Time for a load of links again, as usual I’ve been keeping a stack of these.

Art Opportunities And Events

S1 Artspace in Sheffield is hosting its third annual residency. The residency takes place over ten weeks from 19th July – 28th September, to be followed by a solo exhibition in October – November 2008 and the deadline is May 8th, so if you’re interested you’d better apply soon. I can’t apply but it looks like a good opportunity (it’s paid!) and it’s open to both British and international artists.

criticalnetwork is a new resource for UK and Ireland-based artists, activists, art organisations, cultural critics and the public, launched Feb 2007. Their focus is on “critical and contextual art, events and discussion” and you can sign up for a weekly newsletter of opportunities and events.

The Spike Island Open is coming up next weekend. If you’re close to Bristol, the launch party is on Friday 2 May from 6- 9pm with an After Party from 9-11pm. It continues from Saturday 3 – Monday 5 May 11am-6pm. It’s a popular and busy event that’s usually worth a visit and I’ll be there on the Friday evening if anyone wants to meet up. If I have the energy, I may also be hanging out in the Associate Space on the Sunday afternoon but it’s doubtful.

My friend Sarah B is doing some great curating work up in Cheltenham with the meantime project and I believe they’re always looking for interesting proposals.

The Here Shop is looking for amazing original crafters or anyone else who makes fantastic things, to use one of their shop windows on a monthly basis to showcase your works for sale. Email them at shopATthingsfromhere.co.uk or drop in some samples of your work and a plan of what you’d like to do. Click here for pics and a plan of the window.

Other Art Links

A lovely article entitled Art Is Medicine For The Soul

Harry White Design make excellent measuring jugs and I love his million dots print.

Do You Buy Art – an excellent article by artist, Lisa Call (her blog is great btw, you should read it).

Photographer Daniel Sroka, whose beautiful macro work I very much enjoy, has an interesting offer where you can buy a print of a work in progress and later upgrade so you wind up with two prints for the price of one. Cunning.

A celebration of the professional artist by Barney Davey.

Art Found Out is a blog dedicated to “artists who are informed by the world around them or driven by a highly personal artistic vision.” I like this blog but I’d like it even more if it had more entries on a page, having to click back after every entry is a bit annoying. I spotted this amazing looking book called Grandfather’s Envelopes on it – I want a copy of this Japanese book so badly but unfortunately haven’t been able to find any websites in English that sell it.

Advice from Alyson Stanfield on how to get out of an art slump. I need to follow some of this!

A couple from Empty Easel blog – a cheap and easy way to make a paintbrush cleaning jar and 8 Sensible Projects for Artists (I should be doing some of these too!)

Random Stuff

The Anti-Pragmatic Manifesto from the always interesting Cabinet Of Wonders

One for the Firefly fans – a couple of speeches from the film Serenity done in Shakespearean verse. I salute my fellow Browncoats…

An epic failure in packaging from the delightfully silly Fail Blog.

Beckett For Babies made me laugh.

Time for a load of links again, as usual I’ve been keeping a stack of these. Art Opportunities And Events S1 Artspace in Sheffield is hosting its third annual residency....

José Leonilson was a Brazilian artist who died tragically young in 1993. He was only 36 when he died from AIDS, part of that generation of male artists that we lost far too soon.

His work has the sort of quiet melancholy that I always admire.

José Leonilson: 34 with Scars, 1991

I love this piece, especially the indelicate, puckered, slightly haphazard embroidery and the way the fabric is not stretched taut but instead is just hanging loosely on the wall. It’s pretty obvious why I like his work, since it relates quite strongly to my own, particularly my thread drawings:

Kirsty Hall: Parse, 2007

There are correspondences between our respective drawings too – although this small watercolour and ink drawing is more figurative than my style, I could easily imagine it on a Diary Project envelope.

José Leonilson: Desire is a Blue Lake, 1989

I like the emptiness in this drawing, it takes a certain amount of artistic nerve to leave a lot of white space on the page.

José Leonilson was a Brazilian artist who died tragically young in 1993. He was only 36 when he died from AIDS, part of that generation of male artists that we...

