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Friends are coming round
drinks and snacks in the garden
apart, new normal
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by Scooj
Author: scooj
I am Stephen. I live in Bristol, UK. I decided to shorten my profile...to this: Wildlife, haiku, travel, streetart, psychogeography and my family. Not necessarily in that order.
3582. Stapleton Road
This is the second of four railway column pieces in Stapleton Road to be featured on Natural Adventures. Local artists were commissioned by Network Rail and Severnside Rail Partnership to smarten up the railway supports which had become rather untidy with a plethora of tags and posters. I am a little torn sometimes when this kind of commission comes along, because these spots can host some fine pieces of graffiti, but faced with the option of anti-graffiti painted columns or these gorgeous commissioned murals, I’d always opt for the latter.
This column is a joint effort from Zoe Power and David Bain and is a perfect place to showcase their work. Interestingly their other collaboration to have appeared on Natural Adventures is also a railway piece on Redland Station.
The trademark of these two artists is a highly stylised design and bright bold colours. I would label this piece as a true collaboration because they have stitched their work so closely together that it is difficult for me to be one hundred percent certain who painted what. The cheerful and skilfully painted mural is, along with its sisters, is sure to become a well known local landmark.
3581. M32 roundabout J3 (298)
UPDATE
Thank you, Paul H for correcting my assumption that this piece was by Sled One. It is in fact by 3Dom, and was painted to celebrate Sled One’s birthday paint jam. In terms of the rest of the post, everything I wrote about Sled One is applicable to 3Dom. I will leave the post as originally written, because it is important to recognise how difficult it can be sometimes to get things wrong…
This wonderful piece of writing from Sled One is actually one half of a collaboration with himself, which in retrospect I ought to have posted as one, but without thinking I have split into two. Both elements of his work were part of an ASK painting session a couple of weeks back.
Given that Sled One usually freestyles his work, which means he doesn’t paint from a design on a piece of paper in front of him, but with the freedom of his own mind, there is an extraordinary ease, confidence and flow that demonstrates his gift. Sled One is a truly gifted artist whose distinctive surreal creativity puts him in the highest echelons of character artists in Bristol (and beyond), and he is a great writer too. This is a fairly straightforward piece of writing, but often his writing is enhanced with character-like elements. Turning the inanimate into the animate is a speciality.
To do list
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Holiday weekend
begins with a to do list
frying pan to fire
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by Scooj
3580. M32 Spot (110)
I have only managed to capture a fraction of the Recent John D’oh stencils as he tends to spray them at spots I don’t visit too often (something better change). The last time I looked at this column there was a Pekoe sketch, so I know that this stencil isn’t very old.
As we are accustomed to seeing, John D’oh once again combines his political commentary with humour in this case ridiculing Rishi Sunak for his astounding 1% pay increase for nurses after all they have done and achieved for the nation in the last year. Yet another jaw-dropping moment from this ‘compassionate’ administration. At this moment I ought to say that it is not only nurses. As someone who works in the public sector, I have been on the wrong end of a pay freeze for ten years which was lifted last year and I received a 2% rise, but we are now back to a pay freeze. Meanwhile MPs and bankers (the architects of the banking crisis) have seen their salaries increase very nicely thank you. Respect to John D’oh for calling out these people.
3579. M32 roundabout J3 (297)
Relatively speaking, Rezwonk has had a quiet twelve months. Prior to the first lockdown a year ago, there was no stopping him and his collaborations with Decay and Nightwayss were a regular occurrence… it felt like barely a week would pass without at least one new ‘REZER’ gracing a Bristol wall somewhere. He has been missed, so seeing that he appears to be ramping things up again is pleasure to my eyes.
This recent piece was part of a collaborative wall that was long overdue on this particular site which hadn’t changed for an eternity. This is a beautiful and technically accomplished piece in which he revisits his theme if incorporating rivets in to his letters, as if this were some large metalwork sculpture. The colours work nicely and there is a special something that makes it rather compelling. Great work, keep it up.
Thursday Doors – 1 April 2021
Doors 143 – April Fools’ Day – some central Bristol doors.
Some of you may have seen reports of unrest being reported in Bristol over the last week or two. Such is the nature of the press in the UK at the moment that you’d think the whole of the city was in flames, and violent protesters lurk on every corner. It just isn’t like that.
