Travel

Back in the studio, things is goin’ slow. After dropping my first project idea (because it was looking a bit obvious) in favour of Kristallnacht, I’m having the opposite problem – too many possibilities. So far, I’ve painted a heap of timber (left over from pulling apart the stage built for the recent TEDx event […]

New York – at least, Manhattan – is a very walkable city. No hills, pedestrian-friendly if you cross at the lights, loads of people-watching available, and every second building sells some kind of food. And if your tootsies are tired, there’s a great subway and crosstown bus system and the ubiquitous and cheap Yellow Cab. […]

Part of our SVA summer school program is the Friday series of talks by visiting lecturers. The most recent was by Clifford Owens, a black American photographer, talking about his own work in the context of mind-body connections. Unfortunately, he (like art critic Jerry Saltz, the previous week’s speaker) couldn’t seem to connect with any […]

Well, I may not have predicted the End of Days or whatever the Big N did, but readers without Alzheimer’s will remember that I foreshadowed a couple of fairly meaty names for macho automobiles in my post of May 27. A couple of days ago life imitated art. Complete with throaty V8 roar, this guy […]

Back home, a few of us artists have formed a small group to provide mutual support and feedback, and as a way of staying connected with contemporary thinking. One of the group is Bek (Rebecca) Kinsey, of Byron Bay. Bek actually did the same sculpture summer school that I’m now doing, last year. As a […]

Last Sunday’s weather was even better than Saturday’s, being clearer, with a touch of coolness at the start and end. Mid-morning (NYC wakes up late on Sundays) I strolled down to the New Museum on Bowery. This actually is a new museum although in ten, twenty or fifty years it will be an old museum […]

The summer weather here in NYC over the weekend was stunning. We’d gone from a very hot start to the week, to light showers on Friday, but this just helped cool things down a little for Saturday and Sunday, making it perfect weather for mingling on the Manhattan pavements with the other five million locals […]

I’ve now been in NYC a week, doing my sculpture summer school, and all I’ve made is the tiny little cardboard model coffin you can (just) see in the piccie below.  That’s my studio space – all 9 feet by 7 – and besides the wee coffin, all I’ve got to show for the week […]

On Saturday afternoon, after another frustrating slow-progress session in the studio, I walked south through Greenwich and Soho to a store called The Compleat Sculptor. Inside, it looks a bit run-down. This is possibly because, in the entrance lobby, there’s the following sign: One of the challenges of being a sculptor is the cost of […]

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend the first-ever TEDx event organized by the School of Visual Arts in Chelsea. For those who don’t know, TED is a forum for bringing together people from the Technology, Entertainment and Design industries to share ideas, via a series of 15-minute presentations. TEDx events are independently-organised but run […]