It’s about time I got back to some of my more serious articles, so I’m starting a new series about how the internet is changing the economic aspects of the arts.

THE NEW CREATIVE ECONOMY: PART 1
Don’t Sue Your Customers!

The internet has undoubtedly changed how we engage with the arts, particularly in relation to music but also in other forms of creative expression. There’s no question that many sectors of the arts need a new funding model – but suing your customers isn’t it!

Ongoing battles between the entertainment industry and illegal downloaders are contributing to a damaging fall in consumer trust, according to new research from the PR agency Edelman. The number of UK consumers who said they trusted the industry fell from 47% in 2007 to 31% this year, with confidence disturbed by moves by the music industry to track down and punish illegal music copying, and high-profile scandals in broadcasting.
All quotes are from this article in The Guardian by Jemima Kiss.

Ah, the sweet sound of chickens coming home to roost!

The internet can be a disaster or a boon to the arts, it depends on how willing you are to embrace change. If you can see the potential and are willing to engage with your audience online, you can do well. If you resist the online changes and particularly if you treat your customers badly – as the mainstream music companies have been doing for several years now – your customers will return the favour.

Surveying younger consumers aged 18-34, Edelman found that 55% would take “direct action” against a company if they objected to its practices, 53% would share negative opinions with friends and 46% would ignore a firm’s marketing and advertising. Even more damning, a further 39% said they would not invest in those companies.

I’ve been predicting this for years – anyone with half a brain can see what’s happening, except the entrenched and outdated big music companies apparently. If they don’t change, they will die. The only reason they’ve survived as long as they have is that musicians and music consumers didn’t have a choice before but conditions have changed. Musicians are no longer so reliant on record companies to fund, distribute and promote their music; computers and the internet make it cheap and easy to produce and then promote your own music online. In addition, there are now there are new online music companies who use different financial models and who treat both customers and musicians much better:

Magnatune is an ethical record label based on downloading MP3′s. You choose the amount you want to pay and the artists get 50% of the price. You can then legally share your download with three of your friends. This article by John Buckman about why he started Magnatune is well worth reading because it exposes the problems with the traditional record companies.

The Podsafe Music Network is a promotion network that allows podcasters to download music that they can play on their shows for free without restrictive licensing agreements. Links back to the musicians from the podcasts allow listeners to buy music that they hear on podcasts; I’ve done this several times when I’ve heard something that I love.

Independent online record store, CD Baby only sell CD’s that come directly from the artists, who receive a large percentage of the cover price. I recently bought two Amy Steinberg CD’s from them after hearing one of her tracks on a podcast. My CD’s cost about £7, allowing me to return to joy of buying albums on spec, something I used to do a lot as a teenager when music was a more reasonable price than it was in the 90′s. In addition, the emails I got from the company were charming and funny and the CD’s arrived quickly from the States. I’m hugely resistant to buying music from the mainstream record companies because of the way they behave but I’d definitely buy from CD Baby again because they’re cute, well organised and they treat musicians well.

Although prices of CD’s have dropped recently for several reasons, musicians signed to major labels still only get a tiny fraction of the profits and may even lose money on record deals. The mainstream record companies still rip off both customers and musicians and then have the nerve to constantly bitch in the media and sue people. As is now becoming ever more apparent, this is a bad long term strategy.

The question I’ve been asking myself lately is “if I’m willing to buy Fairtrade to ensure producers in the third world are treated fairly, why am I supporting unethical music companies who mistreat musicians by underpaying them and trapping them into restrictive contracts where they often lose the rights to their own music?”

My solution has been to boycott the major record labels whenever possible and buy the music they produce secondhand but this means that the musicians don’t get anything at all, which I’m not happy about. There has to be a better way and hopefully some of these new online music businesses will provide a way forward where everyone is treated fairly, especially the people who make the music in the first place.

