Monday 24 March 2014

The Jobbing Artist



It is the nature that over my career of thirty plus years, making my living purely from what I make, design and play that makes me think that the term 'Jobbing Artist' best sums it up, it is a career not bound in the garrets of Paris or some other idealised fabrication of the media, but in the realities of getting commissions and completing them so well that I can get another job.  The fact that I take immense pleasure from designing and creating is a bonus.  So the 'Credit Crunch' in 2008 hit artists hard, and maybe public artists the hardest, when jobs are being cut and the word 'cutbacks' shakes us all to the very core, we artists had to think again, redefine how we might make a living in this new 'austere' world, where the pavements aren't paved with gold or public art.  So as the 'Jobbing Artist' I have recently been working creating pieces for new housing estates, in Trowbridge I have created house numbers, seating, tree guards and grills, railings, slate diamond for exterior of houses and a bronze trail along the pavement.  This has led to more house numbers and in the West Midlands if planning permission is approved I will be carving 78 oak house numbers.  So the 'Jobbing Artist' lives on, maybe not with as much money as before and maybe with more variation of scheming, the honey pot of public art is no more and we are left to live on our wits, using our talents and imagination to forge a new future for ourselves.

Thursday 13 March 2014

The Triolin makes an entrance





I was visiting my friend Jessica Curry and thought I should take a gift, she is a musician of outstanding ability, a composer and winner of many awards so this was never going to be easy, but I thought she might like a little three stringed instrument so I made the Triolin and played it, oh my this sounded good.
I gave her the little instrument and she loved it, but of course I couldn't leave it there, so upon returning home I had to make myself one.
These little fellas are fabulous and for the SAW weeks in October when I will have my studio open I think I might make quite a few, which will be for sale.
These are made of oak, charred and measure 700 x 65 x 50 mm, if you fancy one let me know and I will dicuss prices and what tuning you would like, Jess's is tuned to A D C and the little black thing you can see is a movable bridge, so of course you can change the tuning!