dark am i, yet lovely, a lily among thorns, majestic as stars in procession
WHY DESTROY YOURSELF? WHY DIE BEFORE YOUR TIME? THE KEEPERS OF THE HOUSE TREMBLE. DESIRE IS NO LONGER STIRRED. DO NOT CONFORM ANY LONGER TO THE PATTERN OF THIS WORLD.
Who cares what the movie is like when the cover is this good? Stick it on.
Saw this female gaze in a shop window in town for 150 bucks.
Sure enough it stopped me in my tracks.
Robert Harrop of Edge Sculpture really outdone himself when fashioning this Venus. What a cracker. Now gimme a kiss. Lip against lip, flesh against stone. Window licking.
Introducing Pauline Parsons. I was lucky enough to visit her at home some time ago when she opened her doors to the public. It was a chilly wintry evening in the Macclesfield area and we were invited around a bushy drive towards her shed. She and her partner welcomed us inside. In hindsight, I’m glad I took the photos you can see beneath. It’s always nice to have professionals rub off on you in any walk of life. I remember her saying that she didn’t use any glazes whatsoever. At the time, I thought she was mad, but after many unsuccessful trials and tribulations, I can now fully understand why. Clay, like wood, can be nice enough on its own. You don’t need to go and ruin it by slopping paint around all over the shop. Paint can conceal and disguise all the fine details.
White St Thomas is a soft white clay. Gone are the days of darker clays like Terracotta, which soak up all the lighter glazes. Whiter clays offer a pale base, a clear slate if you like, for the colours of your paints to show up on. The colour of the clay can radically affect the end result after administering your glaze. So wise up.
The first I heard of Zack Khan, it
was another British bodybuilder in an interview with Giles Thomas of MDTV
calling him a “big horrible monster”. It was said in the voice of a hater, but
received with interest, curiosity, and excitement. If somebody is hanging out
in the pro ranks looking like a big horrible monster, then I for one wanna see
him. In the sport of professional bodybuilding, it’s perfectly acceptable to look
like a freak. It’s envied, called for, and loved.
The first I saw of him was on the
Bodypower Expo poster on the door in a local gym. He could barely fit on the
poster. We’re talking mass to spare here, you know what I mean?
Then I heard his endearing accent
when I hit on his YouTube video blogs, documenting his road to recovery after
an extremely serious injury to both his legs, ripping his quads on squats. Just
that alone tells you something, doesn’t it? It’s hardly your typical everyday
niggle. It’s not catching your pinkie on the dumbbell rack as you lift the 25
pounders off to do a set of seated hammer curls. Ripping both your quads means you must be really going for it, really pushing the limits.
What I see in this man is the best
breath of fresh air since Gregg Valentino. The bodybuilding scene was getting
boring. All these new Everyday Joe pros get you down. They are getting shorter
and shorter and they look like barrels. Worse, they have zero personality.
There are only so many Shawn Ray “back in the day” videos you can watch. I
mean, Shawn’s a consummate professional with the microphone, but he’s no
comedian. There’s not enough talking smack these days, if you ask me. The golden
age, with the likes of Ronnie and Jay and Flex and Kevin and Chris, are gone.
But all is not lost.
Because here we have Zack ‘King’
Khan, a British heavyweight of epic proportions who has the balls to reveal his
life to the cameras and inspire people like me to write blog posts like this.
Rather than go through the motions of buttering him up, I’ll get straight to
the point and say that he makes us smile. He makes us laugh. And that’s all we
really ask for in a pro, you know. That’s more than enough. Great physique,
strict ethic, size to burn and a gritty condition are dozen to a penny (sort
of), but someone who puts smiles on faces, amid the usual sour bunch? Priceless.
I’d have quite happily gone through
all of Zack’s video blogs in order, from 1 to 97 onwards. He tells it straight,
he cooks, he goes shopping, he gets around on crutches inside his house, he
wears face paint, he smiles when he’s doing heavy seated rows, he’s down to
earth. What comes over predominantly is that he’s a really nice fellow, all in
all, a really brave nice fellow.
