Archive for February, 2008

okay, I know I missed letter I out, but in conversation with Oz, despite pronunciation differences here’s an artist beginning with I………

Nail quotes

Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas. Georges Braque

My name is Kurt Schwitters… I am an artist and I nail my pictures together. Kurt Schwitters

A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit. Desiderius Erasmus

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. Abraham Maslow

A nail will come out, but its hole remains. Turkish Proverb

Well, I am the first to admit I can be wrong… during a very interseting discussion in the Angel with Oz last night, the conversation led to the previous posting about album covers; specifically Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division, contrary to common folk law (and maybe teenage rumours), the design by Peter Saville was not as previously thought (particulary by us) as being the heart rate of a man during an orgasm; it was, as Oz mentioned (saw an interview with said Peter Saville previous week) an image taken of a pulsar. Well, after years of thinking we knew what it represented we were to say a little taken aback, who wouldn’t be? Thinking you knew a secret that only a few knew, like a cone of silence was fantastic – well that bubble has been burst.

Here’s the real definition of the album design by Peter Saville:

The front cover image comes from an edition of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy, and was originally drawn with black lines on a white background. [1] It presents exactly 100 successive pulses from the first pulsar discovered, PSR 1919+21 (often referred to in the context of this album by its older name, CP 1919). PSR B1919+21 is a pulsar with a period of 1.337 seconds and a pulse width of 0.04 second. It notable for being the first radio pulsar ever discovered (in July 1967 by Jocelyn Bell Burnell). Its original designation was CP 1919 and it is also known as PSR J1921+2153. It is located in the constellation of Vulpecula.

Oh well, it was always gonna happen!!!!

The Nails were a six piece New Wave band that formed in Boulder, Colorado, during the mid 1970s. In Colorado, they were originally named The Ravers, and their roadie, Eric Boucher, later became known as Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys.
The Nails moved to New York and by the late 1970s had established themselves on the club circuit. Hotel for Women, an EP recorded in 1981, contained an early version of “88 Lines About 44 Women”, a song that caught the attention of RCA. The Nails were signed to RCA By Bruce Harris, also known for bringing The Clash to America. In 1984 “88 Lines About 44 Women” was re-recorded for RCA and included on The Nails’ full-length debut LP, Mood Swing. The song received regular airplay despite a number of double entendres and lyrical references to masturbation and sadomasochism. [1]
Two years later they released Dangerous Dreams, also on RCA. Both Mood Swing and Dangerous Dreams made the Billboard top 200 album chart. But after the release of Dangerous Dreams RCA dropped The Nails. RCA did not release either LP on compact disc. “88 Lines About 44 Women” continued to appear on compilations 20 years after its release and was featured in a Mazda television commercial that aired in the late 1990s.
The Nails were composed of vocalist Marc Campbell, bassist George Kaufman, saxophonist Douglas Guthrie, drummer Mike Ratti (Dennis McDermott on Mood Swing), keyboardist Dave Kaufman, and guitarist Steve O’Rourke.
In 1988, the band reconvened (without Guthrie and Dave Kaufman) to record a third album, Corpus Christi, which wasn’t released until 1993 and received little exposure.
In 2007, the band licensed Mood Swing and Dangerous Dreams from RCA parent company Sony-BMG Entertainment and released these albums on compact disc for the first time.

It just goes on …………………..!!!!!
Types of nails
boat nails
box nails
brads
broom nails
casing nails
common wire nails
common spikes
cooler nails
deformed shank nails
escutcheon nails
finishing nails
joist hanger nails
railroad spikes
ring shank nails
roofing nails
sinkers
spiral shank nails
wire nails
apple-box nails
beer case nails
cleat nails
hinge, latch plate and lock nails
strap nails
berry-box nails
cigar-box nails
date nails
egg case nails
fruit box nails
hoop fasteners
hook head metal lath nail
orange box nails
BLOCNAIL
CLOUT
CLYDE RAIL SPIKE
CUT CLASP
CUT FLOOR BRAD
DECOR
FLAT COUNTERSUNK HEAD
FURNITURE BRAD
HOLDFAST
MOULDER BRAD
PALMHOLDFAST
ROSEHEAD FINE SHANK
ROSEHEAD FLAT POINT
ROSEHEAD SQUARE SHANK

As you may be aware one of my current pieces is based on the use of nails; well true to form, I have done a little research about some historical facts about nails, their names over the years and modern equivalents. You may wish to gloss over this post!!! But, when working with mixed media I do like to get involved with the materials I am using.

