Bloody PCs, bloody Microsoft and a great new car to photograph

The latest news on my PC is that we have tested some of the known symptoms associated with Windows rebooting- overheating or faulty power supply and as yet nothing seems to add up, strangely after having formatted the hard disc and installed Windows XP when I try to upgrade Service Pack 3 it crashes. Any way lets assume that no one reading “You Will Never Look At Them In The Same Way Again” is a geek and move on enough to say that I have handed it over to my friends Keith and Andy at Bytesize Computers on the Robin Hood Island in Birmingham.

Trying to carry on life and work on my old laptop is like trying to run a marathon but running through treacle. To open a photograph in Photoshop is taking forever so you can image what I’m going through when I say that I took 350 pictures this morning and I cant even sort out the bad fuzzy ones from the “possibles might use it in the future” ones therefore I will wait till I get the tower back to work on the photos associated with the exhibition preview night and some of the events connected to the show. You can get a look at some pictures via my Flickr site which somehow I have managed to keep going through all the mayhem

I got a call from my brother who found a burnt out car at the Maypole in Birmingham, so off I go with camera in hand but when I arrived there was the Ford Galaxy up on a lorry ready for the scrap yard, the burn marks were no good anyway, so I got on the phone to my brother to tell him the latest news. He told me I can’t be right because he was still looking at the car.

The car he spotted was about 200 yards around the corner.


The arsonist really had a great time swinging the car all over the grass verge then resting against the signs, as you can see they got a bit creative.


Remarkable when you think that this is happening on one of the busiest roads in Britain, the 50 bus route that runs to and from Birmingham City Centre through the Maypole is the most used in Europe.


At one stage while I was working and concentrating on the THE shot I became overcome by the extreme smell of the still leaking petrol fumes, I have never experienced this before and for a while I had to work up wind. It wasn’t until I now I realised that I was in a very dangerous environment that could of become a fireball in no time.


So here is a hurriedly put together picture which because of the time frame involved and perhaps my slow laptop doesn’t match my artist statement. If you want to see my work in the gallery and your close to the West Midlands area have a look at my latest exhibition.


Exhibition Title: You Will Look at Them in the Same Way Again
Venue: Solihull Gallery
Address: Solihull Arts Complex, Library Square, Touchwood, Homer Road, Solihull, West Midlands
Dates: 19th January - 7th March
Theres an Artist Talk event on Thursday 26th February at 6pm

Why do PCs crash at the worst possible moment?

Last Thursday was the private view of my latest exhibition.

Exhibition Title: You Will Look at Them in the Same Way Again
Venue: Solihull Gallery
Address: Solihull Arts Complex, Library Square, Touchwood, Homer Road, Solihull, West Midlands
Dates: 19th January - 7th March
There's an Artist Talk event on Thursday 26th February at 6pm

But before I could mail shot everybody to publicise the event my computer started crashing and rebooting. I managed to hold it together by the use of the equivalent of blue tack and string and then restored it back to factory settings on Saturday night. That was not the end of my problems and it now seems that its a hardware fault and not the Windows operating system (sorry Microsoft the number of times I have cursed you this week) Further more when I tried to restore my art work files back onto the PC there was another system crash that seemed to damage my external backup hard drive. In a panic I have been trying to fix that and eventually after defragging and using lots of utilities everything seems to be ok.

Data is Backed up, but!!

I do have everything backed up on DVDs CDs and old hard drives but finding the data and tracking down the latest versions would be time consuming and a bit of a nightmare using my old laptop and a 15 year old tower running on Windows 98. The technology has moved on and even copying a large 8 megapixel photo file from one old device to another seems to take forever. In fact I’m copying all my old car original car pictures to the hard drive on my laptop which is taking 6 hours.

Will this unhappy situation create more hits on my blog?

When I look at the visitor stats for “You Will Never Look at Them In The Same Way Again” I notice that the most popular keywords or key phrases that attract hits to the blog are “How do I restore my PC back to factory setting?” and this refers the user to a post I made regarding another PC disaster. last Summer.

Now in the world of SEO I have attracted visitors to my blog but are they relevant visitors because. I’m sure while my PC world was falling apart the last thing I wanted to do was read a blog about some idiot who photographs burnt out cars in the name of art, or indeed select some fine art photography to mount on that bare wall in my living room.

To come: once I have finished my pc repairs and loaded all the software: the pictures from last weeks Private View of the exhibition, and look at what the children of Solihull are doing having based their paintings on my photographs.

Technorati Tags: Exhibition,Solihull,West Midlands,Art,Fine Art,Photography

Technorati Tags: PC,Restore,Windows,Cars,SEO

Depressing

Did you know according to experts. January 19 is the most depressing day in the year but this year they say it is going to be the most in history, Cold weather, fading Christmas memories and broken New Year resolutions mean this period is usually miserable, but the effects of the economic downturn makes this year worse than ever.

I got a phone from a council worker informing me of a burnt car in the park, but when I arrived it had been towed away. This is the first time this has ever happened to me.

Although you will notice that boggy mess around the charred floor. Well at least I didn’t have to stand in that, and it was very cold. So I’m not that depressed.

Goodbye Tony Hart

I was sad to hear of the death of the Childrens TV artist Tony Hart, I cant quite think if he inspired me to be an artist or not, (its been that long) In some ways I found his programmes very frustrating to watch because I could never see myself being able to draw or paint to the point that someone could recognise what it is! When I was at school I thought that the art of drawing was a natural talent and not something anyone could do by applying certain techniques,

A sleepless night wondering if everything will be ok

Yesterday we set the artwork out on the gallery floor so that we could see how each piece looked in the space and how each one harmonised with the other work. I was a little worried because it doesn’t matter how good a picture looks on a monitor or hard copy its still hit or miss if it works printed on glass and at at that stage you can’t see detail in the pictures and therefore they look disappointing. I was very relieved when all the pictures where hung on white wall with the lighting in the right position.