It’s thoroughly entertaining witnessing Zack churn out his innuendoes and lingo while cooking pasta in the microwave, or thinking on the spot while doing seminars, but don’t be fooled into thinking he’s nothing but a big softie with his cheeky smiles and playful attitude. The proof is in the pudding of any pro by their training sessions, and Zack leaves the fancy stuff at the door when he shifts some insanely intense weight. By golly, the size of him! A YouTube commenter said that he cares about nothing except being huge. Well, I seriously doubt that's true, but even if it is, amen to it!
What follows are examples of work from known associates I have collaborated with either past or present. Whether your efforts are superior or inferior to your competition is irrelevant. What matters is the artistic journey and exploration of self. Your only adversary, in reality, is you. The only object you should strive to better is your last, by you.
ADDING DECORATIVE GLASS TO MELT INSIDE THE KILN. ANY OLD BROKEN BOTTLE OF STELLA WILL DO
A CAST OF SOMEONE'S HEAD. CLEAR NOSTRIL PASSAGE ESSENTIAL FOR BREATHING.
POOR GREEN PENGUIN HAD ITS WINGS CLIPPED. #OOPS
LOVELY SILK PAINTING OF A GRAYSON PERRY-ESQUE VASE.
PLENTIFULLY STAMPED HOUSE NUMBER PLATE FOR ATTACHMENT TO FRONT DOOR. THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAIL.
GLASS JEWEL SAMPLES. ATD IS IN A MAD RUSH TO EXPERIMENT WITH GLASS. PRONTO. DOUBLE QUICK. SOON AS.
LIGHTHOUSE LAMP NEEDS A SHADE. CAN YOU HELP?
BASE OF LIGHTHOUSE. QUALITY JOB ON THE MOSSY ALGAE.
ANOTHER LAMP BASE IN DEVELOPMENT.
A PUMPKIN SPHERE, WITH HOLES IN FOR LEDs.
THIS SPHERE FLASHES DURING DARKNESS THANKS TO SOLAR POWERED LEDs. OH, AND IT'S SET INTO A PIECE OF LOG.
ASHTRAYS IN THE SHAPE OF LUNGS. SO YOU DON'T FORGET TO TRY TO GIVE UP.
Whoever posted on YouTube that this guy is peerless is right on
the button. When it comes to vocabulary, not even Stephen Fry can keep
up with him, and that is bloody well saying something. Every time Will speaks publicly it’s a perfect opportunity to tilt your ears, get the notepad out, and start learning some new words. Does he feel no
sympathy for whoever he speaks with? Surely they don’t know the meaning of some
of the words he comes out with. There is much to be said about Will, much aplenty, coz he makes us laugh out loud with the slightest effort. For now, peerless is enough.
Peerless is a compliment of the very highest magnitude, and peerless is downright true.
The blog just realised that this year’s best Koestler
artwork (and still my screensaver) had an accompanying poem of the same title
in the written works category. Sean Donoher really owned this year’s
competition, and although this effort was kinda overlooked, it had probably the
best line of all:Paranoid bench seats one. Alicia Stubbersfield (poet and
judge) had no time for this though, saying he should have started the poem from
there. Garth is a lifer’s prison by the way, so that’s quite sad, but take
nothing away from his talent. He’s been man enough to put his name on his work
publicly. Anonymous rings alarm bells. Personally, anyone going by the name
anonymous should not win. And a poem should not win over prose. But there you
go. ATD don’t make the rules. I just [try] to judge. Sean, at time of writing, has no idea he is featured here. Much like an author has no idea when someone reads his or her book when he or she is brown bread (dead).
Below is verse from a long and disturbing poem done 5½
years ago. See the similarity between Donegan and Donoher? Writing like this is where it all began. Quick-fire ideas, three-word
lines, 4 word verses, bam.
