Tag Archives: writing

Beamish, Zines, Tattoo Pics

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Beamish!

It’s been such a busy autumn but nothing is a busy as the two months before Christmas if you’re someone who does stalls – in the meantime I’ll take you back to what I’ve done over the last couple of months and we have to start with Beamish ..

After my residency at Beamish last year with the One Suitcase’ Project, I’d been asked alongside my friends and collaborators Rumana of Bok Bok Books and Indi from Desi Blitz to take part in a South Asian ‘Migration Day’ Takeover with our ‘What’s in your suitcase project.

We met Indi and his fabulous Truck Painted Bus at the venue and got ready, dressing Rose Cottage where I was based, ready to chat to visitors and record them and Indi was serving homemade Samosas, the Welfare Hall where Rumana was telling South Asian based children’s stories and the Cinema, which was playing Indi’s Partition film. We were joined by an amazing South Asian dance group and a dementia group which works with people from the community in South Shields.

We all dressed the part – all three of us wearing traditional SA dress Rumana and I ware spoilt by having our hair done in the 1950s Hairdressers. – It was a fantastically busy day and we absolutely loved the colour, sounds and smells that had been added too the traditional 50s town, plus as always the staff were fabulous! I managed to record and edit quite a few pieces ready to be added to the Beamish archive – what an epic day with THE BEST people !

Zines in Hartlepool and Sunderland

We popped up at The Central Hub in Hartlepool for a mini Zine Fest! I was asked by Hartlepool Council with funds from Arts Council England to run this fab little zine fest as a way of getting younger people into the venue which is also the Central Library.

As always zine tests attract the best stallholders, kind, caring and sharing and we spent the day becoming even more of a collective than we had at the last event . The range of work was amazing and it was great to tell visitors about zines and zinemaking , especially as a way of sharing community specific information and passions.

Then last week it was over to Sunderland to run a Zine Making class at Hills Arts Centre right in the Centre of town – organised by the amazing Michaela (and the only fellow Michaela I know) of Pink Collar Gallery– through Norfolk Street Arts Heritage Fund. I love a zine workshop because everyone can make a zine and it can literally be about anything you like… as a starting point we had thoughts about Sunderland then and now , but the work produced really did pick up on personal emotions and memories around experiences of living and working in the city.
Zines can do all that ..

Tattoo Photography with Emma Vynokurova

Emma is a photographer displaced from Ukraine and now living in Newcastle. a friend sent me info about a tattoo photography project Emma was doing, recording people who had tattoos with a meaning, and Emma agreed to photograph me in her studio after hearing about my ink.

My tattoos, like much in my life reflect my memories of my Nana and her influence on me, especially on being a tea purveyor. Emmas project looks as these stories and links them through her ‘Pritani’ project (Pritani being the original name of Britain, and meaning ‘Painted Ones’ in old Celtic.

I spent a good few hours with the wonderful Emma, learned of her flight with her daughter from Ukraine as a result of the war, and her story in Newcastle so far, first with a sponsor in their home and now with her own home, and having to start again after giving up a successful career in Events in her home country .

Emma really understood where my tattoos where influenced by my Nana and the images , later part of an exhibition were beautiful. Can’t wait to see Emma again as we got on famously!

You can find Emma and her work at https://www.instagram.com/emmafoto.ua

images courtesy of Emma Vynokurova

A Commission for a Stunning Book .

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Illustrations for Wade Radford’s Anthology ‘Cognitive Dissonance’

This collection of 15 illustrations was commissioned for the book ‘Cognitive Dissonance’, published by Bedlam BD, which is an anthology of the work of Wade Radford. 

Wade is a filmmaker, writer, actor and artist, whose prose and Polaroid zines I instantly became a huge fan of. (If you don’t look at anything else from his huge range of work, I suggest reading Ciao Philadelphia and discovering the Dear series of Polaroid collectable zines as a starter). 

We have been working together for most of this year, and as a pair of creative freelancers, we’ve become both unofficial work mates and close friends, off on adventures.  Checking out and running zine fairs, capturing film footage across the North Yorkshire Moors and Teesside and pinging ideas off each-other, our collective creativity inspiring each of us, there’s also been a load of laughing and looking out for each-other.

I’d done some illustrations for Wade in return for some photography and publishing he provided for me, and it was amazing to be around someone who was as positive and supportive of my creativity as I am a fan of theirs. So – when I was asked to create illustrations of film stills of the anthology of Wade’s expansive and hugely impressive body of work, I was honoured to be asked to take up the commission. 

I was also excited and slightly apprehensive about the challenge of illustrating some iconic images that really did need me to capture them as embodiments of Wade’s film career which are hugely familiar to his fans. No pressure. 

As I worked through the images, I realised the level of the task – creating images that were basically a retelling of the adult life of someone you’d got to know well, and also how quite weird it is to become that acquainted with someone else’s face, to then see them regularly and observe them to that level. 

The interesting thing was how quickly the drawing skills I’d been using since I was a child advanced during the time, and now the images are published in the anthology – I’ve rarely been more proud of something I’ve drawn – in this case each image is hand drawn on a digital pad using Procreate and an iPad/apple pencil. 

It was, however only once I had the book in my hands and was capable of seeing my illustrations alongside the text, that I took in the enormity of is all. Really emotional stuff! I’d also forgotten some earlier images I’d produced, printed further in the book, which was fabulous!

The book itself is an almost unbelievable 350 page tour through the fantastic creative life Wade’s lived so far, and includes nearly 700 mostly unseen images, a complete film ‘years’ Chronology and new writing by Scott Colbert, Jason Impey and Wade himself. 

It includes the revised version of 2024 zine ‘Busby and Me’ and four shorts including the before-mentioned ‘Ciao Philadelphia’. Images include personal scrapbooks and of course the 15 images I was commissioned to produce in full. 

To purchase the book, which is strictly limited to 100 Hardback A4 copies, and find out more about Wade, follow him at https://wade-radford.com

Illustrations taken from photograph stills of Wade Radford’s films. Film Photography by Wade Radford, Jason Impey and Wesley Strong