City of Fire & Beautiful Bricks...

The Portfolio of Works to date...




..I'm looking for the essence of memories; memories that climb back through the smoke of the hellish industrial landscape of bygone Stoke-On-Trent - the City that my forefathers inhabited, that generations of my family worked and died in.

   As well we all know Stoke-On-Trent is a rapidly developing city mutating and evolving into the future and shaking away the roots of it's ancient industrial past - it is determined and noticeably becoming a new economic hub inhabited with all the characters and players that cornerstone every modern British city nowadays; the Hilton hotel chains, Nando's and all - familiar and formulaic as they may be... there's no point bleating about it as a lot of people do;  growth shapes change, but for now yet, just around the corner under the construction dust lies the old town with it's ancient story and characters!
      
         I am there of course.. and my work brings to life the City of Fire and Beautiful Bricks ...

        The references to the past aren't altogether in the 'Listed Buildings' that sit dead and unused on the high street. They have become iconic in their perfectly preserved state but somehow look lonely - people stare at them and marvel, but they don't always connect. Some great talent needs to weave them into some giant story of this heaving conurbation that awaits writing as yet, but at least they're now guaranteed to be a part of the future somehow - I believe the real story resides in the row upon row of terraced houses; the workers houses (now being demolished by the square mile), the working people of this place and their deep family histories.... When I was a kid, visiting here on my parents annual return home, I was, and still am fascinated by (and terrifed of, back then) 'the entry's' - the playgrounds and growing up 'turf' of my parents and beyond... so many people connect with them as depicted in my work and they tell me so with excited faces, as my parents recollect too; people from all tiers of working society; Labourer to Chief Executive...  they reconnect with their childhoods here... my work is driven and influenced by such places; memories and subliminal references and influences. Two years ago I stayed in Staithes and found in the local gallery an artist named Ian Burke; who through silk-screen printing, and painting delivers a fantastic story of this ancient fishing village through a set of old photographs of the historical inhabitants. Last year I stayed in Filey, and discovered Frank Brangwyn up in Scarborough... within the last few months I went up to see an exhibition by Joan Eardley in Edinburgh - her Glaswegian street-kids.... it's all become a beautiful creative soup! These artists are reinforcing and validating the direction I find myself travelling -  I've been poring over old maps from the Stoke-On-Trent of 1890 and thereabouts for the last five or six years because the stories that folk tell, including my parents, reference places on these maps, and also more so because the City and it's layout are being redrawn for the future.. the streets are being lost! I've always been fascinated by my own family story as far as I know it, and the fact that I came here to become a part of it - it's a great tapestry of influences and they're driving my creative endeavors...

      I want to illustrate those stories; the claustrophobia of living in the shadow of the industrial workplace, the looming effect of the dominant industry sitting ever present and and huge at the end of the street where you live - never out of sight, and never letting the worker forget it either!
My research draws on the old stories; it jumps out of the old maps and photographs - I rebuild lost streets, and reconstruct distant memories from the minds of those who remember the gritty gravitas of working life in pot banks and coal mines... and stories passed down to them through generations who lived through the sheer primitivism of an industrial landscape of a city... I remember when I arrived into it all ... the story is just as involving, just as exciting, and here it is!

Sadie Haynes and The Spirit of Stoke-On-Trent

I first encountered Sadie Haynes through the glass walls of a purpose built 'tank' in the front entrance of the Tesco Extra store in Hanley last year!  The panes of glass that made the walls were covered in the messages of well-wishers either written directly to the glass, or on one of the hundreds of pink Post-It  notes stuck to them all the way around. There was a tremendous sense of excitement at what was going on - I could sense a buzz in the air. Sadie herself was just sitting on a chair within the walls, reading a book. Passing time. I recalled the infamous stunt by David Blaine years earlier; not because I thought of somebody trying to emulate it but because it as a tremendous sense of exposure, a huge challenge that confronted the enormity of such a task head on. Whatever your ambition in declaring such a commitment to raise funds, there is certainly no hiding in having to live the challenge in full public view - success or failure to achieve it is open to all to witness.

I was incredibly proud of a person I did not even know and I could not resist the opportunity of approaching the 'tank' to offer my personal best wishes - I did so, and since we have met now, we recall how she acknowledged my wishes by nearly bursting into tears because of the emotional and physical input it had exacted on her - and I think if she had, I would have too!!  The impact of seeing a live event in the flesh, especially one of such significant impact in the realisation is emotional, and I recall that there was only about fifty minutes until the task was completed when I chose my moment - the sense of achievement was within touching distance for Sadie. She had spent thirty-six hours in this 'world' - locked in ... 'Locked in for Autism', as the name of the task was that has created a significant chapter in fundraising history.

Sadie Haynes is a Community Champion at Tesco Hanley, who's missions have been as varied as they have been individually successful, and to date she is well on course to raise Sixty-Thousand Pounds for those causes in the scope of her varied passions; painting rooms for the Samaritans, collecting doggie related food and supplies for Greyhound Gap, and now to raise the final Two-Thousand Pounds for Skye, a 7 year old little girL whose family are trying to raise £21,000 to pay for an operation to help Skye walk unaided, because the treatment is not available on the NHS. 

Skye Twyford has cerebral palsy and can only walk short distances with the help of a frame and the use of a wheelchair. 

Medicas have ruled that the school girl is suitable for pioneering operation to help her walk, but the procedure is no longer available on the NHS. Syke will tell you that this operation will allow her to walk much better and play with her friends. The operation Skye has been put forward for is the Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy (SDR) treatment, which will reduce the stiffness in Skye's legs. Neurosurgeon Bernadetta Petroni has said "cerebral palsy tightens a persons muscle control and restricts their movement. It is an extremely complex condition; every child is different and should be treated individually. SDR is still very new, and the high risk pioneering surgery is not appropriate for every child and involves intensive rehabilitation but it can be very beneficial in many cases".

Once you have met Skye your outlook on every day life changes for the better! She brings a ray of sunshine with her no matter how she is feeling or whether she's had a good day or not, she brings with her hope, not just for herself but for everyone she meets. She is a determined little girl who has everything to live for, so why shouldn't she have the opportunity to fulfil her life to the full? 

If that means we as a community pull together to raise the extra funds needed then so be it, i will do whatever it takes to raise the £2000 that is still needed...

That is why I have donated my 'Potter -Spirit of the Six Towns' ... and I wish it well in the safe hands of Sadie Haynes, an extraordinary woman in her own right, and somebody whom is I believe, going to get the necessary job done ...