successfully synonym: November 2011

Once upon a time a girl with moonlight in her eyes...

Its been a pretty frenetic week or so as we have worked ridiculous hours trying to complete a commission for Eden Court Theatre in the Victorian Market, Inverness. We worked Monday to Friday last week beginning at 5.30pm and working till 2.00am - even 4.00am on Friday morning!

Our brief was to recreate Victorian styled Fairy tales and we gave them a wintry twist with the choice of colours etc. We used a huge amount of stencils and a fair whack of spraypaint - not the kind of thing we could do during the day!

After completing this we were then asked by Highland Council to do a Mail Box for Santa so we were back in yesterday doing that as well - Polar bear and North Pole included!

Definitely can see we are in the Christmas spirit... -FIN

BLOG TITLE
Frank Sinatra - Once Upon A Time
September of my Years (1965)

reade more...

I can't hear you...

Over the last couple of months we have had the privilege of working with two different artists on album artwork.

The first album, The Quiet in the Land, is calamateur's latest and is a beautiful and honest evolution of his past sounds. This is the sixth piece of cover art we have designed for calamateur, and as always it has been an inspirational listen - another great album!

We designed the cover artwork as well as a 13 page album artwork download, with artwork for each track. - AL

For the second album we did a photo-shoot and design work for Dagger & Colin Gordon's new album Like Father / Like Son.

"Arguably Scotland’s leading mandolin player for many years and he’s clearly passed his talent for negotiating strings and frets onto his guitar-playing oldest son, Colin. The pair are captured on this splendidly intimate album playing older Scottish pipe marches, dance tunes and airs, many of them long neglected ... a splendidly intimate album." The Herald

It has been ten years since we last worked with Dagger on his album Frozen River, so it was good working with him again and we look forward to working with him again in 2021 on his next album!

BLOG TITLE

The Dead Weather - I Can't Hear You

Sea of Cowards (2010)

reade more...

ART SANCTUARY RECEIVES SPECIAL PRIZE - AND 1ST PRIZE: 'BIODIVERSITY' !

http://www.lavenir.net/Article/Detail.aspx?articleID=DMF20111126_00083898

ART SANCTUARY receives 1st PRIZE - 'JARDIN FLEURIS 2011'

What a wonderful thing to experience!

In late November...Summer long gone....

The garden itself receiving this prize

- and:

'Special Prize for Biodiversity'!

Apropos:
'A la Sainte-Catherine, chaque arbre prend racine!'

reade more...

There will be no white flag above my door

We were privileged to be part of a very important day for the Polish residents of Invergordon and beyond as they remembered the fallen at the Polish Remembrance Service. A large group of about 150 gathered around the Polish War Memorial and had a short service with full colours and standards from various groups which was incredibly moving to be part of. Sang Psalm 23 in the open air while leaves fell off the trees, birds sang and the sun shined... it was pretty powerful stuff!

Was intrigued by one gentleman in particular called Marek Straczynski who is Scottish president of the Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantów (SPK - or Polish Ex-Servicemen Association) He carried a standard that had come all the way from Porto Allegre in Brazil carried by Polish soldiers in WWI. Took a number of photographs of him and have included a couple below. Also took a few shots using old Polaroid 690 sheet film and thinking of maybe developing a series of these based on the families. The one attached here is a gentleman called Otto Stainke who is well into his 80's now - not that you could tell - we joked with his son Mike "he looks better than you!"

All this is part of our research for Invergordon Off The Wall so it was good for us to meet some of the families who remain in the area - the Stainke's, Malicki's, Symborski's, Majewski's and Zawinki's among others... We look forward to talking to them about there experiences living in the area - a big thanks to Vanda Zawinski and her family in particular for allowing us to be part of the day. -FIN

BLOG TITLE

Dido - White Flag

Life For Rent (2003)

reade more...

I want to make it with you...