Once again thanks to the staff at the arts complex who did all the installation for me, luxury.

Two weeks of work before the exhibition opens.

First a catch up on whats been happening in the world of John Garghan since I last posted on “You Will Never Look at Them in the Same Way Again”.

A New Years Message from one of my lookouts

I have been one of the many who have been caught by this horrible virus flu/cold like symptom epidemic that’s been sweeping the country. Mine has been the cold flavour or should I say coldzzzzs, I have had about 4 one after another as soon as one fades away a new begins. One is on the way out now and I hope this is the end. While I was in the middle of one “cold” and feeling extremely ill I woke one morning to a text message from John the Park Cleaner who is one of my top scouts for finding burnt out cars. Oh no I thought I can barely sit up without my head spinning or is it the room that’s moving and there’s a burnt out car waiting to be photographed by me. The text was mearly a joke and a Happy New Year message, somewhat relieved I had been spared the dilemma I answered and went back to sleep.

The latest news of my exhibiition

I know I promised a look at some more blogs that I follow and I will do that very shortly but I’m in the thick of preparing for my exhibition.

Exhibition Title: You Will Look at Them in the Same Way Again

Venue: Solihull Gallery

Address: Solihull Arts Complex, Library Square,Touchwood, Homer Road, Solihull, West Midlands

Dates: 19th January - 7th March

You are invited to the Private View Thursday 22nd January 6pm to 7:30

We began the instillation yesterday and because there is a lot of new content in the show all printed onto toughened glass I have been backwards and forwards across Birmingham collecting glass or printing. Its worked like clockwork and I must say a thank you to The Glassworks and Action Graphics who supplied right on time. The only problem I encounter happened last week when The Glassworks called to tell me I could pick up the sheets of glass but I couldn’t open my car doors because the locks had frozen. Using a cocktail of WD40 and De-icer I managed to free the doors although now the central locking system is out of sync with doors locking when they should be open and visa versa and further

more they are never all locked or all open its random. Reminds me of the 1960s film “How I won The War” starring John Lennon who played a very raw recruit into the army; Musketeer Gripweed who couldn’t get the hang of marching or at

least marching in time with everyone else he then got everybody else doing it wrong. The Sergeant Major decided to isolate him from the others and show him how it was done but Gripweed ended up getting the sergeant major screwing it up too.

A trip to London to pick up a picture for the show

I decided that I needed a main picture for the show that would stand out above the rest of the work,

I do have a picture that is a unique one off print:

I will never print the photograph this size or as large again

The print process used for this picture has since changed and it is now impossible to calibrate the digital file to recreate the same result again. That photograph was down at the gallery of International Art Consultants in London. They represent my work into the commercial sector through Art For Offices. So a visit to London to pick up this precious piece also enabled me to visit and have a chat about how we can support one and other to sell my work

Trafalgar Square at 1:30pm, you can see how bad the weather is by the light or lack of light

Despite horrible weather I had a great trip, although I had to pay the London congestion charge of £8 I found the traffic moved freely through central London, the last time I drove through the city it was one big bumper to bumper crawl.

The blogs that I follow

As an artist I find I spend a great deal of time surfing the net, looking for galleries to approach, inspiration from the big wide world or just to look at other artists work. I call it all part of my job, well that’s my excuse. Here are a few blogs and sites I regularly dip into.

Retirement With No Problem

http://www.choiceforum.co.uk/blog/noproblem.html

This has no relationship with art so that proves a point. The blog follows a couple who took early retirement and travel the inland waterways of Britain in their narrow boat “No Problem”. A friend introduced me to this site about 12 months ago and I have followed it ever since, I don’t know why I have no urge to live on a canal boat but it is just a nice diary. This site got me interested in blogging and taught me there is always a story to tell and blog about

Pete's 'Today in History' Quiz

http://todaysthedayquiz.blogspot.com/

This has no relationship with art so this again proves a point. Every Tuesday night I go to the quiz night at The Bulls Head, Hall Green, Birmingham. Pete achieves the impossible and writes one of the best quizzes that I have been to. His philosophy for a quiz is: - Don't make it too hard (people don't like to go home thinking that they know nothing!) If people don't know an answer, when they do hear it they say, "****, I should have known that!!" (There's nothing worse at a quiz than being none the wiser when you've heard the answer!) It works.

Pete's 'Today in History' Quiz has 3 questions relating to this day in history and with answers published the following day I cheat and read a day late. I’m useless on questions based on art and artists which surprises everyone. 

Petes written a book "The Easy Quiz Master" it’s self published and available via Amazon and Lulu.com.

Created In Birmingham

http://www.createdinbirmingham.com/

This blog reports on the creative community in Britians second city. Its run by Chris Unitt and it’s a pretty slick site, My thanks to Chris and his coverage of “You Will Never Look at Them in the Same Way Again” because I get loads of clicks originating from Created In Birmingham.  

The next post will feature some great artist blogs. 

New Year Resolutions on Flickr

A Happy New Year one and all, Christmas was better than I expected and now it’s back to the old routine. It seems that everyone is off until Monday 5th which is when I start to get all the materials together for the installation of the show at the Solihull Arts Complex.

Just started the 365 project on Flickr. The idea is to take a photo a day and post it on my Flickr site. I believe that the idea originated with taking self portraits everyday, but I wouldn’t inflict that on anyone.

Title: Ready for the Recycle Bin

Heres the topical picture for the 1st January as I uploaded it I thought of the implications, what happens if I go on holiday and I'm miles from an internet connection but then I thought with the credit crunch, What Holiday? Anyway lets see if I can keep it going for more than a week.