This was a very brief walk with a focus on street art in a small area of Ouseburn, Newcastle upon Tyne, but not a comprehensive recording of all that was there.
Street art. Robin.
Street art. Three paste up pieces.
Street art. Sumo wrestler.
Street art. White Y fronts with red trim.
Shutter with red paint peeling off blue paint, Lime Street, Ouseburn.
Street art. Paste up.
Street art. Face.
Rik Mayall died on 9th June 2014, at too young an age. So many – famous, infamous and unknown – expressed their shock at his sudden passing.
He tended to play characters that I would prefer to avoid but recognise as people I have sometimes met or observed from a distance. I enjoyed The Young Ones, although probably listening more than seeing as the television was an old black-and-white set which was unable to convey a clear picture.
I was a student. I shared with one other person at a time but had friends who shared houses in larger numbers. I recognised The Young Ones as people around me, even if the characters might not always be the same gender. It captured the spirit of what it was like to be a student at that time, although the house looked in better condition than many of our student rentals.
Politics felt a crucial element of our lives at that time. Maybe it was because we were young? And maybe some were encountering different political beliefs from those around them when they were children. People seemed to target the universities to win the hearts and minds of our generation with religion and/or politics.
For those of us who studied art and design history (all the art and design students as well as art history ones), Marxist and feminist theories were amongst the approaches to visual culture that we were taught. Left wing politics were the ‘correct’ politics, but some were more centre right.
Sometimes people were involved in politics due having a relationship with someone who supported a left or far left party. I remember when I was still at school hearing about girls joining a political group to find boyfriends. Some were genuinely into the politics and tried to recruit others. There were marches and demonstrations, student strikes and sit-ins. It was still the Cold War, and we had grown up in a post-World War world in which our parents and grandparents had experienced a very different world and society was changing, shifting to what was supposed to be a more equal society for all.
The Young Ones shows a world of predominantly male undergraduate students. I think that it was still not much more than about 10% of our generation who did degrees, and there were a lot more men than women: 42.8k men and 25.3k women just a couple of years before The Young Ones was written. It did not look that male-dominated from the Faculty of Arts and Design at our polytechnic where the history of art and fashion courses were predominantly female and the fine art course was about 50/50.
So, The Young Ones, in an odd way, was probably more typical of the student experience of the day than I experienced (albeit decidedly more overtly violent and with a slightly more surrealist twist). It did capture that edginess I remember. It has been strange to see some of that programme and a whole episode of Bottom that have been shown to commemorate Rik Mayall. I didn’t like Bottom and yet I found that I remembered the episode shown. Watching excerpts of The Young Ones seemed like watching a video of people whom I’d met at student parties. I hadn’t expected that. It feels strangely like I’ve lost someone with whom I was acquainted years ago. I think it shows how well Rik Mayall conveyed the characters he played and connected with his audience.
The Late Shows are Newcastle upon Tyne’s version of the Museums At Night weekend that happens in the rest of the UK and Europe on a weekend in May. The Newcastle and Gateshead version has added culture, with artists, designer-makers, musicians, performers, food producers and many others creating a wonderful weekend.
I concentrate on going to venues and events in Ouseburn, just East of Newcastle city centre, which are open both on Friday and Saturday. The atmosphere is so friendly and there lots of venues are within walking distance of each other. There is something about wandering through the streets at a leisurely pace, wearing The Late Shows glowstick (yellow for Newcastle, orange for Gateshead), that causes strangers to smile at each other in Ouseburn.
This year, I started at the Quayside end, with a quick visit to The Cycle Hub to pick up a glowstick pendant and to vote on the Tour De Censored entries before heading across the road, past a lively crowd outside the Tyne Bar, to the Toffee Factory. There was a warm welcome there, and quite a crowd.
The spaces that can be open to the public at the Toffee Factory work very well there for such events. The generous reception area was turned into a stylish cocktail bar, with a display or market stall of refurbished vintage audio equipment, including Dansette record players. The big meetings room had the vintage market (some lovely frocks and diamanté jewellery), a team of make up artists to create glamorous looks and the Moon Booth where people could have a photograph taken to record the moment.