Let’s end on a positive note:

…the survey showed 56% of young UK consumers would rather buy legal content, if it was at a reduced price, than download illegally. That compared well with the 27% who refused to pay for content, and the 17% who said they might pay, but could continue to download illegal content as well. Much piracy, this would suggest, is fed by the lack of a legal online alternative.

If the mainstream music companies start treating their artists fairly, stop suing schoolkids, adapt to the changing conditions of their industry and do a lot of grovelling, then they may have a chance to survive. If they don’t, they’re history…

Maybe you’re asking yourself what this has to do with the visual arts, but as my dad says, “everyone’s useful, if nothing else they can always serve as a bad example!”

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It’s about time I got back to some of my more serious articles, so I’m starting a new series about how the internet is changing the economic aspects of the...

Before I went to Australia I was lucky enough to get two You Make My Day awards. The first was from the lovely Cally, who’s been mentioned here several times in the past. The second was from Australian artist, Feed The Dog (check out her gorgeous cushions on Etsy).

Thank you both, I appreciate it and I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to respond.

“You make my day-Award” works like this:
1. Write a post with links to 5 blogs that make me think and/or make my day.
2. Acknowledge the post of the award giver.
3. Display the “You Make my Day Award” logo. (Optional)
4. Tell the award winners that they have won by commenting on their blogs with the news.

So I now need to pass on the favour and give them out to five other people. Not all of these are blogs but they are all sites that I regularly visit and get excited about.

You Make My Day Awards

I’ve written about Suzi Blu before and I’m still a big fan. Her videos make me laugh but they also inspire me to get off my butt and into the studio. I admire her sense of fun, her utter passion about art and creativity and the way she just gets on and does things.

I love Elsa Mora’s quirky style. Elsa is a prolific and dedicated blogger and I admire the commitment and honesty she brings to writing about both her art and her life.

Eliza from Back Yard is to blame for getting me into the 101 Things meme and for that she certainly deserves an award! She’s been quite unwell lately but before appendicitis struck (ow, get better soon Eliza), she was blogging up a storm about her creative process.

Goblins are traditionally the low level bad guys in role playing and video games – just there to be killed for points. Goblins is a wonderful web comic that turns that convention on its head and explores life from their point of view. I once had a dream where I was Queen Of The Goblins, so it makes me happy to see my little guys getting the love they deserve. Funny, poignant, hard hitting and beautifully drawn and written, this comic continually amazes me with its quality. Although it’s far from daily, it always makes my day when a new episode appears and it’s well worth your time to start at the beginning of the archives and catch up with the story so far.

If you’re a knitter, crocheter or otherwise interested in fibre arts and you haven’t signed up for Ravelry yet, you absolutely must. I love it there and spend far too much time on the forums when I should be in my studio (bad, naughty artist!)

So there you go, 5 great places to check out on this lovely Sunday afternoon. I’m suitably inspired: I’m going upstairs to my studio to get cracking with some work – or at least some tidying!

Before I went to Australia I was lucky enough to get two You Make My Day awards. The first was from the lovely Cally, who’s been mentioned here several times...

A couple of weeks ago, I booked myself onto a day-long spindle spinning workshop at Get Knitted, my favourite Bristol yarn store. I’ve wanted to learn to spin for several years, ever since a friend gave me her slightly broken spinning wheel but I didn’t want to spend money getting it fixed until I knew for sure that spinning was something I wanted to pursue. I have to be careful to balance my need to enthusiastically throw myself into new things with keeping a focus on my existing art: I am very easily distracted! However, number 55 on my 101 Things list is Learn to Spin, so when I saw the workshop advertised, I jumped at the chance to do it.

I’ve been feeling very unenthusiastic about my art for months now but this workshop really released my creative juices: I came home this evening ready to get right back into the studio and start making again. There were 9 of us on the course and our teacher was Jen from the hand-dyed yarn company, Fyberspates. Jen got us all spinning with a simple wooden and plastic spindle in an amazingly short time. Spindles are an ancient technology, possibly one of the oldest in the world – apparently in the Middle Ages they sometimes used a stick and a potato if they didn’t have a nice carved wooden spindle to hand! We got to play with wool, alpaca, silk, mohair, linen and even a little bit of cashmere. Just sinking my fingers into all the different types of fibre was an education and it was interesting to see how we all differed in which ones we found easiest to spin.

