You might stop the party but you can't stop the future

Lovely article in the Observer music monthly about the early spiral tribe and the free party movement, kinda sad that our youth is now history..

For a brief moment, at vast and lawless raves such as Castlemorton, a generation glimpsed an alternative way of life. Speaking to survivors of the early 90s free party scene, Tim Guest tells the story of how the state crushed the dream

You might stop the party but you can't stop the future

...and all this on a day that I saw a charity store advertising old CDs with "Relive the 90s for only 50p".

Friends in funny places..

Sometimes you don't see a friend for ages and then you see them referenced in a Guardian book review...

Stripping is a serious business. I recently met the director of the Ministry of Burlesque Academy, which provides classes in, among other subjects, fan dancing and glove removal. The young woman was also working towards her PhD on the adult entertainment industry in Edinburgh, called "The Private, the Public and the Pubic: Naked Power in Scotland". Her stage name is Gypsy.

More tease than strip

Shaking hands

I don't read tabloids so I missed this image when it was published..

..its as disturbing as the Elvis/Nixon handshake. 

From left to right Peter Sutcliffe (serial killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper), Sir Jimmy Saville (Radio DJ and Chidrens TV presenter) and Frank Bruno (ex-boxer and pantomime favorite). Its just wrong if they got Boy George to join them they could form the Evil A-Team.

The Last of Messing around with Clay.

I got the last of my mugs back from ceramics and they've come out quite lovely. 

This is my Cargo Cult version of the traditional Tiki Bob mug, it glazed in earthy oxides with a gloss interior. I've had a bit of intrest from fellow collector and may produce a limited run of these mugs this summer.

This is my Crargo version of the Trader Vic's Aloha Coconut Bowl I'm going to see if anyone will swap me an original for my handmade version. 

Big and Clever Swearing - NSFW

Went to see Armando Iannucci new film "In the Loop" last night, it has some of the best swearing and honest depictions of politicians your likely to see on screen.

This clip below is Tuckers's Law which was too sweary for the film, thankfully somebody posted it on youtube..



..I think I have an embroidery project to undertake.

The fruits of messing around in clay..

My ceramics course has been finished for more than a week now, so I guess I better show what I've made. Mostly all the mugs have been fired and glazed now, so this mug was my first, a scowling tribal warrior mug, with a two tone outer glaze and a translucent gloss inner glaze.

Then we have my three face bucket mug, it has a black under glaze that I sponged back and then covered with thick toffee like gloss glaze.

My third mug is based on my Cthulhu Tiki mug design, again with the two tone glaze, which took two firing to get right. The terracotta clay shows through the top glaze quite a bit, so even though the top glaze is green and gray lots of red shows.

I moved from using te terracotta clay into using paper clay which is lot more forgiving and more importantly is a white clay, so the glaze colours are more true.

I glazed this Monster Moai with a black undercoat that I sponged back and applied an opaque green glaze on top. The glaze didn't work as I thought and after it was fired the glaze cracked and continued to "Plink" for two weeks after.

I made two more mugs but am still waiting for them to be glaze fired, so hopefully I'll be posting them after the easter holidays.

Another Giant fish?

Having blogged about the giant pink plush shark I spotted in a local stream, I was interested to read about the South American armored Suckermouth found in a river in Leicestershire...

...Damn that one ugly fish.

BIG UGLY FISH FOUND IN RIVER

Fix it for me!

Its quite the week for geek furniture, Trekkies can now spend £1856 on a replica Captain's Chair but I noticed on eBay a better way to spend that money..

..its the 1977 "Jim'll Fix it Chair", now you can lord it over small children like a benevolent super villain. It even comes with an original badge and ash from Sir Jimmy Savile's cigar.
Ah how times have changed a children tv presenter who's trademark was to always be smoking.

BUY THE "JIM'LL FIX IT CHAIR" £2450

As a child I could never decide on what I wanted Jimmy to Fix for me, I had a vague plan about a life sized fiberglass hipopotamus that was also a submarine/motor home but I could never explain it in words.

My Tiki Mug Collection

Most of my Tiki mug collection lives in cardboard boxes, until such time as I settle down or open my own Tiki bar the only way to keep track of them is through my Ooga Mooga page. So today I opened some boxes and took pictures of about half my collection, I'll attempt to get them all posted up soon.

Atomic Tony Tiki's Tiki Mug Collection

Even More Messin' Around With Mud

When I was working on my last mug I really liked some parts of it and decided to take them further. So I took the photos of it and fiddled with them in Photoshop to mock/sketch my next project.
This new mug is made with Paper Clay, which is an amazing clay with paper pulp mixed with the clay, this gives it amazing properties, you can work dry clay with wet, you just have to wet the clay to get the bits to stick together. Fantastic stuff, I don't think I'll go back to using normal clay.



The mug to the right has been biscuit fired and you can see its first layer of glaze, I'll finally get my three other mugs back glazed on this coming Thursday.


The streaky lines didn't work as well as I thought on the third mug, so for this one I went for a much stronger golf ball texture.

The finished mug it should be fired for Thursday and ready for glazing, I've only got three weeks left of my course, so I'll have to plan my remaining time wisely.

Going to Lan-dahn!!

I was lucky enough to have my Captain Hold Fast mug included in the new book by Jay Strongman 'TIKI MUGS - Artifacts of Polynesian Pop' so I'm of to the big city to show my support and quaff a few much needed Mai Tais.