Outside, there was a roof of red tarpaulins and a wonderful temporary black and white dance floor laid over the gravel. Food stalls were grouped near the chimney. There was swing music and a Charleston dance lesson. People on the gravel, including small children, began to join in as the lesson progressed. Everyone was smiling or laughing.
From there, I went on to the Mushroom Works. They always do something imaginative and interesting for special events. This year, they were celebrating A Midsummer Night’s Dream and transformed the building with real trees and plants, generously lent to them by Cowells Garden Centre (the trees were especially lovely). Fairies appeared here, there and everywhere.
There were magical chocolate delights and cakes pretty enough to satisfy Titania herself, and the opportunity to be photographed as a fairy (with a prize for such selfies shared online). In the yard outside, visitors could paint a fairy door by the Muddy Fingers Pottery and watch it being fired using the raku method to create a magical transformation. In the gallery, there were exquisitely folded paper leaves upon which we were invited to write a love sonnet and pin it on Titania’s tree.
I returned to The Cycle Hub to relax with a smooth cappuccino as I tweeted about the Mushroom Works, checked out the new Ouseburn Futures banner, and enjoyed being amongst a relaxed, happy crowd.
On the second night of The Late Shows in Ouseburn, I passed stormtroopers guarding Ernest and a waft of Afro-Caribbean spice from the café at The Tower. I joined Theresa Easton in the Ouseburn Farm yard where she was giving people the opportunity to try printing and to tell them about the Ouseburn Community Art project. We had a lovely space, with the friendly Under the Bridge workshop people showing their painted recycled furniture in the room next to us. We were surrounded by activities including learning how to start growing a plant, petting the pets, and face painting (as well as the farm animals to see). We could hear swing music and smell food from the café upstairs.
I took 3 of my linocuts with me – a cockerel, hen and a goat based on real ones in Ouseburn Farm – and Theresa had one done by the project group of another of the Farm’s goats.
It was great fun to talk to people and to see which linocut they chose to print. It was the first time that I had seen these linocuts printed on a press. Both children and adults tried printing, and sometimes parents had a go whilst waiting for their children who were with the animals. Seeing the sheer delight on a child’s face as she lifted the paper off one of my linocuts and saw what she had printed was lovely and unexpected.
Ouseburn is a wonderful place, and on occasions such as The Late Shows it is truly magical. The 2014 Late Shows there were probably the best yet, with a sense of warmth and sharing wonderful things. Thank you very much to all those whose hard work made it such an enjoyable weekend and put all those smiles on people’s faces.
There were lots of other places in Ouseburn that I didn’t have time to visit but other people mentioned as enjoying, including: 36 Lime Street, Biscuit Factory, Northern Print, the Cumberland Arms, The Holy Biscuit.
The next big event in Ouseburn is Evolution Emerging.
I realised that I have mostly blogged on my art blog in recent months, and appear not to be blogging as much (although I am) because over time I add to a single post about a painting, rather than a new post for each day I do something. Kate Bentham then set the [entirely optional] theme for Week 19 2014 of WeeklyBlogClub as colour. I wondered if I could blog a rainbow…
One of the last set of paintings I did, around winter 2008-09. Street dancer, oil on canvas. © Janet E Davis.
I have suffered from artist’s block since February 2009.
It’s not a total block. I first channelled my creative impulse into taking photographs. Taking my DSLR for a walk got me out of the house during a period when difficulty in breathing made walking even short distances hard work. I took about 20,000 photographs, some of them bad or accidental ones, some average in a snapshotty way, and some that when I see them again make me think “Oh! Did I really take that?” (in a positively surprised way).
Spillers Quay (link to Ouseburn Walk October 2013).
