-
Today’s Works in Progress
Two new Blond Card series started. I said to Tina, last weekend, I’d do a painting of Camden Lock bridge for her daughter. I didn’t have any ideas for it, and it’s not the kind of painting I do had she not asked, so I just started drawing and hoped something would work out. She…
-
-
Add Maddarings & Maddarings MAIN MENU
A new series of hands needing rings, specifically, Maddarings.
Maddarings is the shop at Camden Market I get all my rings from. I’ve only just started wearing rings. Cheap ones costing £5-£25 each. No money in the world could buy better ones. I’ve filled all my fingers and don’t think I’ll do thumbs or any other kind of jewellery. 8 fingers holding between two and four rings each. I’d guess a total spend of around £150.
Maddarings is on Makers Alley near Cyberdog and the Amy Winehouse statue. You walk through the Stables Market entrance on Chalk Farm Road, turn right up the cobbled path then straight ahead on your right to 620 Makers Alley. Each artwork comes with a map showing how to get there. I did 15 of the paintings at Billy’s and the pencil drawn maps at home.
They still need gluing to cardboard, that I’ll paint black like the Jompiy G’s and Blond Cards. An earlier series I give out at The Camden Market Free Art Man promotes Kozmic Records, a record fair near Camden Lock bridge where I set up my display every weekend. There’s Blond Cards promoting Camden venues such as The Elephants Head and The Black Cap. None of these places asked me to do them, and like everything The Camden Market Free Art Man, no money changes hands. There’s also a series of acrylic paintings themed on Maddarings that were available to buy at the shop, but none sold. I think we were asking £5 a painting. Roughly the same the Camden Market ice cream van charges if you choose against the extra chocolate flake. Camden go-ers pay top dollar for taste, touch, sound and smell stimulation, but not sight.
It’s noticeably less busy online recently. YouTube views for my Camden videos are significantly down, as is engagement on other platforms. Not sure why, probably something I’m doing wrong, but I’ll figure it out eventually. I’ve been spending an extra few hours a week making and posting YouTube shorts. Maybe that’ll help. I eventually got round to doing Camden TikTok’s last week. In a few years I’ll probably get started on AI.
The Add Maddarings were started at Billy’s studio on Monday as I forgot to take the drawing I’d prepared for the Offgridlife Claymation series. A series I’ve been working on every Monday for the last three weeks after @offgridlife YouTube shorts about FREE ART FREES ART. I had to quickly come up with something to do, and for some reason came up with this.
Shelley, who runs Maddarings, was the singer in Elbow Sisters. A two-piece band we did when we were married for a few years, starting in 2009. I think we started the band after getting married.
The first set of oil transfer drawings I made using this method were after The Rite of Spring. Billy and I then collaborated on a series of using this method that, unfortunately, were attributed solely to him. Welcome to the art world! Pristine on the outside, dodgy second-hand car dealers behind the scenes. I was quite put out by this deliberate misattribution, as I moaned about extensively in a recent video addressing another case of my artistic contributions with Billy being understating/ eradicating of my role in order to falsely elevate his. None of this is Billy’s fault, as far as I’m concerned, it seems to be how others have chosen to attribute our work irrespective of the truth. FREE ART FREES ART is the antithesis of this, as is Black Ivory. If there’s no credible art world available, make one. Or as my mum would say “If you want something done, do it yourself.”
The red and green text above were all individually hand stamped this morning. They’ll go on the front somewhere with the painting and map. Despite being in oil, even the thickly painted Add Maddarings dry in only a few days. The pencil drawings of the map are traced from my initial sketch showing where Maddarings is in relation to Cyberdog and the Amy Winehouse statue.
