Edinburgh Weekend

Time to allow myself the luxury of a weekend in Edinburgh with nothing to do but see some friends and go to the opening of Stephen Bottomley's first retrospective.
I always sleep very well in Edinburgh: I stay with friends and the room in which I sleep overlooks a graveyard! Much needed as the changing clocks, seasons and the travel to and from the US has made my sleeping patterns somewhat messy.

Stephen Bottomley is well-known as the head of Jewellery and Silversmithing at the Edinburgh College of Art. A few years younger than me, he had his first retrospective at the estimable "Scottish Gallery" on Dundas Street and very excellent it is too, with a range of pieces from his twenty years' worth of quiet, calm and focused research-based jewellery, exploring the cutting edge of new technologies, be they in terms of design (CAD), production (CAM) or materials (such as heat-exchange alloys from rockets). It is hard to imagine anyone not connecting with his work: his use of subtle forms, exquisite surfaces and soft colours - often from enamels - make even the large "ruff" pieces most appealing.

Stephen Bottomley talking to a guest at the opening of his retrospective.

The exhibition runs until the 28th of November and is well worth seeing. You can download a copy of the catalogue here.

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I met up with the irrepressible Howie Nicholsby of 21st Century Kilts - someone we are hoping to feature in "Scotland the What?" in November of next year - and spent a few hours ordering a new kilt, as well as discussing art, politics, gourmet pub pies and Alexander McQueen. Anyone visiting Edinburgh should stop by the shop and see what is going on.

Here, he is helping me select a tweed. I decided to go with the one on the top at the front, an organic, hand-woven tweed from Mull. It looks striped but has a very subtle check. I was particularly taken with his jacket, but there wasn't enough of this tweed to make the jacket too. Best thing about the tweed is that they will never produce that particular pattern again: the colours are all natural plant materials or the colour of the wool straight from the sheep and it is lies beautifully between brown and grey.

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The National Portrait Gallery was recently refurbished. A remarkable Victorian Gothic building with some stunning Arts and Crafts murals inside, I've always found this place rather dull. Apart from a few excellent pieces, the majority of the collection is worthy paintings of worthy people...

The library in the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.

 The atrium in the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.

Unfortunately, for all the renovation, it remains what it has always been: dull.

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Finally, a gothic image from outside the shop of one of our other potential exhibitors in "Scotland the What?", Joey-D:

Last Entry from Chicago and Workshop Update

(I'm just back from a weekend in Edinburgh, which is why there was a hiatus.)

The last day in Chicago was one of pure tourism. I woke up very early and as the show opened at 11 am and my airport  shuttle was at 11.30 am, I thought that a walk around the area to see some more of the city would be in order.

Ironworkers amongst you might be interested to see this extraordinary cladding on what is now a "Target" shop:

Then it was back to the hotel, the airport and home. The flight home being one of the worst I have ever been on, what with the baby with vile hipster parents who thought it acceptable to ignore it's six-hour screaming session while they listened to their iPods or played games on their iPads, looking daggers at anyone who looked at them; plus the actual fisticuffs fight between the nasty, scrawny English sportswear-chav and the enromous ghetto-fabulous American woman...

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I've not been entirely inactive since I returned. Following on from a discussion at SOFA, I decided to try my hand at a true "Gypsy Setting". I'm very comfortable with flush setting, but proper gypsy setting allows for the use of larger and shaped stones. Using a large nut I found in the street in Chicago, I thought I would turn it into a ring by using a lathe to remove the threads and cut it to size, then set it with garnets, rather like the nut ring I habitually wear but larger. This is what it looked like after I cut the seats and engraved the channel round it:

And this is it set:

Since I made the antlers for the belt-buckle, I've been putting them on everything. I was thinking that in keeping with the spirit of rebranding "Everything Everywhere" and "EE", I might rebrand as "AA" or "Antlers on Anything"! I've completed two antler pieces:

The wooden gem antler pendant is for my friend and colleague, Wing Mun.
More tomorrow, including the weekend in Edinburgh and Stephen Bottomley's Retrospective at the Scottish Galllery.

SOFA Day 3 - Saturday, November 3rd

By Saturday, I had the programme sorted: I wanted to hear the talk about "Mr Imagination" at 4pm, had to meet a friend for lunch at 1pm and knew that I wanted to see a bit more of the city and the amazing architecture of the place.

One of the things I love about American city architecture is the way that is skips stylistically from Victorian Gothic to Art Deco, often leading to some remarkable mashups.

My recent interest in Brutalism was piqued by the remarkable "Marina City" towers and I took more photographs of these than of any other building in the place!

The other building which I thought wonderful is the green marble-clad "Carbon and Carbide" building, which is now an hotel but which retains a grandeur and presence.

It is worth going inside to the foyer to see the superb brasswork on the elevators and grilles and the ceiling patterned with the form of a brilliant-cut diamond:

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Back to SOFA!
Apart from the talk in the afternoon - which was excellent, presented by people who had been friends of Mr Imagination's and presented with humour and humanity untainted with sentimentality - it was just a question of wandering around the rest of the show and seeing what was there. As I said yesterday, there is a lot of glass at SOFA: glass is a medium which I enjoy but in which I have no desire to work: relatively simple pieces can still thrill me. By far the most psychological work I found were these wall-pieces by Norman Mooney:

They are made from cut glass and are quite enormous. They exert a natural pull, drawing people towards them as any shiny object can do but there comes a point of closeness where a physical fear is manifest: dare I go any closer?