Here's a video attempting to lay out the truth for you in simple layman's terms. It's awfully kind of someone to bother trying to do this for us. We're born and we live and we work and all the rest of it but when was the last time anybody stopped to tell us what the purple plague is going on, eh? Any instances come immediately to mind? All we want to know is the story so far. That's it. Not a lot to ask. Who we are, what we've done, who's in charge, and so on. Add some powerful male narration, stirring animation... and bingo, you have a recipe for enlightenment. Not hard, is it, and yet there is sooo much ambiguity out there that sometimes we can watch an advert and not know what is being advertised. ADVERTS DIE!!! Why teach us geography in school when you could be educating us about the dangers of gambling addiction? The point is this: In a world of contradictions and blurry fuzz, sometimes all it takes is a few minutes of awe-inspiring reason, skilfully depicted on screen to rebalance the books. Funny how even atheists can't help getting a few cheap shots in at religion though... Everybody whose anybody knows the absolute truth and the absolute truth is that it's nothing but a grand scale slanging match. Take Tom Jones as an example and "listen to nobody but yourself".
“And if
I gotta die tonight, if this weight is gonna kill me tonight, then so be it.”
Somebody commented that this was the most inspirational quote in Bodybuilding
History. Er—no, don’t think so, it’s actually corny as hell. Okay? This kind of
thing would sound bearable if spoken by a Green Beret behind enemy lines, not a heavy-duty bodybuilder in a cushy gymnasium. No disrespect to Kai, mind, because he has arrived from nowhere,
can’t really imagine him doing a Jay Cutler and showing you around his crib,
bragging his head off. Listen, some of these guys need a whopping 300 pounds plus of muscle
just to house their world-beating egos. They are bloated and proud and awesome. Kai, artist and body-popper extremo, is
undoubtedly the most talented of the bunch when it comes to jaw-dropping antics
on the stage, although Marvellous Melvin Anthony and Darren Charles deserve a
mention also. As for classical no-nonsense posing, manly posing, Nasser El Sonbatty
and Dennis Wolf get hollers. Some of them dance around and shake their ass. C'mon guys. When you're wearing citrus-coloured knickers on stage, it's not a wise thing to do.
These 2 were right up there in the prizes, and with apologies ATD does protest quite vehemently. There's no way these pair are beating some of the other entires who didn't win squat. Sorry, but no way Jose! These might have been knocked up with pen and crayon during a short journey in the Group4 sweatbox. Congratulations and all that, not taking anything away from these, the lower one has an angle about it, but there were better. Much better. A scribble with a pen is just that, and never beats a planned, time-consuming composition. Which proves that if another person's judgement of your work means more than it should to you as an artist, then you should either consider another passion/career path or get used to a world of hurt, unless you're lucky and your work is adored for some unfathomable reason, because judging, even when done by experts from a range fields, is prone to, well, barking mad decisions, you could say. . What is it with art? Why do we have these types who read into it so much? Those who think an unmade bed or a shark cut in half is worthy of a place in a gallery? Get a grip of yourselves! It seems that the general rule is this: If it goes on a canvas and hangs on the wall, it's art. And they're not shy with the mark up, either, when it comes to pounds and dollars. . For cost, if you're an artist, add up your time in hours, expenses in materials, travel fees incurred to acquire those materials et cetera, double it for some profit, then add a couple of noughts for good measure. This last part, with the noughts, is the most important part of the whole process. That's the way ATD sees it. . Eat a shish kebab with salad cream. Spew it up on some silk in a frame. Mix it around with a bog brush. Let it dry. Hang on wall. Attach price tag. Voila. You're an artist. . Pricing it is the easy part. You're thinking a 100, maybe a 1000 buckaroonies. That's you're 1st mistake before you even got going. It's either rip them off, or get ripped off yourself. Somebody is deffo gettin' ripped off, that's for cocksure. So you wanna charge at least 10 bags of sand (grand), if not a 100 bags. Yes, 100k. On eBay. Today. .
