The Jar Project

I recieved my jar to partake in the Jar Project and decided as the theme was to fill the jar with stories I would fill it with my memory sketches which I've been putting down over the last couple of months. It's a tree of wee me to almost adult. Fiddly to say the least but seems appropriate to have a contained home for them all. The exhibition of all 200 jars will be at Brooklyn Art Library later on this Spring, wish I could make it over the pond Flat Stanley style with the jar!

http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/thejarproject

A memory a day - 41 - Shyness is nice.....

17 years old, attending Norwich City College supposedly to educate myself in the joys of Psychology and Sociology. The reality was a smoke filled F-Block. Hugely fond memories of great friends made and it could be seen as a sociological education in some respects! I learnt nothing academic but had a great time drinking tea and smoking cherry menthol tobacco. Ask by The Smiths always reminds me of this time due to it being the top song on the old 80s nicotine stained Jukebox hanging off the wall and the song I put on most frequently. Everything But The Girl was saved for when you crashed and burned because you made the mistake of asking!

A memory a day - 40 - Lighting up Linate

About 16/17 at Linate Airport, Milan about to board the plane back home after spending time at my dads in Italy. I've already by this point been told I should scrub my fully gothed up face, been called Bustina Gob Vomit and asked why the hell I should be dressing for a funeral by a very unhappy with my teenage style choices, father!

I naively couldn't see what on earth the problem would be with taking my bullet belts and gun lighter through customs. In hindsight it isn't so surprising that officers were horrified and that lovely lighter never did make it to Blighty

A memory a day - 39 - Jangling and Dangling

Around 16 a friend and I would climb up the ladder on the back of St Andrews Hall in Norwich and wobble around on the roof ending up leaning over the edge watching the world beneath go by and all the goths hanging out outside what was the Red Lion (now the doghouse). It gives me palpitations just thinking about it! Particularly as we probably would be sharing a bottle of cider up there teetering over the edge of a 100ft drop. Urghh. We would also of course have at least 25 bracelets on each arm as this was de riguer for the minigothlets that we were at the time, jingle jangle!

Doodling with your eyes shut

Was lovely to switch the brain off for 5 minutes shut your eyes and let the pencil take over the paper. A little mini task I did that was in Digital Arts Mag set by the fabulous Jon Burgerman. Just wondering now who all these little beasties are!

A memory a day - 38 - The Blue Paint Party

In the fourth year at school so about 15 and my ma astoundingly agrees I can have a party. I was pretty square at that time so no one thought anything would go wrong! We're thinking a few videos which I hire out, bowls of popcorn, some punch. My mum was to be in her studio working all evening. Not many hours later no videos have been watched, popcorn and pineapple cheese sticks are trampled into the cork tiles of the kitchen floor but worst of all gatecrashers have found my mums store of silk screen printing dyes and poured them all over the carpets and the walls! Absolute nightmare, my poor poor mother was devastated and certainly screamed everyone out of the house pretty sharpish! It never came out of the carpets which had to be replaced. Oh dear. sorry mum (again!)

National Doodle Day

It's national doodle day today so why not switch off your brain for ten minutes and scare yourself with the insides of your head!

(click on the image to zoom in)

A memory a day - 37 - Living with The Archers

This is where my mum would always be found when I was a child. (I resisted the urge to put a the roll up hanging out of her mouth which was also a permanent attachment at the time!)In her studio lost in amongst the Archers on Radio 4, a luke warm cup of earl grey and a hairdryer blasting out to dry the inks on her silk printing screens. The most intricately beautiful artwork you can imagine. In contrast to the vibrant work she was painstakingly poring over she was always dressed from head to toe in black. She'd also be wearing about 5 belts and a vest over the top of a tight black lycra dress. (I think it was an 80s thing!) She was and still is incredibly stylish and even wears a touch of colour on occasion these days! Love you mum x

The Full English Breakfast

This is an illustration for They Draw and They Cook. As approved by The Fry Up Inspector!!
You can see the bigger version on the site - here.

A memory a day - 36 - Paradise Wrecked

Still on the same trip(about 13 years old). Now in Beira, Mozambique on the beach, a most beautiful white sandy beach with the eery prescence of the murky orange rusty shipwrecks. Apparently left from the civil war and some have even been especially kept to provide a breakwater!

A memory a day - 35 - Beira bulldog

This is the same summer trip. This is the road to Beira, Mozambique. A road full of potholes proving for quite a bumpy ride. The kids by the road were playing a game of run in the road, lie down in front of the approaching car, scare the living hell out of the now ashen driver I imagine and then get up and run off as quickly as you could before you got runover! It was certainly causing much amusement by the side of the road, not so much inside the jeep though...

A memory a day - 34 - Punch Drunk

13 years old, my first encounter with alcohol.

My dad had taken me to stay with friends on a trip back to Zimbabwe. I have lots of beautiful memories of this summer but one of the least exotic but vivid is that of having my first gut churning, head crushing and somewhat anxiety inducing hangover!

I laid in bed at said friends house feeling seasick wondering how I had come to wake up on a ship in the roughest of seas and then recalled a gargantuan bowl of scrumptious red juice, full of fruit and what turned out to be rum and feeling a strange confidence for a shy child gleefully chatting with strangers. That confidence soon turns to mortifying embarrassment overnight! Didn't try that again for a while! (not that any of it felt any different at any other point in my life!!)