Perhaps because I have stood in front of them, this photograph actually brings back the slightly anxious feeling that these pieces gave me! The tension between the formal, almost mathematical beauty, the simplicity of form and colour and the fear of damage - to either the object or self - made these compelling works.

Combining glass with two of my own favourite materials, iron and silver, I loved Rik Allen's "Launch" collection of small sculptures depicting a nostalgic space-race, old movies on wet weekend television...

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There was one very funny moment when a fellow jeweller noticed that I was wearing a ring with a stone set on the palm-side of the ring: he showed me the rings he was wearing, all of which had stones on the inside, then a friend of his joined us and we excitedly squawked about the joys of setting like this until the somewhat irate gallery owner shooed us away from the front of her stand!

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Tucked away at the back of the show were some absolutely remarkable encaustic drawings by Matt Duffin, who makes exquisite drawings on his home-made "scraperboards". These are both compelling and slightly sinister:

Which leaves only my favourite piece in the show, the "Cabinet of Curiosities" by Andy Paiko, made in glass, iron, string and wood:

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That night, I went out on another photo-walk.

Then came home to look at my souvenirs...

Last day of Chicago tomorrow: no more SOFA.

Day 2, SOFA Chicago - Friday 2nd November

Day 2 - Friday 2nd November
An early start for me today as I wanted to have a look around the area around the hotel, Chicago's "Magnificent Mile" of very expensive brand-name shops. The first people I encountered were these unlikely fellows:

Chicago has a LOT of homelessness and I was particularly struck by the dignity and erudition of many of the homeless people I spoke to - often older people, always men, largely African-American - and by the way in which a proportion of them were ex-military. For a country which prides itself on its military - all questions about the rights and wrongs of that aside - this is surprising. Anyway, these guys asked me to take their photograph, which I did, and then charged me $1 each for the privilege. I actually can't believe I fell for it!

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Back to SOFA...

It was good to see that Craft Scotland were represented and I had a lovely chat to Angus Ross (the wooden furniture in the centre of the shot below):

my main intention of speaking to Craig Stuart about his Mokumé pieces never happened as I am pleased to say that every time I went to find him, he was deep in earnest discussion with interested parties.

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During the day, we went to a number of the SOFA talks, including one on our own exhibit, that of Gothic Jewellery. This was given by Marjorie Simon who did the amazing job of pulling together all the various threads which make up that which we understand as "Gothic" today, managing to make sense of the seemingly contradictory styles of "Goth" music, Victorian Gothic, Renaissance Gothic and the focus on death and transfiguration seen in many of these works.

Marjorie Simon, speaking about Gothic Jewellery 

After this, we wandered about for a bit. Strangely, perhaps, for a jeweller, I found myself drawn to a lot of the glass which was in the show: there was a LOT of glass in the show!

Lampworked glass birds by Marc Petrovic 

Then it was time for Paul McClure's brilliant talk on his work, "Killer Jewels". I've been a fan of Paul's work for years - it was with great pleasure that I accepted one of his Robert Indiana-inspired "GATC" badges - and he is well-known on Crafthaus, so it was great to hear him speak about the thoughts and motivations behind his thorough researches. It was also strange to find that where I find his work very witty, there is a (deadly) serious intent behind it.

 Paul McClure talking about his work

At this point, we broke for lunch and I discovered that I had never actually eaten Mexican food; what passes for Mexican food over here is fatty rubbish with cheap chilli powder to disguise the fact. Madelyn took me to a restaurant where mild spicing, fresh, sour cheeses and crisp vegetables were the order of the day, all served with a tableaux of the "Day of the Dead"!

Then it was back to Navy Pier for more SOFA.
Navy Pier is a very, very odd place. SOFA is held in the conference centre upstairs, whilst downstairs is a funfair, gift shops, cafes and bars and, most out-of-place of all, a fantastic, small museum of stained glass with some marvellous examples of Tiffany stained glass windows:

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The glass theme continues when Madelyn and I were invited to the "Glassblowers' Ball", held in the "Ignite" studios in an industrial suburb of Chicago. This was a fantastic event! We had VIP tickets, so it only cost the cab ride out there and we had barbeque, drinks, a Marching band, dancing, performance art AND live glass-blowing. All in the same space. It was interesting and frightening that as people got more drunk, they felt less inhibited about going ever closer to the glowing bubbles of hot glass!

Aaron Wolf-Bose at work 

Aaron Wolf-Bose, John Miller and Kimberly Harty all contributed glass "performances" to the evening but Kimberly's was actually "performance art" around the ideas of making glass. She combined a computer which tracked her movements with spinning glass fibres to make a glass version of the map of her movements. It was fairly interesting as a performance and it set me to thinking about how much like dance is a team of working glassblowers.

 Kimberly Harty performing "Time and Motion Studies"

We both crashed at about midnight and headed home...
Saturday report tomorrow!