Photographic Memory

Yesterday I got to Aid&Abet after Alex and found three boys with three boyish tables of things. Martyn Cross had a beautiful 'Bring and Buy' reliquary of candle fingers, miniature bones, Greggs the Bakers bunting, badges and a bowl of nuts with eyes on. I bought some nuts, badges and a lovely bookmark with a library card on it. Craig Atkinson of Café Royal zines fame was sitting behind a bank of zines made from other people's photos: weddings, dogs, Christmas they reminded me of a book I'd been reading on the train for my PhD on albums. I have brought along today a picture of the Wagner's Christmas photos and Michael Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip.
Alex was round the corner and made a rally track with something like Scalectrix but the boys will probably tell me is called something else.
Alex and I had our first public 'domestic' of the residency (inaugural perhaps- for the first day).

I spent ages starting three new scraperboard 'scrimshaw' drawings- I could find the proper scraper and stole one of Alex's sculptures to draw with (Alex told me that sculpture was called 'Scrimshaw set' so actually it was perfect)

I started laboriously scraping away and changed board a few times as I wanted an immaculate black background- as some of them may go to New York.

I started scraping again although my boggle- chameleon eyes (awaiting the arrival of my glasses) were distracting. Alex's toys laughed like Sid James, chattered and crashed into things. Half an hour into my painstaking drawing a mushroom cloud of gold dust distributed a fine powder all over the biscuits, books, my desk, paintings and my black drawing- argggh- Alex decided his gold project hadn't worked and he wasn't going to use the footage after all. I washed my hands in the loo where although many rooms away had motes of gold fluttering down on the bird spider's cobweb.

Intermission

Alex, Craig, Martyn and I have our work in the end room- and it looks fantastic together- we all seem to be operating on another era and we are all I think interested in car-boot tat. When Martyn asked me where my images had come from- he told me he has a postcard of Anne Frank's room in his studio too.
Martyn's work is very funny: subverting knitting patterns by turning adding a coffin, a noose, a naked man...
Craig's 'Hitler's are fantastic as are his beautiful drawing of a bus shelter and his 'Sex in the Mountains' collage and Alex's precious domestic objects are beautiful combinations of indigestion tablets and glitter- a carriage clock (my great aunts) becomes a motorcade for a figurine, the bowl of a spoon a dish for a plastic 'sapphire'.