A musical week, mainly, kicking off with the astonishing world-premiere performance of Gerald Barry's Organ Concerto by the…

It's been fairly quiet since my last post but I've managed to squeeze in a trip to London with my ex-colleague and still-friend, Rachael Colley, a trip which involved culture and a lot of work by Lin Cheung. We started off with a visit to the V&A to see the final choices for the…

Make no mistake, I am furious with the disgusting power-obsessed homunculus who occupies the tenuous and devalued position of "Prime Minister" in the UK after last Thursday's general election.



Theresa May is a puppet of the heaps of billionaire ordure who control the media in this tinpot island and she is also so spectacularly lacking in empathy and so desperate to stay in power - despite a resounding trouncing in the election - that she is prepared to do deals with a group - the…

Last week kicked off to a glorious start with the Goldsmiths' Company Craft and Design Awards, held in the opulent surroundings of Goldsmiths' Hall in…

What a week!

Quite apart from the preparations for the new students starting next week (and the previous ones returning, of course), I've spent a lot of time in the workshops - on Tuesday evening as much to avoid violent thunderstorms as anything else - making up work for the Made In The Middle show, work which shows a completely new way of working for me, eschewing applied - illustrative - narrative for a more 'improvised' narrative of material, being braver about allowing the…

I would never have imagined in January of this year that I would end up in such a different situation from the one I was in...



January

A busy month, making up work for…

What a week! Not only have we been finishing off with the students for the year - and sometimes for ever, really - but I've been doing my best to help Karen Dicken to get the "Handmade By Machines" exhibition and…

I completely forgot that I spent some time during the conference over the weekend speaking to Rachel Skene - a friend and colleague of Patty Niemann's in Caithness - talking about her project "You Love Local". This is a scheme which aims to promote handmade and craft products by not only tracking products from start to finish but also to by giving them a "narrative", something of their back-story. She is also planning a level of managed quality…

I have just returned from Dundee where I attended the Craft Scotland conference for 2013. As I have blogged before, I have a lot of time for Craft Scotland. I don't…

Many years ago, I realised that Alexander McQueen was not a couturier in the usual sense of the word. It was his commission of the collar from Shaun Leanne for his 2001 catwalk show which drew my attention to his work - the collar is a stunning assembly of lethal silver spikes and grey pearls, seen at 7:40 in the video below - and the show just blew me away. From that moment on, I never thought of McQueen as a clothing designer but as a sculptor, a critic, an historian, someone with a…

It wasn't all work in Pittsburgh and in between teaching the workshops, I got a chance to socialise a bit too. Quite apart from my non-metalsmithing friends, Elizabeth Avery and Kirk Savage and their wonderfully odd family, I also managed to see Lizzy DaVita and hooked up with Glen Gardner for an evening of dinner, his workshop and an exhibition.…

After the stint at the detention centre, it was time to return to the SCC to work with a group of young people on the "Artist and Kids" programme. This programme is well established within the SCC and I taught on it last year, which was great fun. One of last year's students even signed up to take my main adults' workshop…

Apologies for the hiatus in blogging my visit to San Francisco; I had to spend some time in Yorkshire discussing a project which I hope to present here in the very near future.

My second day in San Francisco was spent at the American Craft Council/California College of the Arts symposium called "Craft Forward-ing", an event aimed at students and new graduates with a view to giving them an introduction to the world of business and suggesting ways of actually making money out of…

I have no idea where the weeks go. It is now two weeks since I last posted a blog entry and the end of September is upon us; the wind and rains, the chilling air, herald autumn without even the good grace of the last few warm days that September usually brings, Keats' "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness".

Spent last weekend in Brighton, recovering from the 'flu which always accompanies the start of term... all those viri travelling distances with students from far away,…

Some months ago I was contacted by Sia Corrina, the editor of a free, online magazine entitled "Serendipity" and asked if I would contribute to her "Apocalyptic Art" edition, Winter 2011. Of course, I agreed, but somewhere along the line then forgot that the article had been written, that the magazine was published and that I had work in it, along with two other Crafthaus artists, Francesca Gabrielli and…

Sad to be leaving Pittsburgh.

As you can see, I had another night with Brigitte and we went to the Pittsburgh institution, Sarris, where we had the most gigantic banana splits I've ever seen. Delicious! I'm not…

I'll get to the robots in a moment. First of all, my class at the SCC... There isn't much to say about the class at the SCC as we weren't really making projects, more exploring techniques through making samples and finding ways of problem-solving for processes which the people in the class used. As such, I have no photographs of work to show. What I do have is a photograph of all the people involved:

 …

Or, as Will - above - would tell you, Yes You Can Wear That!

Last weekend, I spent a brilliant two days with some young peope at the Society for Contemporary Crafts in Pittsburgh running a workshop looking at creativity, oblique ways of looking at every day objects and the creation of jewellery from those objects. The…

Although it is almost a week since the event - I've been travelling and am now in Pittsburgh - I really should write up an exciting event I attended on Monday last week in London, "Cut In Clerkenwell" which is an exhibition at Craft Central by the Hand Engravers' Association in the UK, a most worthy body who have a highly talented and esteemed membership - including…