A memory a day - 33 - Sweet smelling yellow bellies

I've been working with students lately who are looking at Penguin Book Design and it reminded me of the English Bookshop in Milan where as a child staying with my pa he would buy me secondhand Penguins. Perry Mason tales with sweet smelling yellow bellies and green tatty coats. I suspect the penguins on these editions were those of Tschichold rather than the oh so cute and animated ones of Young but they had still seen lots of pairs of eyes! I don't think I'd have the same colourful memories if I'd read these from a kindle! Long live lovingly worn old mildewy books.

I was suprised to find you can in fact give your kindle a spray with this! Eek!

A memory a day - 32 - Nan

This is my Nan. She was actually my dad's nan, so my great nan. She was a beautiful old soul. When I was around 7 or 8 we would visit her in Withernsea, just North of Hull. I'd go swimming in the brown north sea at freezing temperatures and then we'd trudge back to Nans back through the beachfront towers, turning a corner to see a towering lighthouse, then bathed in the warmth of Nans dining room sat at the table for her most delicious bean and potato stew probably followed by a mug of Horlicks. Nan's husband Cliff would be in an armchair by the fire throughout this experience sleeping, cribbaging or generally observing the world at large. I'm not sure he ever left that chair!

The back room was filled with games and books and boxes of craft making goodies. Heaven for a child with such a love for stationary and making things. But most importantly Nan kept the most stunningly magical garden of flowers and vegetables I have ever seen. Although my memories of the seafront are all of cloudy chilly days shivering in a towel, all the memories of nans back garden are of brilliant sunshine and vibrant flowers typifying any persons dream of an English Garden with a touch of the land of Oz.

It was also nan who told me that the furry leaved plants were rabbits ears leading to many scary thoughts of earless bunnies in the undergrowth for quite some time!

Flamingo Valentine

I am crazy busy beyond all belief this week so a memory a day will resume next week. In the meantime happy Valentines day in advance! If you think Valentines is a bucket of tosh well here's a pretty flamingo, there is always time for flamingos!

A memory a day - 31 - Sore Bottoms and Humongous Hairdos

A little unbalanced this one but so were those ladies so nevermind. When I was about 10 or maybe younger (sorry going back a couple of years from the last one) my dad looked after a friends studio for a few months while he was away. It was an amazing studio in Mile End, London, a vast space in a converted warehouse. The thing I loved the most about it was the hammock that went from one end of the studio to the other. I wasn't actually there on the evening of the doodle above but loved the image of it when my dad told me about a party he'd had. Three curvy ladies were enjoying the hammock, round bottoms fitting perfectly, until, wallop the whole thing collapsed and there were three sore bottomed pear shaped lovelies on the floor!

The other wee memory of this period was that dad used the shampoo that belonged to the follically challenged artist who the studio belonged to for the time was there. Dad had a pretty thick full head of hair but after using miracle grow on it for a few months it became a lustrously thick mane of mammoth proportions!

A memory a day - 30 - Toothy terrors

About 12 or 13, braces to straighten rather protruding fangs, which I actually quite like the idea of now! The scariest experience here though was the orthodontist telling me before putting the braces on that he thought I was a prime candidate for a new kind of teeth straightening where they would pull all my teeth out, straighten them and then put them back in. I completely believed him so after many gummy nightmares I was a quivering wreck upon going back for the next appointment where thankfully he just glued some rather ugly lumps of metal track to my teeth instead.

A memory a day - 29 - Basta Pasta eatza Pizza!

Still around the same age discovering Italian food for the first time. Not gourmet delights just yet but proper Italian Pizza Napoletana with Anchovies, crusty bread with every meal and Tartufo for afters! I couldn't wait to introduce my wee boy to Tartufo's when I took him over for the first time. It's just a chocolate ice cream with crunchy chocolate powder on the top but this was a proper treat for me as a nipper. At home with my mum in England pudding was fruit (fruit!!) and fizzy pop in the fridge was unheard of. Mum called the water in the taps council pop. Not that I mind now, she was looking after my health as all good mums should! And I actually rather like fruit nowadays....

A memory a day - 28 - Coke Can Car Keys

When I was about 12 years old we had a fabulous summer driving from Italy over to Portugal where we stayed at a house a few miles from the beautiful Algarve coastline with my Grandfather, his wife and their sons(my uncles). A fabulous villa it was, in the middle of nowhere with an outdoor pizza oven to cook the dinner in, lizards running up the stone walls and ruins nearby. My uncles were my age and youger (my Grandfather remarried) and when we discovered that pooin rhymmed with ruin we took great delight in singing this song everytime anyone went near it. Oh the hilarity! Pffff.

Anyway, dad lost the one and only set of car keys we had on the beach in the sand, we searched and searched to no avail. Upon telling a local farmer this he was convinced he could handcraft us one from a coke can. He did indeed make a beautiful key from said can. Alas it didn't work but it's a nice memory none the less!

A memory a day - 27 - Mrs Hagg

My art teacher in the 1st year of secondary school was called Mrs Hagg. And boy she did live up to her name. Uninspiring lessons drawing shoes and bricks. The most excitement there ever was was when a fellow pupil wet herself as she hadn't been allowed to go to the toilet poor girl. I never did particularly well and ended up steering away from art and becoming far more engrossed in sewing and making for quite some time.

My path went from making my own clothes, a job costume making, then embroidery by hand, then digitally. And it was then that I discovered digital art and interactive animation which opened up a whole new world. After an animation degree and an MA in Animation (to my disbelief I got a distinction!) I have come full circle to where I was as a wee child who loved to play with pencils and stationary. Funny how things evolve.... Oh and thanks to Gary my beloved who thought this was a picture of me!!