I first had a camera of my own, a Kodak Instamatic, when I was about 8 years old. I was formally taught a bit about photography as an art student in my late teens, but not the more technical, commercial photography things such as how to use lights in a studio. I use photography in different ways at different times. 20 years ago, I tended to use it instead of sketching to capture material for landscape paintings. Since 2009, I have used it more as a method for capturing a visual impression of an event or experience (usually in a set or several sets of photos), or to create a single picture of something (usually a landscape or detail of an urban landscape).
Then on 1st January 2013, I found I couldn’t focus my beloved DSLR even manually so couldn’t take photos with it. I have taken snaps with the 2 MP camera in my iPod Touch (with probably scratched lens cover) or the 3 MP camera in my old 3GS iPhone which creates a pinkish cast in the middle of the photo and a greenish cast on the outer area of it. I find it very frustrating, especially when I have seen pictures that I could only get with a telephoto lens and the manual settings of a DSLR, eg swans squabbling on a golden river at sunset.
Life drawing week 1, 20-minute pose. © Janet E Davis.
At times since 2009 I have tried to draw. I can draw when I’m in a studio and have other people around me who are drawing. The smell of a proper studio helps to get me into a drawing frame of mind. The scents include white spirit, oil paints, linseed oil, quite freshly-sawn wood, plaster of Paris. When I could afford to, I went to life drawing sessions. I enjoyed doing that and would love to do more. You can see what I did on the life drawing pages of this blog.
More recently, I have attended art classes at the Hatton Gallery to try to kick-start myself into painting (posts about that are on my art blog). I like drawing in art galleries. The Hatton Gallery has a particular significance for me because my art teacher at school would have been there when he was an undergraduate, and I think he would have drawn and painted in that building (I think he also worked in another building at some stage). I have found it quite reassuring, probably because it evokes distant memories of someone who encouraged me to draw and seemed to believe that I had some ability even when I was just 11 years old.
Going to the art classes has meant I have seen exhibitions that I wouldn’t have made the effort to see otherwise. Looking at work in one of the exhibitions has been part of the classes which, as an art historian, I really appreciate. I have been drawing things that I wouldn’t be able to elsewhere or wouldn’t think of drawing. I wish the sessions were 30 minutes longer, or that I had somewhere else to go where I could draw in the same space as others for a half-day or a day.
Exercise in tone.
We have also done drawing exercises in the art classes that make me think I should try different ways of mark-making. I want to do more expressive drawings. There are so many different kinds of drawings that I haven’t done yet but I think that I need to draw daily to start feeling sufficient confidence to be expressive. Drawing is a way of looking at things, not necessarily a process that is about an outcome. It can also be an essential part of the process of painting, but even when it isn’t obvious, it helps in the mark-making of painting.
I could blame my inability to get on with painting as a “lack of inspiration,” but I don’t believe in the myth of the artist struck by the coup de foudre of inspiration. Some people think that they need to be in a specific mood to create but I think it’s possible to create in most moods. Music, some space, time, and materials should be all I need. So, why am I unable to focus and get into painting again? What is the block?
The cost of materials makes me anxious. I won’t be able to afford more paint once I have used up what I have, unless I sell some pictures. Part of it is fearing that I won’t produce something really original. Part of it is doubting my skills, now my joints don’t work as well and object to strains and stresses. I think that I fear that I have no ideas or thoughts worth communicating to others. I fear not being able to communicate my ideas effectively, butI also fear being able to express thoughts and feelings effectively. I feel a need to produce work that others will like, but am disturbed by the idea that any of my work is saleable, as if that makes it less ‘genuine.’ It may be avoiding overtly difficult subject matter (although sometimes that is very quietly included, but not so that viewers would notice), but there are always thoughts and ideas in everything I do. The still lives might have been about colour relationships and compositions – and have always been about time. The landscapes have always had a sense of the specific place and time, but also the history of that place.
