Theatre Show - The Line We Draw by Skye Loneragan

Great reviews for The Line We Draw - no adjectives for my live illustrations, but at least they weren't negative iether!http://www.theherald.co.uk/search/display.var.2518303.0.new_works_new_worlds_the_arches_glasgow.phphttp://joycemcmillan.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/new-works-new-worlds/
ttp://joycemcmillan.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/new-works-new-worlds/

Like the above two are like TOTALLY rad! 4 stars frae wee Joyce MacMillan too. Ya Beauty!

The Library and Dot 504: Holdin' Fast, Behaviour Festival, The Arches

Dot 504 - Really like how this drawing has become something else. Enjoyed working on it in particular.

Dot 504: Holdin' Fast

Dot 504: Holdin' Fast.



The Library, by Sacha Kyle

John Moran and his neighbour Saori, The Arches

Beautiful, hypnotic. Initially offputting. Intrinsically interfered with. Brilliantly put together.

Really lovely to encounter these two tonight.

The show was quite something: beautiful in it's honesty; intrinsically decorated with aural interferences, tangible memories and everyday occurances they encounter; the structure of the 71 beats per minute; the acerbic observations; the loops, the Steve Reichian referencing; the changes of emotion in experiencing one loop of behaviour played with shifting soundscapes/soundtracks; the aural and performance portraits; adding structure to the intangible, making it music.

Very inspiring.

The Mighty Naked, Al Seed, and Andy Arnold finally leaves the building

It's 3am Saturday morning and I've got a bucketload of things to do 'tomorrow'. But it's been 2 weeks of creative, organic, improvised, inspiring bliss bliss bliss.

Don't know if anyone actually reads this blog. But to be on the safe side I try to bleep out the sweary words incase any of my students ever read it. Ay yes, did you know I've been a teacher? And a Drinker, a Smoker and a Joker? Those were the days...

LAST night was great. Andy Arnold, Creative/Artistic Director/unboxable renegade arts wizard was finally getting the 'boot oot' of the Arches, the very place he set up and cultivated 17-ish years ago.

'Wee Hard Man', or 'Norman Wisdom on Speed' as a particular critic Joyce McMillan once titled him, was lauded by friends, contemporaries and peers alike in the tremendous decorated setting of the last arch. A most splendid 'Ciao Dahling' party tripped the light fantastic after an excellent 'Scratch' line up. Andy Arnold; he might be just up the road, but it would appear that he won't be able to be extracted out of the Arches' fibres as easily as the tramps' piss that leaks in most nights.


Tonight - a different night - I was in awe of the theatrical might of Al Seed. Lovely chap without the makeup and fearsome round belly, but in character - WOW! I could draw him for HOURS. Yet, I found it bloody difficult - watching him transport the audience in the spotlit blackness, you could hear a pin drop, and certainly some sketchy wee artist scratching away with her pencils...

And yet after all this excitement, I find myself head back, yawning and touch typing on a grand scale. Probably loads of spelling errors. Nope, just checked. Time for bed young-ish Soep.

Got some Soeperb drawings of Ann Liv Young and her troupe of naked, strap-on toting, mask wearing, body bumping and grinding, bitching and some obscure Frenchish language. Happily drawing away on my big whiteboard of people and memories of the Arches Theatre Festival, which are many, and quality, and good. Getting a 'season' ticket is most definitely worthwhile - it's a bloody great festival, and the initial encounter of the feast of visual and brain slapping delights are enough to get you reaching for the mighty goose feather simply so you can sample the next course of many.

Clash of the Titans: Old Firm, and stories from Iraq

Watching the Old Firm Game from Inside the Glaswegian.

Detail.

'A Fiery Old Firm Clash saw a red card, missed penalty, last gasp winner & ugly scenes at the End'.

This is the quote from Hotmail at 02.22am.

I think I was lucky just to lose my bike light and not my head when I decided I would get my pens and pencils out in a notorious Ranger's pub The Glaswegian. I came in after the kick off, which I'm sure wouldn't have endeered anyone to me. I quaffed 2 bottles of Magners (they didn't have any ginger beer or ale) and I didn't know any of the songs.

I wasn't the only one not singing, but by crikey, it was a much more heated affair than the last Old Firm match I drew in the Brazenhead (notorious Celtic pub). After being treated so nicely there during that weekend afternoon match, I felt like a traitor standing there tonight in that pub. And I don't even bloody support football in any shape or form. But I am Catholic. And that might have mattered...

I did get a load of curious glances and stares and I was just bloody nice and friendly back. There was me giving a nod and a smile when Rangers got their goal, and there was me still nodding and smiling after drawing lots of the tasteful phrases I was hearing and the 'jubilant' atmosphere, and there was me still f*****g nodding and smiling after I noticed somehow Rangers has got another goal; so it was 2-1 to Rangers ey? Shame. Guess Celtic didn't have their chance then.

What a bloody fool I am.

There was me curiously staring at all the drunken celtic supporters starting up songs under the Highland Man's umbrella (Argyll Street under Central Station), and crowds of strangers joining in from the other side of the road, with me thinking 'Aw, that's nice. Look how well the Celtic Supporters are taking it.'

Now I realise, perhaps, why some serious looking woman in a black bob, glasses and red top, at the end of the match, demanded what I was doing in the Glaswegian, and Where was I from?

Ah Jenny, with her wits about her, smiled gleefully and proclaimed 'Och I'm just an Art Student!'

'Oh that's alright then' she grunted and left me to it. I wish I'd been a fly on the wall as I haplessly pratted along with my picture mistakenly believing that everyone was exultant around me.

Hah.

So then I rushed back to the Arches for a quick bladder relief call before zipping into the 'light relief' of Bluey, the autobiographical play by Phil Spencer and his monkey/Dad Alfred.

From the perspective of an imaginative young boy witnessing his Dad going to the war in Iraq, believing it all pointless and stupid, and reflecting on the stories they shared, interjected with angsty adolescent male music, strobe lighting, smoke machines and 'right in there' audience participation.

Sharp and well practiced. The comedic look at an individual's experience of a war going on the theatre, was still honey compared to the raw redness of what I experienced beforehand.

And is that your last Old Firm documenting session Miss Soep? Have you had your fill of adrenalin fuelled drawing experiences? Are you going to stop, or join a side?

It's 2.49 in the morning. I'm ready for my pit, and by the way, No Comment.