Sunday 16 May 2021

Silver Spoon-grove

In the Autumn of 2020 I took part in 'Silver Spoon' an exhibition of art works and texts curated by artist Barbara Dougan at Grove. Blog (groveprojects.org)




Silver Spoon by Dean Reddick


Costs
Now when the man at the corner store
Says sugar's gone up another two cents,
And bread one,
And there's a new tax on cigarettes--
We remember the job we never had,
Never could get,
And can't have now
Because we're colored.
 
From Langston Hughes' 'Harlem'.
 
I used to meet the sugar factory once a year, see it looming, chained, growling, know it had been waiting for me. I didn’t speak to it, but we exchanged thoughts. I would glance at it, spoon the yoghurt my mother had given me more quickly, more intensely, and we would leave it behind. We were off on holiday to my grandparents’ in Lowestoft, to the edge of our island, the edge of ages. 
 
The punch, the embrace of its crumpled hugeness and defiant ugliness and its sniffling stench would always remind me of the dog-food factory near the Blackwell Tunnel, the one we'd pass (twelve times a year) on our way to our other grandparents. I loved them both, these brutal, immoveable animals, but they bothered me.

On one of those grandparent journeys, the people would got darker and darker and poorer and poorer. On the other, they’d get whiter and whiter and richer and richer. On each, we’d listen to John Lee Hooker and The Carpenters. We were happy, either way, emerging from our halfway house. Except... except the sugar factory reminded me that all is not what it seems. It reminded me that wild, flat, pretty, quiet Suffolk was person and system too, could be harsh and beaten and frightening too. And that poor people, dark people maybe, could live here too. 

Nothing is pure. Nothing is just sweet. Nothing costs nothing. And no-one is ever free.
 
Kevin Acott

Friday 21 August 2020

Art of Caring 2020

Nan 2020 Pen and Watercolour

Friday 29 May 2020

Sentinel Trees

During this years Urban Tree Festival https://urbantreefestival.org/  Collect Connect exhibited the work of artists and writers around the theme of 'Sentinel Trees' https://collectconnect.blogspot.com/
Here are my contributions;




This is a  polyester resin and bronze powder cast of a conker and its shell. The bronze in the resin can be oxidised to produce the classic bronze patina. This was quite a technically challenging cast to produce requiring an 8 piece silicon rubber mould.


The outer shell and the conker are cast as separate pieces and then assembled.


This is a polyester and slate powder cast of a London Plane tree seed. These beautiful balls of seed are mostly sterile.


These seed balls often persist on Plane trees through the winter and can be seen hanging, silhouetted amongst the branches and twigs, on street trees.


Tuesday 31 March 2020



It is fox-night in the city
Vixen vows under moon-fight
Dog-love
Then the Corvid Dawn

Sunday 16 June 2019

Last Day

Today is the last day of the E17 Art Trail and I wanted to share the art works from last week's drawing session at the Manual Instruction Centre Community Gardens.
Thank you to everyone who came to see the birds in the garden and to all of you who came to the drawing session.