Designs for the box

Alistair's latest designs on paper for his Tagtool.

Portraits

Lewis the photographer came in and took our photos whilst we played around creating our portraits on the Tagtool.

Spacemakers week 2

Some images from this weeks Spacemakers a series of six Thursday evenings held at Hannah Maclure

Mystery photo

On the subject of what artists get up to in libraries Alex Stephenson created Mystery Photo a set of books that exist as twenty five copies in the permanent collections of libraries and archives.

The books feature ninety photographs of 'mysterious content', submitted by the general public to Nottinghamshire libraries in 2006. Alex sorted them into Dewey categories, aware that the subjective scrutiny of the Dewey Decimal system allowed for multiple readings of each image.

Alexander Stevenson

Garbologists trip

" .... we had a trip organised by Ange to Perth Recycling Centre where we met up with Fraser McDonald who was displaying his art work for Nine Trades Of Dundee. Philip my key worker from the Axis forward project came to collect me and my partner to take us and bring us back for the trip to Perth where we met up with Alistair from the library. I really enjoyed the day out and learned lots of things that I didn’t know about the recycling centre that they recycle something’s that go to charities. An example of this was there were bikes that went to help Children for Baranados and televisions that also got repaired to sell on as well, It also helped me stay away from drink for the day and it was a nice day out with my partner too".

Michelle LIFE GROUP MEMBER

Draw or Die

Chris Dyson told me about his Glasgow pal Jens Strandberg who organises events called DRAW OR DIE where drawer's battle it out using overhead projectors.

(Chris ... I think you just died with this portrait of me).

Awaiting Alistair's design

Tagtools come in all shapes and sizes...

The one made by Alistair (library worker) is still unfinished, the sliders are too long to fit the buttons and it needs decorating. Alistair is currently working on his design for the box.

Today (on what must have been the hottest day of the year yet) metal worker/ninetrades artist Chris Dyson dropped in the library, he was able to advice us how to shorten the sliders. In the meantime he couldn't resist having a go.

Spacebusters!

For the next 6 Thursday evenings I will be at the Hannah Maclure Centre running The Spacemakers in collaboration with a local arts initiative known as D-Air. Together we will be examining the role of contemporary arts in relation to direct democracy. We'll be looking at a range of responses by individuals and groups across the globe.

I'll be featuring work by groups like Improv Everywhere who were invited by the New York Public library to stage a performance to highlight the serious budget cuts the library is facing.

They chose a Ghostbusters action as the New York Public library features in the opening of the movie.

For more on IMPROV EVERYWHERE and further images of the Ghostbuster action click here

Grey Lodge Designers

A few images from todays workshop with young people from the Grey Lodge AAAA project. We spent two days drawing inspired by the work of UK designer Jon Burgerman. The result were designs on T-shirts, bags and shoes as well as some nifty drawing-annimation using the Tagtool.

Library staff also got bitten by the creative-bug ...

There's evidence of it in the Science and Business office.

Jackie and Kerri youth workers from Grey Lodge stop to model their bags....before returning to HQ.

Those must have matching bag and shoes....

Wall2 self-portraits

I have been working away for two weeks, I returned today and was delighted when library workers Sandra and Verity showed me how they'd been using the Tagtool with the Wall2 group. They'd printed out A4 size photographs of group members and laid each photo over the graphics tablet. Each group member was able to trace their own likeness and then have their photo taken by their own Tagtool self-portrait.

LIFE drawing

We met Michelle and Alec today.

Alec told us he hadn't set foot in a library for about three years. Michelle was delighted with her drawing-animations... the photos are going on up on her Facebook page.