Al has mentioned before the joys of our job and the exciting things we sometimes get to do. We had another one of those nights on Monday when we visited the Cross family in Nigg. As part of the Invergordon Off The Wall project we have been carrying on our research phase and did our first real interviews with Sabine and Richard while they prepared food. Sabine made her Fathers recipe for homemade bread ("Daddy's Bread")which he had perfected over a number of years.

While preparing everything she recounted stories about her past growing up in Invergordon as well as the amazing story of her fathers escape from Poland during WWII. Richard made his famous "Honey and Mustard Chicken" which only differed from the recipe on the back of the jar with the addition of red peppers instead of green! Needless to say Sabine's bread was absolutely amazing served warm with butter and her homemade blackcurrant jam... ah, the trials we have to put up with in the name of art!

There is a real flurry of activity here today as we get to the end of the week. Big job starting next week in Inverness and we are busy doing Risk Assessments and Method Statements...all artwork created and both Al and I keen to get started. Imagine we will have a few blogs up in the next few days to keep you all in the loop.

In the meantime a few pics to get your mouth watering... - FIN

BLOG TITLE

Bread - Make it With You

On The Waters (1970)

reade more...

Lonesome Swan

The studio has a buzz about it today. We are gearing up for a large paint job next week in Inverness, and are frantically putting finishing touches to our stencils. We wont give away too much just now, but lets just say we are enjoying reading up on the tales of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm!

Here is a detail of one of our sketches. - AL

BLOG TITLE

Glasvegas - Lonesome Swan

Glasvegas (2008)

reade more...

Burning down the house...

I spent my Saturday with some members of the Northern Cell of Scottish Photographers in Dingwall. It was a surprising breath of fresh air with some really inspiring work on show by the folks there who had come from as far away as Aberdeen.

A mix of work including a series of images shot on a mobile phone on the London Underground, images shot from crumbling WWII bases in Scotland, some interesting pinhole work, handmade books, digital slideshows, images and poetry...very diverse but all inspiring!

I was a touch disorganised and left things till the day before but showed a few prints from work I did for The Big Willow a couple of years ago as well as a selection of travel work on the laptop - really could have done with prints of some of those.

Hoping to maintain contact with some of the guys and maybe meet up again over the winter to talk all things photographic...

Have attached some of the images that were taken over a 2 year period of The Big Willow project (by U.S. artist Patrick Dougherty) from site selection, through growth, construction and ultimately its destruction. A series of 42 images in a portfolio were produced to accompany an exhibition of the work. - FIN

BLOG TITLE

Talking Heads - Burning Down The House

Speaking In Tongues (1983)

reade more...

I keep the wolf from the door...

It's been a few weeks since we updated folks on what we are up to but it's been a busy old time.

We've picked up a couple of interesting commissions that we have began working on.

One of which is for the Victorian Market in collaboration with Eden Court. We have been asked to design and paint a series of panels for the interior of the market for the Winter Festival on the theme of Fairy Tales. These will form the backdrop to a series of live performances by Eden Court. This will be a lot of fun and give us both the chance to read Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson again!

Gingerbread houses, red capes, wolves, apples and brave knights battling to save the damsel in distress...definitely something to look forward to. Here's a wee piece by Gustave Doré to start with - if only we were as talented!

On a separate note, following on from the meeting we had with the Catholic Church as part of our Invergordon Off The Wall project we are meeting with our first couple of "chefs" on Monday to get some recipes and try some food. Not a bad job is it?! Will post some photos of that next week. - FIN

BLOG TITLE
Radiohead - Wolf At The Door
Hail To the Thief (2003)

reade more...

ART SANCTUARY RECEIVES SPECIAL PRIZE!

We are really proud to share this news:
Art Sanctuary receives prize for "Maisons vertes et fleuries 2011" -
This is a prize for the GARDEN - independently of the art exhibited -
in other words; A prize for 'The man who planted all the trees' :)
Official date: November 22, 2011.