There have been four protests now where citizens have taken to the streets to object to the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill which is passing through parliament right now. This bill along with others coming from the hard-line right-wing Home Secretary Priti Patel seeks to restrict human rights further and by doing so, cement central control over the people she is there to serve. The first protest ended with violent exchanges which is so deeply sad, because of the damage it did to the purpose of the protest.
You get what you vote for, and sadly it seems that people who voted for this Government have been happy to see our public services brought to its knees through the policy/ideological choice of austerity; our exit from a powerful trading partnership and the freedoms to work in and participate fully as citizens of Europe; a clamping down on our right to protest peacefully; a reduction in our overseas development budget at a time when wealthy countries should be stepping up and not stepping back; an Australian-style immigration system proposed to keep ‘illegal’ immigrants out of the country unless they have documentation that their lives are at risk (impossible for people whose lives are at risk… think about it); a perfunctory recognition that climate change is really important because we are hosting the COP 26 conference in Glasgow this year, not forgetting that many serving in this Government were climate sceptics only a few years ago, and some still are; a jaw-droppingly incompetent response to the Covid-19 pandemic with more than 126,000 people who have died from this deadly disease and a clown at the helm with nothing more important to himself than himself.
I would love to say at this point that I am only joking and that the above paragraph is an April Fools’ Day piece, but it isn’t, it is real, and it is our future. It is no wonder some people want to protest, and it is no surprise that this Government want to suppress any kind of objection or resistance or anything that might expose them as anything other than brilliant. Unfortunately they have Rupert Murdoch on their side and the full weight of his media holdings which makes it much easier for them to sway public opinion.
Oops… I appear to have gone off-topic, but I feel much better for sharing. I hadn’t intended to ‘go there’ but it just started to spill out. The point I was going to make was that the protests have ended up in one street, Bridewell Street, which is only a stone’s throw away from where all these doors are. Most of these doors are now entrances to pubs or restaurants where once stood banking and finance establishments. Our city centres are ever evolving and a further evolution is set to take place as many businesses leave their offices and commercial premises in favour of ‘working from home’ models.
I hope you enjoy my doors more than my rant, but both would be doubly satisfying… here they are:
That’s it for this week, and I’ll try to steer clear of politics in the future – have a wonderful Easter/Passover weekend.
If you have made it this far, you probably like doors, and you really ought to take a look at the No Facilities blog by Dan Anton who has taken over the hosting of Thursday Doors from Norm 2.0 blog. Links to more doorscursions can be found in the comments section of Dan Anton’s Thursday Doors post.
by Scooj
Warm
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Drawn to the garden
the dog, the cat and children
catching a few rays
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by Scooj
3578. M32 roundabout J3 (296)
Aah, such deep joy. This is my favourite collaboration of the year so far. For me it simply speaks of spring, of life, of happiness. The colours are strong and vibrant and the execution of the two elements of the collaboration by Billy and Sepr is so natural and so very easy on the eye.
On the right of the piece is a classic Sepr character holding an old wired telephone handset stating that ‘it’s for you’ and expecting at any moment to hand the phone over. The colours are magical and the green shadow is outrageously bold but somehow works brilliantly.
To the left is a visual interpretation of what is being heard in the earpiece of the telephone handset. ‘Hello, this is spring, can I help you’ says Billy’s half of the mural both in words and visually. A rural landscape with a lamb and daffodils and a spring rainbow are contained in a speech bubble. This is magnificent and I would challenge even the coldest hearted critic of street art not to find some happiness in this piece.
I’ve not seen these two collaborate before, but if this is anything to go by I sincerely hope it is not the last time.
3577. Cumberland Basin
I am going to be honest with you. My excitement at finding this collaboration piece by Nugmoose and Mudra was a little offset by the rather creepy and unsettling nature of the images. Nugmoose likes to experiment with alien forms and Mudra’s work is always pushing creative boundaries. The result in this case is decidedly odd, and the location slightly dingy.
Having said all that is it great that these two, and Slakarts too, have hit upon a friendship that is highly productive just at the moment. In this piece, Nugmoose’s figure is being drawn towards a hand clutching some flowers. The monster appears to have lost its eyes and is navigating its way forward using the sense of smell. Is that what is going on here? A weird piece, but a nice one to have found.
Natural adventures 