Textile pattern and Girard

I have always been really interested in pattern, especially when it hand finished or woven textile. Those garish and hideously kich train/tube/bus seat covers really ignited triggered a reaction in me from an early age and I have a fondness for them. Embarrassingly, although I've always wanted one I have never compiled a series of reference photos documenting the different colour swatches and patterns of transport seating. I could see myself getting really into an ongoing project like that. taking the longer way round because i want to ride the obscure line which has the most interesting seat patterns, the awkward looks I'd get from passengers as they watch me photographing empty seats on the night bus. in my experience the lowly mini bus or coach often have the most "out-there" designs, looking like a kind of generic woven lsd experience, if there is such a thing. I came across the textile work of Alexander Girard recently and he really does pattern fabric properly..

I can see now that clearly a great deal of the seat designs I've enjoyed over the years have been greatly influenced by this 60's legend. Always bold and crisp in definition with a highly vivid colour palette girard represents the zenith of patterned fabric design for me.

Edutainment

I was really enjoying this public information cartoon from the 50's which gave information about nuclear fallout and what to do in case of an attack. I find the modernist American animation from this period very endearing and pleasant to watch. A simillar feel to Hannah Barberra's The Jetsons or Flintstones. It's interesting and quite surreal seeing something as serious as a fallout infomercial during the cold war being broadcast to the adult population in the medium of cartoon, almost satirical. Certainly cant see that happening today, at least in such a light manner. However it does work quite effectively by getting the information across plainly and simplisticly, which i guess in the scenario is what you'd want. There is a lot of old footage from this time where anything from sex education to safety videos.

I've included an example below

The impact society has on advertising

It has been said that there is no truer representation and social documentation of a particular time period than by looking at advertising from the time. It can be very enlightening as to what the fears/values were of the time. In order to hi-light this as much as possible It's interesting to look at a long standing corporate giant like Coca-Cola and compare its two ads with 50 years difference. The first ad, launched in the 50's depicts a young modern housewife taking a break from housework in order to enjoy "the pause that refreshes" with her coke. Notice key features which have been deliberately drawn into the scene like the the new icebox and vacuum cleaner showing this is the successful modern wife who can afford these luxuries. i also find it hilarious that the tag line and paragraph refer to a break from cleaning the house which coke would never dream of including in a campaign today.

The second advertisement is from 2006 and depicts a kind of fictional wonderland in which everything stems around coke. Notice how it is deliberately asexual in order not to alienate any party. If they are going to get gender specific nowadays they have to categorise it with an entirely separate drink eg diet coke (female) coke zero (male) which each gets specifically targeted ad campaigns made for it. Sticking with regular Coke, this ad has no emphasis on anything really other than a kind of light hearted fun filled land in which there are no problems and everyone enjoys coke. a lot of advertising seems to be going down this route at the moment and i'm not really rating it.

on a purely artwork and no concept basis the 50's one still wins hands down, this happy computer graphics stuff is rubbish.

Old and new processes with Reid Miles

I'm really interested and inspired by the work of Reid Miles who was behind much of the blue note jazz record sleeves. To me, the graphics feel like they have been stripped down of anything that is unnecessary to the design, casting away that which was cluttered. His works are models for composition and have an overwhelming cleanliness and clarity about them. Strong, bold geometric shapes give a head nod to modernism, kept within a restricted colour palette of usually an off white, black and signature colour. In a search for brevity his works have a consciously understated design ethos which focuses more on the functionality ( i.e relaying the information on the sleeve) and how to design that in the most simplistic and aesthetically pleasing way possible. This way of thinking is a staple ethos in modern graphic design, with many designers work being so reductive that literally nothing other than the bare information is included in their wholly functional practice. The admirable part of it is that although in our lives we are saturated with images including clean lines, bold shapes and perfect circles of course at this point there was no computer aided design and this work was all produced by hand. This gives it an entirely more credible nature because its creation and execution is so laboured, precise and ultimately, skilled. Compared to the very little time it would take you to knock out a tacky pastiche of his work on photoshop.

Large scale commercial painters

The Ritual Project - start to finish from Jon on Vimeo.

I have a huge respect for artists/craftsmen who work using the traditional method in which they were trained. Hand painted signage/advertisements and letterpress are skilled trades, which are dying out in our society. In these busy 2000 something times it seems we have no time for traditional work of this high level, which is very sad. It is very easy from a corporate viewpoint to renew your workforce in favor of more efficient and modern processes. But I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that the quality and attention to detail grabs our attention as a consumer a hell of a lot more than your standard printed sign or vinyl billboard campaign. The advantage of speed and price that these mass produced campaigns bring bear no relation to the effectiveness that it has on the public, its just easier from their point of view. I think its fantastic that Stella Artois still seem to value the use of artisans by commissioning this series of works in New York, which I'm sure were not cheap. Although expensive I really believe that overall it would have been financially worth their while from the people who actually stop and soak in their surroundings, I'm sure Londoners would appreciate this kind of thing and would love to see more work popping up in our city. A lot of people, including myself, find the bombardment of advertising on us offensive, maybe this is a way we could learn to live with it. At least it is beautiful and gives skilled artists work. But that’s a separate debate.

UP THERE from Jon on Vimeo.

some other shit

After doing my last project i was very interested in pursuing work which incorporated type and slogans. here are some examples taken from recent canvases ive done in which my love of type is driving me to expand and experiment

PERSONAL PROJECT

For my personal project i wanted to focus on something which i felt strongly about, deforestation in my area. I'm not a hippy, or a crusty vegan or anything, i just enjoy nature. I like having it around and being able engage with it. It bothers me to see large areas of forest cut down in areas of outstanding beauty which we have no real right to destroy, they have obviously been here a lot longer than us. I don't have a solution to the problem, and as an artist and a member of society i am actively part of the problem by using a great deal of paper and packaging. but if i was ever in a position where i could do something which would really make a difference i would. anyway, i was finding it hard to find a subject for my painting i was passionate about and this seemed obvious to me as it is very personal.

It's unfortunate i don't have any pictures of the mass logging by industry because they would illustrate my point perfectly...

The extent of some of the damage is quite a powerful sight.

An A3 sketch done in class inspired by the cross section books i used to enjoy as a child. i liked the way that trees show their age with rings in the trunk and how old some trees grow to live. For me, the natural next step was to personify it as an

"Old Timer".

Bit of a weird one..

So this painting was aimed at the folks who seem intent on ruining my local landscape. When thinking about what the painting should say i thought, what statement would i give to them on behalf of me and others who opposed? I wanted it to have a real slogan attached which people would recognise, light hearted yet punchy and serious about my point. So, armed with some bitten floyd lyrics and the usual tongue in cheek attitude which often follows me in my work i arrived at

"HEY! MISTER, LEAVE THEM TREES ALONE!"

i actually bit off a bit more than i could chew with this one as i left it 2 days before the deadline to start and it was a very ambitiously sized canvas, or at least bigger than i'm used to doing. 2 days of pain ensued but overall i feel alright with how it looks. i think the time limit actually made me work harder and i got a lot more done than i would do usually in the time. The finished painting is 16" X 40"