I am not sure what subject to paint. I would like to go back to painting people because people are interesting, and I’m aware that I look at them in a very different way to how I did when I was 20 or even 5 years ago. Since I don’t have that opportunity currently, I need to rediscover my fascination with landscapes or to find the life in still life compositions again. I just need to get past this block. It feels like granite but can probably be demolished as if it were polystyrene, if I can just find the right way. I can’t go through another year of not painting.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog – which, of course, are of most interest to me, but you might find the fireworks animation based on the stats, and the comparisons with things, vaguely amusing… Thank you very much for reading – and I will endeavour to blog more regularly in 2014.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,300 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.
‘Life’ on a wet night
I can’t remember when I first thought that I would write a book. I vaguely remember making tiny pretend books from paper when playing libraries as a child (it was only one of the make believe games which also included exploring jungles and other wild places, and flying around the universe in my one-girl-and-a-cat-sized spaceship). The idea of writing a book seems to have been in my head always, so why have I not yet written one?
I have written lots of words over the years since I first started to write (my mother says I wrote on any white/pale surface when I began to write, including the white leatherette banquette they put in the kitchen). I have written lots of letters, some over 50 pages long (mostly full of complete nonsense). I have written reports, one or two of which have been book length (I usually try to keep reports very concise). I have written a dissertation on 20th century sculpture (not book length) and a thesis on Luke Fildes and British 19th century social realism (short book length).
I tried to start writing a novel in my teens. I never got beyond a few words. I tried writing romantic fiction in my early 20s but I was motivated more by the possibility of making money than romance, and within three paragraphs usually had reverted to a realism that twisted the romance into satire.
Some years later, 20 or 30 handwritten pages into writing a satirical novel set in the British heritage world, I concluded that I was probably too close to reality and would risk being prosecuted for libel so stopped. The trouble was that when I tried exaggerating to the level of obvious humour, I kept hearing of real life events that went beyond what I had imagined. Then I was made redundant, and became immersed in art history and then history research and writing for most of the next few years.
The next two attempts were a story set in the archaeology world, and then a detective story taking place mostly in a museum.
So what still stops me from writing that novel?
Possibly it’s a similar problem to the one that has been stopping me from painting. I probably fear that people will say it’s rubbish, or simply dull. I don’t aspire to producing great literature, just a narrative that is good enough for people to read till the end, feel that they haven’t completely wasted a few hours of their lives, and that they might want to read another by the same author.
I hesitate to write with passion (a lecturer’s comment on an essay on film noir praised my ‘cool and detached but impassioned’ style). I tend to think a lot of what I’ve ever written is embarrassingly bad, but I try to allow for the fact that I may be over-critical of my own work. More than that, I probably fear to express things that might cause people to think there’s something dark or wild beyond my polite exterior.
Then there is the question of genre and subject… a voice in my head keeps saying ‘you’re supposed to use your life experience as material.’ The older I get, the less I think know about life, and people. I still don’t understand people. So, how can I write a novel?
Of course, I could write something factual. There was a historical biography I intended writing but someone else covered some of the ideas after I discussed them. I probably wouldn’t have found a publisher interested in that subject tackled by an unknown writer anyway. Almost 10 years later, I think it’s probably even more difficult to get a factual book published, and since I can’t afford the fees for the illustrations, publishing it myself would be impossible at present.
So, I write micro fiction on a micro blog most days (see @130story – follow and join in). I write blogs. I write emails sometimes. I write minutes of meetings. Very occasionally, I write letters. And most of the time, it feels like I am just littering the world with more words that nobody wants, rather than communicating thoughts and ideas.
Maybe it’s time to give up the idea of writing a book…
I saw this work by accident.
I went out to a summer festival. I wasn’t sure if it were the EATng Festival or the One Show Summer Festival. When I changed buses, I had to wait a long time. When it came, the driver told me that he wouldn’t be stopping at the Baltic Mill (where I wanted to go) due to the One Show Festival closing the road along which the bus normally goes. It was a day when I couldn’t walk very far so I decided to see what was at or around the Sage.
I found some new art at the CoMusica Arches behind the Sage. I tried to take photos on my old compact camera (I do miss my DSLR a lot), but it wouldn’t work properly and freaked out totally at the high contrasts.
