Land of the rising obesity levels

I'm Scottish. So there. Mallow courses through my veins along with Irn Bru. Perhaps not, but I grew up there and its brilliant. Lochs, mountains, castles...

I grew up miles away from that stuff in a new town made of concrete and weird green landscaped hillocks by the side of a dual carriageway.  We did have this. Chocolate, mallow, jam and biscuit. Eaten in that precise order. And of course, most amazing packaging in the world.

After Sunday school my sister and I would, after carefully removing the teacake,  flatten out the wrapper and painstakingly remove every wrinkle (working from the outside to the middle) until left with a super shiny sheet of foil,  curving slightly at the edges. Sometimes we would then mould it or fold it into a shape. Very fiddly.  Not having access to google in 1983 it would mostly be a very limited origami fortune teller. 

Japan meets Scotland -  land of the rising obesity levels.

I'm still obsessed with super fiddly detail and painstaking, high risk creations. Also all things Japanese.

This may be where it all started, so along with the other stuff I haven't finished yet,  I'm going to be making some stuff about it...

The First Big Weekend

I lived in London for 10 years, during which time I listened to much Scottish music on my mini disc player/ipod device on the tube. Trying to cling on to an idea of "Scottishness", I guess...

Arab Strap
Boards of Canada
Belle and Sebastian
The Blue Nile
even a bit of Deacon Blue

This takes me straight back to Dundee, 1996. Its a life I might have been leading had I not buggered off to Art School. Although we did our fair share of drinking and silly stuff there too.

This and the album its from are so badly produced, its actually good and I love those early Belle and Sebastian albums that sound like they were recorded in a church hall (and they were)...

It has been a "Big Weekend" of sorts. I'm up to my eyeballs in life, instead of making right now but I'll be back soon with more art type stuff. I'm getting stuff ready to make some actual pictures for frames at the weekend.

Until then, this could be some sort of 'on hold music'....

For the love of Newtownland

A Valentines card to my hometown

I grew up in a Scottish newtown from age 5 - 18. It was a bizarre place in retrospect.

I love and hate it.

The first of 5 newtowns built in the 1950s, it embodies a utopian dream that the planners and architects had, but also some mistakes made by them in their first go at actualising it.

As Britain's first shopping mall, the original "Town Centre" really was, in my opinion, a building worth looking after.

the Toonie

Look at London's Barbican Centre or Southbank. 

Southbank

Barbican

The Town Centre was built in the wrong place - on a dreich and blustery hill.  Over the years, a series of bad planning decisions have left it crumbling and bookended by Tesco and Asda. The original building is more or less abandoned.

More on this stuff to come...