(source: glasgow steel nail company)
The Penny Nail
This article in ‘The Ironmonger’ from 1915 tells us the story of the ‘penny’ nail.
As you can see from the above picture, the details come from the account books of churchwardens and builders in the Middle Ages in England. In this case, the researcher examined the records dated 1477 from the Church of St Mary-at-Hill in the City of London.
Although many different handmade nails were in use at the time which had specific names, a large proportion were named simply by the number of pence paid for a hundred nails.
For example, four penny nails were those of which a hundred were purchased for 4d. (The ‘d’ stands for pence in the days when sterling was denominated in pounds, shillings and pence – £ s d).
The account records of the Church of St Mary-at-Hill show -
‘ffor a c of v peny nayle vd’
The ‘c’ is the Roman numeral for ‘hundred’ and ‘v’ is the Roman numeral for ‘five’.
The amount of money paid for a hundred nails – fourpence, fivepence,sixpence – is thought to depend on the size of the nail. The larger the nail, the more expensive it was. The largest nail appears to have been the tenpenny nail, also referred to as the ‘fyve stroke nayle’ – possibly because it took five strokes of the hammer to get it home.Nails in Stuart Times
Moving on a couple of centuries and we begin to see some of the nail names appearing that we still use today.
This article, again from ‘The Ironmonger’ this time dated 1924, reports on a young man named Ambrose Crowley who lived in the days of William & Mary. He was a Quaker who was in business as a ‘naylor’ and by 1682 had set himself up as an ironmonger in Thames Street in London to sell his nails.
Apart from explaining the best size of bags to use for packing the nails to stack them successfully in a pile the document reviewed by the researcher showed the following nail names being used at that time -

In the news at the moment is the sale of the painting – Kerze (candle) by German artist Gerhard Richter used on the album cover by Sonic Youth – ‘Daydream Nation’ (1988), not an album, which at the time was a major chart success! Its said that the popularity of the image is worldwide – symbol of peace, its probably going to sell for at least £2.5m, maybe more

This got me thinking about my own record collection – most of it in boxes, some lost in time (parties, friends borrowing them etc, currently updating on CD – I know its the day of the i-pod, I do own one and use it all the time!) and which ones stick in my mind as cherished album covers.
I have included a few here for various reasons, some more obvious than others – the immediate shock value of the Pistols;

as a very young teenager smuggling it into my bedroom so the parents wouldn’t see it!Ian Dury,

just loved the image of him standing there outside the shop with slightly flared trousers (not hip at the time!!), constantly looking in the shop window and setting to memory what was there whilst sat in the lounge with headphones on (so my parents couldn’t hear some of the lyrics!!!
Then there is Joy Division, a discovery thanks to Oz, the cover looks at first like a mountain range in contour map formation, but, when you found out what it really represented you felt like you were the holder of a secret and only a few knew, especially not parents!

Another one I have posted is that of Klaus Nomi - I just loved the theatrical element to the black and white image, a strange mix of b/w classics and slightly comical approach (at the time I saw Metropolis for the first time and felt a link between the two – well I was young and impressionable at the time!)
Over time I might droop a few more in, of course, there’s nothing like thumbing your way through old albums, which of course does lead you to sitting down and playing them… which can’t be bad.

I know I haven’t been upto date with this but all will be resumed!! You may notice that I haven’t posted an artist with I as the initial letter – to be frank I couldn’t remember one that I like/has influenced me. No doubt, there are one or two and hopefully I can recall them at a later date.

So as a bonus I am including two yes 2 artists just to make up for the lack of ‘I’

Both artist work influenced me in my early college days and I have selected works that I remember seeing for the first time and thinking wow, other images are ones that I have chosen because of the mark making/drawing technique. Enjoy

Following previous posting about nails and the artist David Shrigley I found an interesting interview by him from the Independent, it follows; I like his earthy honesty and sense of humour – shame about Notts Forest: although I agree with him on his understanding of their skill!
I will tootle over to the Haywood Gallery in the next week or two to have a butchers at his latest exhibition – running 25th Jan to 13th April

Contemporary art borrows the structure of a joke, then takes out the humour – that’s what makes it art. In my twisted mind, it makes sense. But pretty much everything Gilbert and George do is funny.
* My aesthetic is a form of shorthand. I made a decision that I wasn’t going to draw anything in a more sophisticated fashion than it needed to be.
* My parents are not at all interested in art and never thought I would be an artist.
* Art is not a great career path, as very few people make money from it. Then again, nobody expected to make money from it when I graduated, so it’s changed a lot.
* Art can be a bit of a rich kid’s thing to study, in the United States particularly.
* There’s always good work coming out, there always has been and there always will be. I think it’s ridiculous to say there’s no good art around. It’s true in any discipline. People always say there isn’t any good music around, but they’re not looking for it in the right place.
* I’m a big consumer of music. Now I’ve made some money, I really like the fact that I can buy records without having to worry. That’s a big luxury in my life. The ironic thing is I get lots of freebies now.
* I tend to put too much emotional energy into following Nottingham Forest, but they’re never on TV because they’re crap.
* ‘The Mighty Boosh’ is the best comedy on TV by some distance. It’s crazy, but quite sweet and innocent at the same time.
* I’m proud that I do what I enjoy, and I can do it and support my partner. And I don’t have to get up dead early in the morning. I can wander around the house in my pyjamas and do drawings. That’s quite nice, but I’m not sure if that’s an achievement or just a stroke of good fortune. Maybe it’s both.
Interview By Luiza Sauma