The next piece made me smile, and I vaguely recognised the style. I discovered later it’s by IDa4 (aka Chris Fleming – more info including interviews are on his G+ page) and that I recognised the style from ‘Heaton,’ a piece that enlivens a boarded-up building by a roundabout. He’s doing a project called ‘Europe’ that sounds interesting. Maybe you can help?
I wish I could do street art – or indoor art – on this scale.
Reading What I Lack by Robert Brook this morning, in which he considers “social aspects of character,” reminded me that one of the important things that I lack much of the time is people, in a face-to-face contact with people way. It also connected with what a couple of other people had said recently about social circles and cliques, so it seemed time to think and write a little on the topic.
I have spent far too much time in solitude during the past 10 years or more, either because of work or illness (or both, at times). Occasionally, people have commented in recent years that I spend far too much time online and not enough time offline, not understanding that my main means of being in contact with people is through being online. It has not been unusual for a week or a fortnight to pass without my having a face-to-face conversation with anyone that goes beyond a perfunctory ‘warm/wet/cold weather for the time of year.’ Most of my work has been online, creating online resources, and/or collaborating with others online.
The benefit of solitude is not having anyone to disturb my work or even thinking. I have space to think. I am a creative person, and creative people possibly need space to think in order to create. I also need the stimulation of other people. The work that I do is, directly or indirectly, about communicating information and ideas to people. I need to communicate with people even to find out the best ways of communicating with them, and what they might want or need to know. Working in complete solitude for too long, one can become far too inwardly-focused and to have a purely internal dialogue, using language and logic that makes no sense to others once it is revealed to them.
When I travelled regularly and had an office elsewhere, I often had conversations with fellow travellers or in cafés at lunchtime. These were often people who would not feel that they could make their views known in the public sphere. Sometimes, they would reflect at the end of a conversation that they had never told their story or views on a specific issue to someone before.
Occasionally, there have been some who were only too pleased to tell anyone who would listen what their views were. Once, a man on a train could not wait to tell me what he thought about asylum seekers and Europeans coming to the UK to work, and about those claiming benefits. He regretted it as I politely and but firmly challenged his misinformed prejudices with some facts, and went to stand by the door for 20 minutes in his anxiety to ensure he was able to get off that train.
Most discussions have been friendly, however. It is a wonderfully random way of obtaining views and getting a feel for what might be useful or interesting to a broader range of people. It breaks through the usual social circles.
Circles caused by hail in rock pool
I first recognised the existence of social circles at primary school, when I was 5 years old. Although I did not belong to them, I seemed to be welcome enough to ‘visit’ each, but if one belonged, one had to declare oneself as not part of the other circles and not play with those children.
Later on, I found that there were inner circles within circles, and that some circles could be cliques that seemed to be more deliberate in excluding those who did not belong. I saw myself as outside of the circles when I was an undergraduate, only to discover years later that some had seen me as being in the centre of an inner circle and themselves as the outsiders who could not get into the circle. The same happened at work later on. At some point, whilst browsing in a library, I came across something that CS Lewis had written and delivered as a speech in 1944 that explains this phenomenon more eloquently than I can.
The circle cannot have from within the charm it had from outside. By the very act of admitting you it has lost its magic.
Once the first novelty is worn off, the members of this circle will be no more interesting than your old friends. Why should they be? You were not looking for virtue or kindness or loyalty or humour or learning or wit or any of the things that can really be enjoyed. You merely wanted to be “in.” And that is a pleasure that cannot last. As soon as your new associates have been staled to you by custom, you will be looking for another Ring. The rainbow’s end will still be ahead of you. The old ring will now be only the drab background for your endeavor to enter the new one.
