Some more graffiti/art* (delete as appropriate) – this time a cheeky image of what looks like the 80’s computer game character ‘Hungry Horace’ by a bridge on Ecclesall Rd in Sheffield. I know it may be illegal – but it did make me smile.
Round the corner from my studio an empty industrial unit has graffiti and faces painted from the inside looking out. I guess it must have been used as a squat, or for a party or something. It’s like looking through the window onto another world and this face stares back reminding me of the different layers of community that we live amongst.
I love these industrial structures that so often seem to form the backdrop of our urban landscapes. There were two of them near where my grandparents lived and we would drive past whenever we visited so seeing one is always tinged with nostalgia.
They expand and contract so slowly with the ebb and flow of energy usage. I saw this one full to capacity, dwarfing the nearby houses. I love the spiral pattern and the orange rust.
As the shortest day approaches some of the winter sunsets have been astonishing. I pulled over on a rather grim dual carriageway to see these colours. The golden fire of the sunset is amazing but I also love the rich blue/greys to the east.
My train was delayed on the way home from London but beautiful music filled the space at St Pancras Station .
Tallulah Rendall and her band were playing and this artist was painting as they did so. As I looked down on them with the music echoing amongst the vast steel arches it was a moment of wonder and beauty in the midst of cold and frustration. And if the train hadn’t been delayed I wouldn’t have experienced it.
Whilst I was waiting for my friend in her office I glanced along the bookshelves and one book stood out:
The Korean script looked beautifully alien amidst the other English books. I don’t know what it says but I love the golden shapes. And whilst the language is alien to me – I am reminded that this sense of otherness is entirely relative. As the musician Ali Faka Toure says of his home town in Mali:
‘For most people when they think of Timbuktu it is at the edge of the world. But for us is it is the centre of the world’
As the snow begins to melt here tiny rivers are opening up. These photos taken of the gutter outside my stuido could be satellite pictures of the Amazon or images of flowing liquid methane on one of Saturn’s moons – the laws of physics are the same. The small thing contains the vast and the universal.