Kirsty Hall: Mixed Fibres For Spinning

My tiny lumpy balls of yarn don’t look like anything special but to me they’re quite magical because hey, I made yarn! Actual yarn, from fibre – how cool is that? OK, so it’s not very good yarn – a 5 year old medieval child with a potato could probably have made better. It’s extremely uneven, going from thick to thin and back again and some places aren’t twisted enough but I don’t care, it’s a beginning. This is the incredible thing about learning something new; the joy of looking at something that you’ve made with little technical skill but with utter concentration and passion and knowing that you’re back in that humble place of Beginner’s Mind. Every artist should keep feeling their way back to that place; it kicks you out of your complacency and gives you that little skip in your creative spirit that charges you up.

Kirsty Hall: Homespun Yarn & Spindle

A Boring Bit
There’s been a bit of downtime on the site this week because we needed to upgrade WordPress after a possible spambot incursion – so if anyone’s had trouble getting the site to load, that would be why. A couple of things are still a bit funky: the gallery pages aren’t quite right and the blog archives have done a bunk but hopefully we’ll get everything back to normal soon. If you’re very observant, you may also have noticed that we’ve switched on a confirmation box for comments. I’m sorry about this, I know they’re a nuisance but I was getting upwards of 400 spam on the blog every single day and it was driving me absolutely nuts.

A couple of weeks ago, I booked myself onto a day-long spindle spinning workshop at Get Knitted, my favourite Bristol yarn store. I’ve wanted to learn to spin for several...

Sorry, didn’t mean to disappear like that, I was hit by a virus and today is the first day I’ve felt like myself in more than a week.

So, what’s been happening? Well, I bought a new camera with the last of my holiday money and I’m absolutely loving it. It’s a Sony Cybershot DSC-H3 and it’s so much better than my little Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01. When I was in Australia I completely hit the limitations of the Panasonic and was finding it frustrating that I often couldn’t get the shots I wanted because I didn’t have enough zoom.

I’ve also realised that I take a lot of indoor shots and close-ups and while the Panasonic is OK on macro, it sucks in poor light. That’s not to say that the Panasonic is a bad camera: if you want to photograph groups of people outdoors then it’s a great choice. It’s light and small enough to easily carry in a pocket and has a proper wide angle lens, which is unusual in a compact digital of that size and you can even use it underwater if you have a special case for it. I think it’s a nifty little compact; it’s just not a good fit for the kind of photography that I do.

The Sony has 10x zoom compared to the 3.6x of the Panasonic and a noticeably better macro setting. The lens feels like a higher quality to me and I can see the difference in the photos I’m taking. It’s larger and heavier than the Panasonic but still light enough to carry around with me, which is hugely important. I looked at a couple of larger cameras with even better zooms but realised that I would end up leaving them at home half the time. There’s an old photography saying that ‘the best camera is the one you have with you’ and it’s so true.

I don’t have a card for the new camera yet so I’m relying on the internal memory and it can only take 14 images before it’s full. Usually I take as many photos as I want and then decide which ones I like once they’re on my computer screen. I generally only junk images directly from the camera if they’re obviously blurry or bad. But when I went out for a walk today I had to delete quite a few decent photos so that I could take better ones. In a way it was quite freeing because I was having to look at each image and make a conscious positive decision to keep it. When you can only take 14 images, each image has to really work to earn its keep! I can see how this could be an interestingly disciplined way to take photos but I’m still looking forward to my memory card arriving.

OK, that’s enough yakking about the new camera, let’s see what it can actually do…

Kirsty Hall: Sunlit Puddle, Bristol, April 2008

Kirsty Hall: A Watery Window, Bristol, April 2008

Kirsty Hall: Manhole cover, Bristol, April 2008

Sorry, didn’t mean to disappear like that, I was hit by a virus and today is the first day I’ve felt like myself in more than a week. So, what’s...