Artist’s Diary

Tuesday o8 December 2009

After a fantastic series of workshops Paul and Brian met back at Fairbridge North West to complete the Mosaic and clean up the Plaster frieze to make ready for a later exhibition. Photos of these are on the Arts Workshop Pages.

Met Lucy from The Waterways Trust on site at Bridge 51 in Littleborough this afternoon.  Lucy had arranged an on-site meeting with Jerry and Nick both from British Waterways and Chrsitine and Lynne from Rochdale Council to see if there where any rules and regulations we had to follow to make and install our artwork. 

The kinds of questions we had to ask were;

• Who owned the bridge and the wall?
• Who did we have to get permission from to put up the artwork?
• Did we need planning permission from Rochdale Council?  How long would this take?
• How could we put up the artwork if we chose to put it on the big concrete wall over the canal?
• Could we get a work boat to hire or on loan?
• etc…

In our minds we had to try to figure out;

• If the project had enough money to pay for everything we had to do?
• Could we get it all done in the agreed time that we had?  If not could we agree an extention?
• Where would the best place be to put the artwork -We have to weight up the possible effects of vandalsim; materials & fabrication(making) costs;  accessability for installation and of course which site around the bridge will enable the most people to see the artwork?

And we had still had no idea what we wanted to make!!

The drive to and from the meeting was put to good use as it gave Paul and Brian time to share ideas, likes and dislikes, find common ground through discussion and slowly come to understand our different approaches to the project – always one of the most interesting and challenging parts of any project when 2 artists collaborate together.

Wed 13 January 2010

Back again after a HAPPY NEW YEAR.  Paul and I have been developing ideas independantly over the holiday and today we are meeting to reveal all and find some common ground to take forward for our proposal.  Could be easy – could be really hard??

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Meeting went really well.  Threw our ideas into the proverbial melting pot and discovered lots of common ground.  We developed a concept that incorporated elements that we were both happy with and went away to develop them – each with part of the whole to design.

Tuesday 19 January 2010

Received Paul’s design via email and spent some time on photoshop combining his work and my work together into one design.  Looks good – so I’m happy.  Paul’s yet to see it.

Wed 20 January 2010

Task for today is to make appointments with the specialist fabricators we are going to have to work with.  We need to meet with them as soon as possible to find out if our idea can be made a reality.  We need to take guidance from them as to any potential technical difficulties and limitations due to materials so we can incorporate these into our design.  This will ensure cost effective fabrication and a durable, visual effective product.  They will aslo tell us how much it is all going to cost – also very important!