iPhoneography V

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Agatha Christie, art, Art Deco, artist, arts, Bexhill, biblical epic, British, Christian artist, De la Warr, east sussex, faint aroma, fishing boat, George Lucas, Indiana Jones, iphone, iPhoneography, Italian Job, linseed oil, longboard, Modernist, Pavilion, photograph, photography, Poirot, retirement town, Richard Wilson, seafront, Shakespeare, Star Wars, turps

Iphoneography episode V seems to me to have strong George Lucas overtones to it. It’s funny isn’t it how our culture and our experiences soak into us in a sort of cultural marinade until our very being is infused by what we have seen and heard.

It’s the stuff that we have chosen though, the stuff we love or have loved that we choose to represent us in our speech, character or even our dress! At this point I’d clarify that I mean what we choose to wear… I don’t, and have never had the inclination to, wear dresses.

There is some stuff that gets into us that really doesn’t belong there. Stuff that has been inflicted upon us if you like, that’s the stuff that needs careful handling and hopefully healing, but that’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m referring to is the stuff we embrace!

For me that’s all manner of arty, geeky stuff. Shakespeare said , “If you scratch us, do we not bleed”, but if you scratch the surface of most us what bleeds out is our interests, our obsessions, our loves. Give me a metaphorical squeeze and I’ll probably exude the faint aroma of Star Wars, Indiana Jones, a biblical epic, or perhaps even turps and linseed oil! What we love is what we become.

Well yesterday we went, as a family, on a cultural trip down the road to the seething metropolis that is Bexhill. Now for those of you not familiar with the south coast of England, Bexhill might have a reputation for being a bit of a retirement town – I’m not saying it is, but it might have that reputation. However it is also the owner of a magnificent and recently beautifully refurbished seafront and beautiful Art Deco theatre called the De la Warr Pavilion*.

So we embraced Bexhill in all its sun-kissed splendour, walked the seafront, skated the seafront, ate some lunch on the beach and visited the De la Warr with its current Richard Wilson exhibit. I even took a few snaps…

A very British seafront… thing.

A… ? To be honest I’m not sure what these things are called, ‘pavilionettes’ perhaps. Whatever they’re called they looked great in the sunshine with the sea glinting on the sea behind them.

Fishing boat on the Seafront.

Ceramic cups from the Pavilion shop. They may look like crumpled plastic rubbish, but they are in fact, ceramic. Liked these.

Richard Wilson’s “Hang on a minute lads, I’ve got a great idea …” In my opinion this is one of those pieces that provokes the old argument, “but is is art?” It is however pretty cool to see up close though.

Art Deco or Modernist? Not sure, but Agatha Christie’s Poirot seemed very at home here during the filming of the television series.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_De_La_Warr_Pavilion

Camera phone revolution?

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east sussex, Christian, artist, art, Christian artist, inspiration, picture, create, longboard, photo, photography, cameraphone, smartphone, filters, eastbourne, lewes, harveys brewery

With the advent of the camera phone, everyone it seems now has the opportunity to capture the images that take hold of them, capture them, on a daily basis.

For an artist this could be a little disturbing, but why should it be. Everyone should have the right to be able to create art, whether it’s with a brush, pencil or a camera phone!

So I thought, why not publish some of the photo’s I’ve taken on my phone? It’s a relatively low megapixel iPhone 3Gs, but even with it’s limited 3.2mp quality it is still capable of taking a half decent photo’.

The really cool thing about smartphone technology is that you no longer need thousands of pounds of Adobe software and a high end Mac to play with images. You can download a handful of Apps and play around to your hearts content!

I’m using Snapseed, Dynamic Light, Pic Grunger and PhotoToaster Apps (Thanks http://rubicorno.com/ for the tips). Most of which are either under £2 or free. So give it a go. Take a photo, pull it into an App and play around and have some fun! Here are some of mine:

Me and my youngest son at bedtime. Taken by Michelle, my wife.

Harveys Brewery, Lewes, East Sussex.

The Downs, Eastbourne, East Sussex

My son Ezra on a family Longboarding day out along the coast in Eastbourne.

Winter Longboarding with the family on Eastbourne seafront.

The same seafront as the shot above this one, but with minimal filtering.

Harveys Brewery again, but with more filtering.

The very talented Mr. Angus Bishop on drums.

 

Different can be beautiful…

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A.skate, art, artist, autism, brush strokes, canvas, Christ, Christian, Christian artist, faith, God, grace, hope, Ian Goldsmith, inspiration, Jesus, kingdom of god, legendary tony hawk, longboard, love, oil painting, paint, painter, painting, peace, picture, skateboard, skater, surf, temple grandin, Tony Hawk, will gudgeon

Today was a good day. The sun has been out. I’ve spent quite a lot of time with my boys out on our longboards over the weekend and progress has been made on my current project. The painting is developed from a photo taken by the very talented local photographer Will Gudgeon* at a skating showcase in Brighton given by, among others, the now legendary Tony Hawk.

I’ve been skating, on and off (mostly off to be honest) ever since I could afford my own board. As a kid in the 70s I wasn’t allowed a board because my mum was a subscriber to the ‘skateboarding can kill or maim your children’ philosophy propagated by the media at the time. It didn’t help that a good friend, who’s parents had actually denied the maiming rumours, had bought him a board and he’d proceeded to bust his two front teeth falling off one. I love skating. The feeling of swishing along a good bit of tarmac is hard to beat. It’s a sublime yet edgy form of dry surfing and indeed was invented (I believe) by surfers during down time in bad weather when they couldn’t surf. It gives me peace, it gets me out in the fresh air and it’s something we can do as a family. Except the dog, she walks with Michelle while I divide my time to walking with Michelle and skating with the boys!

Anyway I want to dedicate this week’s blog to the A.skate Foundation and I’ll paste in an explanation of their work underneath this. It’s a wonderful organisation and one close to my own heart. Many people have autism of some kind or colour of the autistic spectrum. I probably have a very mild case (as does one of my sons) and you probably would never know until we’re put under stress, but for some it is much more profound and obvious. It’s a challenging characteristic, especially when we are young, but with love, encouragement and understanding people with Autism can often find integration with society achievable. Indeed many people you know may well have a degree of autism without ever realising it! Daryl Hannah, Temple Grandin, Bill Gates, Satoshi Tajiri (creator of Pokemon), perhaps even Einstein and Darwin have (or may have had, in the case of Darwin and Einstein) some form of autism!

So anyway here’s a little description from the team at A.skate:

Who we are:

The A.skate Foundation is a non profit that allows children with autism to be a part of our social world through skateboarding. We hold clinics for children with autism at no cost to the families, give grants to children with autism for skateboard gear, as well as promote awareness and educate families about the skateboard industry. Five years ago 1:150 children were diagnosed with autism. Today 1:91 children are diagnosed with autism, 1:58 of those being boys according to the statistics on TACA now.

http://askate.org/about_askate

Here are a few of the things that we do:

• hold clinics nationwide for children with autism at no cost to the families
• give “Grants for Gear” for kids to purchase skateboard gear
• hold fundraisers and events to promote our cause

Autism, like skateboarding, can be unpredictable and often times unruly. We embrace the parts of autism that are hard to understand and give these kids an outlet that is free of rules or judgment, and allows them to be social without being “social”.

Here’s the picture so far…

Still work to be done, but it’s getting a lot closer to completion now thank goodness! Mental note, don’t work on large canvases.

Oil on canvas.

*http://www.willgudgeon.co.uk/