Because it’s not all about me, but rather about building communities.
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My studio
: “We’re two weeks into the new year, but I feel like I’m still in first gear: there has been no “hitting the ground running” — or any other similar corporate-speak — here. In addition to the…”
: “All-in-all 2024 has not been a very productive year in terms of artwork - mainly because of too much time and headspace spent in moving to a new home in Hastings, on top of my day job. I completed four…”
: “This is my monthly link dump, a regular monthly series containing a mix of links to interesting blog posts I’ve read from the past month covering arts & culture, myth, folklore, landscape punk, hauntology,…”
: “Last week I wrote about the idea of copying Bluesky’s concept of “Starter Packs” to create a "British Weird" starter pack for RSS feeds (rather than Bluesky accounts), along with instructions of…”
: “One of the interesting things that social media platform Bluesky is doing is Starter Packs - lists that can be created by users to recommend other users — usually based around interest/occupation —…”
The Horror Advent Calendar, 3 days in
: “I was fortunate enough to receive one of James Burt’s Horror Advent Calendars which he writes about here. Each calendar is a collection of twenty-four short (and by short I mean microfiction) horror…”
Read the rest of “Horror Advent Calendar & Mycelium Parish News”…
: “I’ve got three weeks booked off as holiday from my day job over Christmas/New Year. There are two reasons for this: firstly because I haven’t taken any holiday since May and I need to use it up before…”
A view from my studio window over Hastings’ West Hill. Photograph by the author.
: “This is my monthly link dump, a regular monthly series containing a mix of links to interesting blog posts I’ve read from the past month covering arts & culture, myth, folklore, landscape punk, hauntology,…”
: “This blog post is more of a collection of notes than a cohesive article. I wrote it to help guide my own thinking on the subject (I find writing to be a good way to clarify my ideas and identify the things…”
The “Folk Horror and folklore” starter pack
: “The mass exodus from Twitter/X to Bluesky over the past weekend — #eXit as some have tagged it — has dramatically increased the number of followers I have there from about four hundred to over a thousand…”
Read the rest of “Bluesky, eXit, & vague thoughts about self-hosting”…
A detail from another shot in the Marsh Spirit photoshoot
: “Most of the time I have at least some idea who the characters that I photograph are. Not so in this case - I came up with the title of The Marsh Spirit after the event. There are early sketches of this…”
Photograph by the author
: “I am once again pondering if/how to make some short video pieces for my Acid Renaissance series. I did do a very short, static camera Children of Winter clip back at the start of the series in 2019,…”
Read the rest of “Contemplating Acid Renaissance short video pieces”…
A view from my studio window over Hastings’ West Hill. Photograph by the author.
: “This is my inaugural monthly link dump, the first of a hopefully regular monthly series containing a mix of links to interesting blog posts I’ve read from the past month covering arts & culture, myth,…”
Read the rest of “The Inaugural Monthly Link Dump: October 2024”…
The Hastings Borough Bonfire Society’s Torchlit Procession, October 2024 (showing members of the South Heighton Bonfire Society). Photograph by the author.
: “One thing I’m starting to learn about Hastings is that the people here know how to make their own community entertainment. That’s probably because it’s considered too small for any major touring…”
Read the rest of “Collective joy & collective ownership of ritual”…
A detail from another shot in the Lamia photoshoot
: “Two weekends ago my studio in my flat here in Hastings got its first proper use: a session of life-drawing (drawings below) followed by the Lamia photoshoot (prints of which are available here). Although…”
Read the rest of “Lamia: my first new artwork made in Hastings”…
: “A lot of link dumps on blogs are about techie stuff. This one isn’t. While I do follow some techie blogs, the vast majority of the blogs I follow are about arts & culture, myth & folklore, landscape…”
HAG installation, by artist Beccy McCray
: “The Green Man was a term invented by Julia Somerset (Lady Raglan) in 1939 for the various foliate head designs found in European churches between the 11th and the…”
Sainsbury's Corn Flakes packaging from 1976 - © The Sainsbury Archive, 2024: https://www.sainsburyarchive.org.uk/catalogue/search/sapkcpro11321123-sainsburys-corn-flakes-500g-1-1lb-packaging/search/eweo-term:breakfast-cereals/action/ajax/c/1
: “It started off, as these things tend to do, as a light-hearted thread on BlueSky initiated by writer Ray Newman about Sainsbury’s slightly otherworldly Corn Flakes packaging design from the 1970s, which…”
Read the rest of “Corn Flakes, Stuck Culture, & the wrong type of undead”…
Michelangelo, David, marble, 1501–04 (Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence)
: “This post is a follow-up to my post from last year September life-drawing: not safe for whose work? and I draw upon a lot of the concepts I laid out there. It’s a little longer and rantier than I planned,…”
Two minute concept sketch in pastels on black paper by the author
: “Lamia is a character from Greek mythology who — like many other deities and monsters of Greek mythology — seems to have been reimagined several times during the classical period. The earliest version…”