Again, no disrespect to the winners above, but they are like totally poo. And, in all jest, it's fun to make fun out of the winners, because they won. It's the ones that get overlooked you gotta respect. . AND, finally, criticism of your work is not a criticism of you. It's when someone criticises both you the person AND your work which means you got serious problems. Man up your thick skin and be your own judge. Diversify. Prove them wrong. Ignore them. And keep truckin'.
Joint 1st and 2nd place for ATD. Can't quite decide. One of the art judges had just a single word to sum this up, and that word was "No." As they moved along the paintings, all you could hear was "No, no, no, no..." What do you expect though, from experienced set-in-their-ways critics who have to quickly sum things up on the spot? Judging anything is so goddamn subjective. Still...that judge don't deserve eyes! Ya hear! ATD will say again now to you what he said to them then... "I'll buy it!"
Good jobbie, Lee. Take no notice of your official Koestler placing.
This is ATD's screen saver. Need ewt else need be said on the matter? A majestic mixture of strokes and patterns. Looks like DNA circling blue brickwork with finely balanced interlocked blades in the centre.
"Highly Commended" is more or less a pat on the back for what Art Till Death believes is a much more deserving effort. Don't know where he got Ba Baa's The Barber's from, but that's a stroke of genius right there. The only connection that comes to mind is the outro to 2Pac's Troublesome 96' song, in which he repeats the words la laa, ba baa, like a sheep. It's good.
SCHMOE is a brand of fiction exclusively for weightlifters,
bodybuilders and gym goers. It is a form of flash fiction at the moment, which
means small segments of self-contained stories, scenes or sketches ranging from
a couple of hundred to over a thousand words. This means that you can digest it
in small bite-sized pieces, just about anywhere.
Not everyone likes to read chunky fat novels. They can take
weeks if not months to finish. These short morsels can put a smile on your face
in minutes. Think of SCHMOE as a fictional magazine. Apart from glossy pictures, what do the best magazines offer? Education? Entertainment? This too. And told by a storyteller, not some journo (will all due respect). Never mind you can't beat it—you can't find it. Not like this.
There are people out there who this content will really resonate
with. You might be one of them. If you love training and you love reading
fiction then this is for you, no question about it. You’ll find inspiration and
laughter throughout.
Heard of a film called The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke? Art Till Death predicts a film called The Bodybuilder in the not-so-distant future.
Don’t fear if you are not an iron-pumping freakazoid with tons of
muscle. There is something here for anyone who steps in any kind of gym for any
reason too. Keeping fit and being healthy is a mainstream preoccupation. We all
have bodies to keep.
SCHMOE 1 was conceived right here from 2010 onwards. It is also available all in one place for
download onto Kindle, where it can be read seamlessly. SCHMOE 2 is brand new
material and will not be viewable here at all unfortunately. There will be no
more fiction here actually, apart from occasional samples maybe. But plenty to look forward too.
This ‘niche’ challenge has the odds stacked against it but is quite exciting all the same.
Andrew has performed his spoken word at Contact Theatre Manchester and South Bank Centre London. His publications include Not Shut Up and The Big Issue. He has collaborated with the creative works of prisoners, patients and refugees. In 2008 his collages were displayed in a Co-operative art exhibition. Since then he has recorded over forty electronic music tracks and designed forty ceramic sculptures. He is currently working on a cyber goth novel while editing a substantial backlist, besides compiling a hardcopy portfolio of digital photo-montages and sketches.
Andrew was ousted from school into a secure psych unit as a teenager. Since then he has been homeless, imprisoned, and detained for several years under the Mental Health Act. Andrew is an ex-addict and a Voice-Hearer. He attempted suicide in the summer of 2015, but manages his demons thesedays by attending therapy groups, where he shares his otherworldly experiences with others. Simple things like poetry and weightlifting help motivate him. He enjoys pool, swimming, and working the punchbag. Andrew is an avid conspiracy theorist.
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