Gift from Paolozzi

“Art is not produced in art Colleges but in  studios, with people working together.” Paolozzi

   I have just finished re-writing my “Masterclass- Ten Days with Paolozzi”

Now I am looking for an editor and people to read and check it.

    At the end of the week we were all given a Paolozzi plaster cast of a head with the proviso from Geraldine Prince, art historian and course organizer:
“If you think you have not had value for your money you can always sell it.”

Diary of a Masterclass with Paolozzi

"All human experience is just one big collage."  Paolozzi

Editing my diary of Ten Days with Paolozzi – a Masterclass held in Edinburgh College of Art – I have been struck by how prescient he was of our future: of the role robots play, of the melding of man, machine and robot, how technology is changing us as beings and the way we interact with the world yet at the same time he ransacked cultures from the past re-creating them in his own  images. He regarded the studio more like a kitchen or cauldron mixing stuff up and seeing what emerges at the end.

On a personal level I found my time with Paolozzi just as beneficial, if not more so, in some ways than four years at Glasgow School of Art because with Paolozzi one had a link direct to the past – he had met Braque, Arp, Giacometti, Leger, Dubuffet, Miro and Tristan Tzara in Paris.

And in a strange way the process of turning this diary into a book means I am re-living that time in Ediburgh College of Art and in a vicarious way touching these seminal figures from our artistic past.

Masterclass with Paolozzi - 1996

Paolozzi having his hand cast in plaster- Edinburgh College of Art, 1996

“The golden rule is just to follow one's obsessions."

 Eduardo  Paolozzi

 "Paolozzi is all about the unexpected - as anyone brave enough to sign up for his Masterclass in Edinburgh this summer will quickly discover” – art critic Iain Gale. The Independent

Well, I signed up for this Masterclass in Edinburgh College of Art  and Paolozzi asked us to keep a diary. I did so. 

The other day I re-read it  and realised what a remarkable insight it offered into this grand old man of British sculpture.

Oh it was not easy. We had a roller-coaster  ten days when we saw Paolozzi in both his benign and belligerent moods.

Today with the ease of self-publishing  both e-book and print-on-demand  I have decided to put publish that diary. 

But first comes the difficult bit- editing the images and text.

The city that distrusts photographers

   I am great admirer of the Magnum photographers so I looked with special interest at last Sunday Observer colour magazine  (17.11.13) which carried a selection of photos they had taken in Marrakech in preparation for the worlds largest photography museum opening there in two years time.

   Two years ago I stayed in a riad in the medina and took photos. Here was a rare opportunity to compare my work with these internatioanl photographers. I would learn from them, see the opportunities I missed.

   But it was not to be. The Magnum photographers had encountered an unfriendly reception from the locals and were unable, with the exception of Susan Meiselas, to access the local community who for cultural reasons are very unhappy to be photographed.

    Well, for some reason I was able to win their trust and here is the result.

It is a city of contrasts, the old way of life mixing alongside the new:

While there I took a day trip to the Atlas Mountains, only regretting it could not have been longer: