Well, as was inevitable the oasis in the city that is Pomona Island is possibly looking towards the end of its time. I would really rather it not be though.
Developers are, of course eyeing it up for the usual bland mix of flats, shops offices etc. This, myself and lot of others feel would be a tragically wasteful misuse of such a unique green space. In a city like Manchester with a serious lack of open space surely a plan to incorporate this into the plans would be the way forward.
There are a great deal of people in Manchester actively working to make the future of our city a greener more sustainable and habitable one, a chance to properly and thoughtfully utilise this space, or for that matter, anything like it will not come our way again.
Cities all over the world are realising their brownfield sites can have social and ecologically important uses. Just look at the high line in NYC for one. What has been achieved and continues to evolve in NY should be a benchmark in the new urban environment.
What we could do with the space we have in Manchester could really be a paradigm shift.
I would like to see at least a large portion of it retained and used for urban gardening projects, used for educating people on how to grow their own food ( especially when considering the high rates of malnutrition in the area) and crucially these days, bee attracting flowers.
It could become a haven for green initiatives, for land management, animal husbandry and wildlife protection while providing a much needed public place outside the concrete, glass and steel cropping up across the city.
Manchester and Salford people who know, care and write about Pomona include Hayley Flynn of Skyliner, George Haydock, Dr luke Blazejewski, James Walsh , The Manchester Ship Canal Heritage societyand others, all, like myself passionate about the place for reasons of both the preservation of wildlife and the more romantic and purely human ones of having a place to go, to wander, to get away from it all or to sit by the water and watch the birds.
A little video sequence I made, intro dialogue thanks to James Walsh.
A blog post I made a couple of months ago with a bit of different information as well is HERE
In the decades this area has been sitting vacant it has been anything but dormant, it has become a haven for migratory birds each spring, a home to many species of feathered friends, rabbits and importantly, bees. People have naturally taken to it as a walking route from Trafford Road into Castlefield and it has been used on many film and tv productions.
I could wax poetic, ramble on about the injustices and rue the shortsightedness of the developers, the council and the monetary aims of all involved but many have done it better than I.
A superb book was written that in part touches on Pomona, "Edgelands: Journeys Into England's True Wilderness". It is an ode to these wonderful urban spaces, these places neither in nor out of the city but a little bit of both. Right now is a time to act, to tell the powers that be what you think, what your alternatives are and sprout forth new ideas for a new age, we must not allow rampant construction to continue to damage what little green space we have left as in years to come we will wish we had not.
Imagine if places like Whitworth Park did not exist, the foresight of the creator of that saw how important it was to give people such a place and what a place it is. What a place Pomona could become. There is time to register your objection, but not very much, August 5th 2015 is the cut off date so please, let them know you oppose this plan and what your ideas are, if you have never visited Pomona before then why not organise a trip with friends or contact one of the people I referred to above for info on tours, they, like me are there all the time! Or, come to our event on August 1st.
Use THIS document to register your objections, all the information you need is in there. Please do this before August 5th.
A project making sketch/ note books from scrap and left over materials.
Like most artistically inclined people I don't like to throw things out, I think everything has another life, another use and so much of what is thrown away as scrap and waste can be useful. Not to mention the general collecting of stuff that "I might need one day" This can be good but can also lead to amassing a huge amount of stuff. I happen to love paper and cardboard and all that so have collected stacks of it over time, every now and then I have a cull and then a few months ago, inspired by a project a friend of mine did and the fact that I have been making my own notebooks for a long while now I thought I would put all this to good use and came up with the Scrap Book Project.
My aim is to make, by hand out of scraps and left over materials, 1000 notebooks, sketchbooks etc of all different paper styles, shapes and sizes. They are deliberately pretty rough and ready, as the materials dictate really.
It is going to take a long time and I have 15 books made so far, just plugging away at it I calculated that to get it done in three months I will need to make 30 a day... probably best then to not put a deadline on it and get it done when it is done.
The idea is to hold an event during the Big Draw where the books are all put in a huge pile and people are encouraged to take them, draw and write in them and then send me pictures which will all go on a blog. Of course this will probably all change knowing me and it will end up doing something else entirely!
Check back in a year and I might have them finished!!
As part of my Unit X ( this is the main blog, not mine) work for this year I am attempting to collect as many personal stories of the city as I can, this is a city in flux and is changing so fast right now, I think it is important to document the stories of people and what the city means to them or what experiences they have had here as, with so much change there are probably a lot of these experiences that will not happen again.
I will produce a little book if I get enough submissions, not for sale but just for our exhibition so please share this post and your stories.
I have a thing for geometry and have been recently going back to exploring how it is used in artistic applications and there is no end to it, of course Islamic art has presice geometic patterns and these are beautiful, however I tend to like the more random ways it can be applied. I have been playing around with some drawings on paper and in illustrator using the Delauney triangulation and Voronoi diagram ideas, I can not see this ending any time soon. Anyway, here are two drawings I did recently in illustrator based on these idea. If you like this sort of thing and want to see the absolute master of geometric drawing, look no further than this guy
as finished as it's going to get.
here's another one, a work in progress with a long way to go
Work in progress , expanding on the simple on above
a bit more progress
and a few hours later.....
these type of drawings take on a life of their own, they go where they want, that's fine by me.
Many people in Manchester and Salford fondly remember the blue cargo cranes the once stood proudly at the edge of the water front, myself among them. I loved to sit and look and photograph them so the day before and day they were being demolished a took a load of photos and decided to do a little story on JPG magazine, you can read it here if you are interested. http://jpgmag.com/stories/19776
This project just came up on my FB feed and I felt the need to put it somewhere, brag or something... mobile showers for the homeless in San Fransisco... what a simple and incredibly smart idea, one the world needs. They used apiece of my icon design( the transgender or unisex icon I created) that I am very pleased to see in such a context, it was a really heartwarming thing to see so, there that is. Check out their amazing project here
It is mind boggling to believe that this year is at an end... it has flown by. We are having our end of year exhibition in a couple of weeks, I am showing the work I have been doing on my final major project and we'd love a big turnout of fellow art lovers. Come along, bring your friends.. check the event page on facebook for updates and such. There's some pretty exciting work coming together for this!
Postcard and bookmark designs for a fictional poetry festival.
I decided to create two identities based on lines from the poem,"Of Mutability" by Jo Shapcott.
Most of the work was done by initially creating a load of collage and mixed media pieces in response to the poem then working out ways of creating a postcard and bookmark with them using all or part of the original artwork. I did a bit of both and came up with a few different design ideas and concepts, here are a few of the ones I have picked for the final presentation.
The Flying Fish:
I scanned an abstract painting done on a book page then blew it up and pixelated it for the background.
And the Spring Chill:
this was another abstract book page painting I scanned then blew up and pixelated for the background
I did these little paintings and then scanned and blew them up and used pixelated portions for some of the
postcards.
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