and much to the annoyance of the wife I may add) and it's going to be a nice little home for my future as an artist. I've planned the extension already, and I'll break the news if and when I get my first 5 figure Commission!  I figure I can get the Cathedral view in the velux I put in that section.

This picture I took of the Dock on my birthday 7 years ago, a reflection in the Pan Am bars window, is not  too dis-similar to the photo I viewed online when I was in the States, Liverbirds aloft the Dock, though that was a straightforward shot. I used it recently for my publicity pics for the Exhibition I had at the Albert Dock, and I've made some business cards for my art from it. Funnily enough, I'm listening to Christy Moore once again, and the track I've played a few times this evening is 'The Voyage'. Sums up really what we've been through, and both reminds and excites me of the Journey I'm undertaking with my Art.

look, touch