 After a very busy couple of weeks I got back to work making larger confused flags for the Open Eye Gallery On a Small Scale exhibition. This is an annual event hosted in the run-up to Christmas, when one of their beautiful Edinburgh New Town Georgian galleries is turned over entirely to line the walls in banks of A5-size art by gallery artists. The works are presented simply unframed on the walls in a grid formation, an exciting melting-pot of ideas, materials and colour (the artists' party is great, too). Affordable small works mean a great chance to buy art for Christmas!
It has been interesting to scale up from the miniatures I have been making for Brexit Art Machine, I can fit in more drawing to combine with ideas of obfuscation, disorder, transparency and confusion. I am enjoying the flag invention more than ever as I make flags 14, 15, 16 and 17 in the series especially for the gallery, and then watch out in 2020 for some more miniature flags for the vending machines. 7 great things about this week: 1. Waves aren’t made of water: I watched David Malone’s The Secret Life of Waves on BBC iPlayer. Poetry, philosophy, life and death, needles blowing bubbles, and Professor Michael McIntyre’s fab lab’s wave box at Cambridge University complete with rubber ducks - marvellous. 2. Brexit Art Machine is in London, with my mini confused flags loaded alongside works by brilliant artists in the vending machine! It is popping up at selected venues, and was outside the Houses of Parliament a couple of days ago. 3. A friend making an extremely speedy recovery from a knee replacement and looking fabulous and happy after years of pain. 4. I found a beautiful, tiny insect exhausted on the kitchen worktop. I smeared a strawberry beside it and observed through a magnifying glass: insect found its way to the spot of juice and fed by dipping its proboscis. I noticed it had a pair of curly antlers fringed spectacularly with hairs. After a while it had enough energy to fly away and I felt nurturing and deep-down happy. 5. Coloured pencils so soft it's like drawing with eyeshadow. 6. Relief. When pain, worry, nightmares and things that go bump in the night disappear and you feel yourself again. Maybe it was the full moon. 7. Getting back to work in my room. Thanks for visiting, see you next week!  I had a great trip by train to Edinburgh to deliver 6 more Confused Flags for Brexit Art Machine (or any of the Artobotic vending machines, of course). Delighted that my made-up alphabets have found a place where they make sense by not making sense!
7 great things about this week: 1. Off-peak travel on warm modern trains of comfort and phone chargers. 2. Autumn leaves, irresistibly crisp and crunchy, and the COLOURS! 3. Views from the Forth Rail Bridge: splendificent (spell-check doesn’t like that word! haha, I won) 4. B’s red car on a grey road dotted with bronze leaves. 5. A trip to the Scottish borders and a wonderful weekend with friends. Discovered they are into art, so the newest Confused Flag will be winging its way to them: a thank-you gift for their kindness in making us and our weird greyhound so welcome. 6. Making duvet igloos in bed to maximise snuggling on frosty nights. 7. The sounds birds make at this time of year. Thanks for visiting, see you next week!  I started a new set of Confused Flags this week for Artobotic vending machines, particularly with the Brexit Art machine in mind. Working against the backdrop of British politics and the Brexit process growing more shocking and convoluted at every turn, my flags seem to grow in confusion and obfuscation in response - they may look rather embarrassed, too!
 An exciting creative time! I have always found autumn to be a time of high mental energy and fresh starts, possibly because of the association with the new academic term. It’s a time of year I loved all through years of school and as a student, and still each year as it approaches I get the thrill. It brings double excitement for me right now: firstly, the Brexit Art Machines being installed in London for the month - and my Confused Flags are in the stacks to vend! I really am so excited! I am making more at the moment. Wobbly borders, misfit motifs, double-sided issues, foggy substrates and crossed meaning are my favourite themes, along with very some confused stars and stripes. Here is one of a star nudging boundaries:  The second excitement is the start of Folktale Week 2019 on Instagram, which I will be joining as Binky McKee. I have written about it on The Weekly at my Binky's site, please take a look if you would like to know more!
Thanks for visiting, see you next week!  I delivered my first six Confused Flags for Artobotic’s Brexit Art Machine this week. The idea of art vending machines selling random works of art is new and exciting! I know many of my friends and colleagues contribute regularly to the art machines, and I am delighted to be taking part alongside them.  Flag no.2 has a fold-out which the owner can play with, creating a new flag by opening it out over the other half of the support:  <<<<<<<ARTOBOTIC!>>>>>>>>  I am delighted to have been invited to contribute to Artobotic's Brexit Art Machine!
Artobotic place repurposed vending machines filled with small brown boxes containing original art at selected venues. |
The Weekly
Welcome to my blog. I am an artist in Fife, Scotland, represented by the Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh.
I also work in design and illustration. Visit my other website under my nom de plume Binky McKee to see what goes on there.
PIC OF THE WEEK
It's often the details - a tiny section cropped out of a photo of our bedroom window, looking very Dickensian Christmassy.
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