And you will always find them hard to enter, for a reason you very well know. You yourself, once you are in, want to make it hard for the next entrant, just as those who are already in made it hard for you. Naturally. In any wholesome group of people which holds together for a good purpose, the exclusions are in a sense accidental. Three or four people who are together for the sake of some piece of work exclude others because there is work only for so many or because the others can’t in fact do it. Your little musical group limits its numbers because the rooms they meet in are only so big. But your genuine Inner Ring exists for exclusion. There’d be no fun if there were no outsiders. The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence.
The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain…
CS Lewis, ‘The Inner Ring,’ the Memorial Lecture at King’s College, University of London, 1944.
Working on my own, it is difficult to be part of a circle that is a work community one. Friends living in the same city or region from college days and workplaces have disappeared over time as they moved to jobs elsewhere or my work was based elsewhere, and we lost contact. Social media allows me to take part a little, however, and to build new networks. Not having been in a specific job a lot of the time (due to illness) has given me more freedom to chat to people simply because they appear interesting. I tend to do this mostly, but not exclusively, on Twitter these days. I belong to around three dozen discussion lists but rarely get involved in discussions there now, but they are part of the tools that enabled me to connect with people online over the past 15 to 18 years.
If you have used Google Plus (aka G+), you will be aware that it provides Circles to which one can add people and then choose to communicate with everybody who cares to look at you page or only with specific circles or individuals. Although I rarely G+, I did set up a lot of Circles on my first account and am in other people’s Circles. On Twitter, I use Lists to group together people and organisations that have something in common, especially if I think others might find them useful to discover more people in a particular interest group. I often put people in more than one List.
Although some could perceive the use of specific hashtags as signifying the boundary of a clique’s discussion, the way in which Twitter works can break down the more obvious boundaries because the conversation is overt. Sometimes people apologise for joining in on a Twitter conversation, although I always regard any open conversation as one that anyone else can join, as long as their intention is not merely to abuse or insult. I remember having to encourage someone to make a comment to someone they perceived as too high up in the sector’s hierarchy for them to address. I have to admit that in offline society, I am equally likely to consider that I can speak to people regardless of their position (although I recognise that the higher they are, the less time they will have for any one individual beyond their closest circle due to so many wishing to speak to them).
So when I became aware recently that some people think that there are cliques on Twitter to which some could not belong, it reminded me of CS Lewis’s circles or rings, and I wondered why I didn’t see a clique where someone else did. The first thing I realised was that I had met face-to-face many of the most noticeable people in the groups perceived as cliques. The second thing was that I know certain people do meet each other regularly because they are based in the same region or meet regularly at events. Those that seem to connect most are within relatively easy travelling distance of London. Thirdly, I don’t remember ever feeling excluded from their discussions about issues in which I’m interested.
I suppose some might regard Weekly Blog Club as a clique. There are certain people who blog regularly, and some who have been with us from the very beginning but who do not blog so frequently, and there are those who read but don’t write. I have always thought of it as being an open thing. It came out of a conversation in ‘public’ between Dan Slee, Sarah Lay and me. Dan came up with the name of the hashtag. I set up a Twitter account and the blog. Sarah wrote the very first post. It grew out of a sense of community, and has developed its own community that connects in with other communities, online and offline.
There are cliques online, including on Twitter, but they seem to be less common than circles. A few years ago, I used to worry when I felt excluded from one or two but realised that it was just because one or two in a group hadn’t liked my disagreeing with them or something I had stated, rather than being shunned by a whole group. I don’t have to agree with absolutely everything someone else thinks in order to be friendly with them. It would be a very boring world if we always agreed with everyone else on everything.
I see the difference between cliques and social circles as where people are looking (when I was an undergraduate, the question of “the gaze” was a key one in art history): in cliques, they gaze inwardly and only at each other; in circles, people’s gaze is outward as well as inward. The clique seeks to exclude whilst the circle is open to expanding to any who want to join it. I like the fact that social media opens up groups that might have become cliques in the past and enables them to be circles. Simply being yourself, treating others with respect, contributing to a circle’s discussions and work can be enough to get into most social circles in the online world.
Do join in some circles. Share your thoughts, contribute, and encourage others to join you.
Janet's Jottings 