I Just Can't Get Enough?

I'm not sure how I feel about the "Saturdays", a processed pop girl band created to destroy "Girls Aloud". I think if you want to create something to Destroy a girl-group then build an atomic monster or raise a zombie hoard, but I do know I approve of this Pin-up themed pop video.

Signs of Spring?

After the brief flurries of snow that crippled Britain snow last month its good to see some signs of spring coming.
The snowdrops pushing trough, sap rising and the return of migrating animals.


I was walking to work when I spotted the distinctive colouring of this fishy visitor and was lucky enough to snap some pictures of it.


Ah you know its spring when the giant pink plush sharks* swim upstream to spawn.



*(what's slightly worrying about this is that in the last six months two bodies have been found in this river, perhaps this ain't a toy but a fancy dress costume)

Another secret genre?

I was hunting for a book for a friend and went into a Waterstones near Glasgow Central Train Station and discovered another whole section of books I'd never heard of. I know romantic literature is popular with young ladies and they all love a vampire, so I guess it was an easy jump to create "Paranormal Romance".

Cannibal & Zombie - part 2

Finally I found an Artstore in Glasgow that sells big tubs of plaster, I got tired of buying tiny expensive packets of plaster and my favorite type of plaster "Stonecast" is no longer produced.



First cast from the mold, notice how dirty it gets from clay residue on the mold.

The cast trimmed down to fit the plate frames I found.



First coat of ochre paint, I'm trying to steal the colour theme from the cover art of Les Baxters "Ritual of the Savage".



Darker colours added.

Blues and further greens, then I took a wee break from finishing the piece, and then rattled through finishing it, I forgot to take pictures of it until I added all the final painting and given it a final coat of gloss varnish.

This finished cast will be winging its way to Australia for the "Gasoline & Garterbelt" Artshow in March.

Knickers to Re-Cycling!

In tribute to the "kred-eet cHruinch" (I'm not pronouncing or spelling this over used phrase this year, like Rumpelstiltskin or Demons, to name a thing is to have power over it so I refuse to use this depressing little phrase) I engaged in some Making-do-and-mending today.

This is my favorite white shirt, it has a lovely hula girl emroidered on the back, with a real wiggly grass skirt. Its made by Dragonfly and I found it reduced in TK Max years ago and wore it on my wedding day.

As you can see the skirt has frayed and looks really moth eaten.

Once a few years ago my wife challenged me to buy her some sexy pants for Xmas, well I failed with these tasseled showgirl pants. She never wore them but I have identified them as a suitable source of replacement hula girl skirt tassels.

Advert your eyes vicar, the lady has no skirt on, I had to unpick the original skirt from behind.

Finally the replacement skirt sewn on and the shirt is ready to be worn again, after a wee wash as its a bit musty from being at the back of the wardrobe unworn for so long.

Rarg a Steampunk Pin-up?

Ever one to experiment with fashion, my good friend Rarg (him that I painted the Wogan picture for) was telling me the other day, that another friend of his had pointed him towards a Steampunk website which had taken the pictures of him at the World Beard and Mustache championships and made it into a wallpaper.

So I tracked it down to Steampunk Wallpapers..

Description: Do you Tire of Being Confined to this Dismal Earth? Do you Envy the Birds their Careless Flight? There is Hope! Enlist in the Aerocorps Today! Penetrate the Very Firmament! See the Wonders of the Sky! You Will Fly, Guaranteed.*

*Landings not Guaranteed.

"Generation" Exhibition

Back when I was a teenager in Orkney, we were often taken to see the graduate show at the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness in Orkney. I often wondered what art I'd be exhibiting there once I graduated art college.
The Arts Centre hasn't done a Orcadian graduate show in ages so I was lucky enough to discover that they had stated doing them again and sent off some art.
So if you fancy catching my animation "The Kong Tiki Affair" and looking at a couple of Sleazy Cheezy posters then pop along.

Generation
Orkney Art Graduates 2001 -2008

An exhibition highlighting the work of new artists, designers and makers from Orkney who have graduated with a degrees in Art and Design over the last 8 years. Since opening in 1979, Pier Arts Centre graduate exhibitions have regularly featured the work of Orkney's artists, showing more than 70 artists to date.

21st February to 4th April

Further Messin' Around With Mud

Frighteningly I'm half way through my ceramics course so I'm having to plan on what I can finish in the time left. For the last two weeks I've been glazing my first mug and working on a new one.

This one is based on my design for a Cthulhu Tiki mug.
A snarling tiki face rising above the ruins on R'lyeh , imagine if you will the type of mug that would be used in Trader Vic's, if the Trader had been equally influenced by the dammned idols of Cthulhu as Polynesian Tikis.

Slabs of clay around a cheap glass bud vase I found in Poundland.

Re-using that nose design from my last mug.

Looks a bit like a cyclops moai.

The other face on the back, continuing the joined face theme.


Sharp pointy teeth.



Thats as far as I got that week and then I dropped it, so I had to do a bit of repair before I started more details.
Adding the slabs around the base.



Strange layers of slabs.



I used the tines of fork to add the texture on the body of the mug, once its dry I'll clean them up and remove any little bits of clay. I've seen a lovely dark chrome glaze which would add a lovely other-worldy look to the mug, that or some ichor like drip glaze.