-
If you’re at Camden Market in London on a weekend day, you can stop by my Camden Market Free Art Man display between 12pm and 3pm (unless the weather’s bad or I’m sick) and get some of my artwork for free, including multiple series based on Blurt, Steemit and Ecency. Original paintings and drawings, not prints. All part of FREE ART FREES ART where we cut out the middleman gallery, and give our work directly to the public in exchange for a short video interview. Last weekend was the most popular so far for my crypto-social artworks. 12inch vinyl LP’s painted in acrylic on the theme of the three main platforms I’m currently using: Blurt, Steemit and Ecency. The Ecency LP has, so far, been the most popular with its blue and white heart design. I don’t think any of the Blurt have gone yet, but I’m sure they’ll start catching up in the not too distant future. I have loads up in my attic, all numbered in unlimited editions (I don’t make limited editions) waiting for new homes and walls to be hung on. Here’s a couple of YouTube shorts showing members of the public browsing and choosing which of the three designs to take:
I’ve also made other crypto-social artworks. The first series was started in rural Thailand of Blurt posters. Our dustbin lid just happened to be the perfect size for the paper we’d taken there. I’ll be making some for Steemit and Ecency soon:
Above is in the apartment my girlfriend and I are still renting in Isaan, standing on a bed we forgot we had when we went to the store to buy its furniture, so ended up with two double beds for the two of us. It will be good though for when visitors come round for sunny countryside art retreats. After this photo was taken, I painted the eyebrows black. An initial oversight. There’s eight in this edition so far, but there will be many more, glued to cardboard and taken out to Camden soon. All Camden work is on a support to try and ensure as many are hung on the wall as possible. A key concept of Advertism is to minimise the possibility of our work being hidden in draws and other forms of storage instead of being out in the open promoting our work.
Then there’s the crypto-social BlondCards that also promote a couple of friends I have in crypto-social world @ronthroop and @offgridlife Below are two. I thought I had some Blond Cards for Ecency but can’t find a photo of one. If I haven’t, they’ll be coming soon:
Each day at Camden sees about 40 artworks given away to the public. I’m planning on having a day dedicated to crypto-social series but don’t have enough yet. I did a couple of days dedicated to artwork themed on Nirvana which went quite well. Hopefully, through FREE ART FREES ART awareness and use of crypto-social platforms will increase, but it’s early days yet as far as Camden Market’s concerned.
-
Was back out doing The Camden Market Free Art Man today. Two sunny days in a row. The Crypto-Social artworks are starting to go now.
See the interview in the YouTube video that starts around 35mins 52 secs, which I’ll do a dedicated separate video about soon, as it’s the most in depth we’ve gone into what the three crypto-social sites are that I’ve discovered through Ron Throop @ronthroop and am getting to learn about with a lot of help from @offgridlife also. Was a slow start at first, getting rid of this series of paintings but both an Ecency and a Steemit 12 inch LP were taken today. I don’t think any Blurt ones have gone yet, which surprises me as I thought they’d be the most popular. So far the Ecency ones are the most popular. Here’s two photos showing each of the three designs:
A very polite young lad deciding between Ecency and Steemit LP’s:
Spot the Blurt LP on show in THE CAMDEN MARKET FREE ART MAN display
As Camden gets busier the videos get longer and the number of Blond Cards I’m going to need this year keeps going up. Last week I thought I’d need 2000 to see me through till November, but it’s now looking more like 3000. Next year I won’t have this problem as I’ll paint them in Thailand during the winter months. Today’s suitcase full of, mostly, Blond Cards:
The group of four musicians who each took an artwork 15 minutes into the video asked about my rings. I told them I got all but one of them from Shelley’s shop at Camden Market on Makers Alley, called Maddarings. The problem is, it’s hidden away and difficult to direct to. I have a series planned of paintings with text on saying “I get my rings from Maddarings at Camden Market at 620 Maker’s Alley, near the Amy Winehouse statue, near Cyberdog” and a map showing exactly where to find it. Each painting will be of the rings I wear to Camden each weekend:
-
Middle-man cutting out at Camden Market yesterday. Galleries out, FREE ART FREES ART in. Didn’t manage to get the Blond Magnums out but will have them as part of the display today. The Camden videos are a lot longer now as I’m not editing them anymore, or even watching them. Maybe when I get an assistant I’ll delegate it to them, but for now I just get home, copy all the footage into the video editor, put on the titles and theme tune and upload. Raw footage is the foreseeable future.
Stay posted for when the video from today’s Camden Market Free Art Man is out to see the Blond Magnums. They’re like Blond Cards but bigger. Part of my new medium sized range. Although I had a family from Essex yesterday take a few of my big ones, other than that though, large paintings have been hard to shift. Hopefully medium sized will go better.
The last two times I’ve taken the Camden Market canvas text paintings out, they’ve gone on their first day. Big canvases go quick, big cardboard goes slow. I have some 30 x 24 inch blank canvases upstairs I’ll use to add to this series. As Advertism goes they’re the best.
The Blond Cards will have a booklet later this year. Ron Throop and I were comparing the cost of booklet production between the US and UK. I think it was over a dollar each in US, UK is 17p. FREE ART FREES ART is being done differently either side of the Atlantic partially for this reason.
Edgeworth Johnstone 