A trio of oddments

Here's a trio of things around Saltaire that I may vaguely have noticed before but have certainly never stopped to photograph. The mirror is at the Victoria Road entrance to Salts Mill, above the now-sealed tunnel that used to lead to the Dining Hall across the road. There is a larger mirror further along that I have taken pictures of in the past. Whether this smaller one is a recent addition, or whether I've just never seen it, I don't know. (It is quite high up). It must be to enable the security guards to see the driveway from their office.

The ceramic cat is a David Hockney creation, made when he was a student at Bradford College of Art and later given to his brother. It has been loaned to Salts Mill to display in the 1853 Gallery alongside some of Hockney's other work in the Salt collection.

Finally, corks... I'd be interested to know if any of my local readers know where these are?

In fact, it is a large picture that covers the window of the Victoria Off Licence, on Victoria Road. It's one of those wonderful shops that stays open a lot and sells sweets, crisps, milk and other useful sundries as well as alcohol. The same lovely couple have owned and run it for over 30 years.

With nail and Hockney

Mounted on a gable end at the corner of Peckover Street and Chapel Street, in the historic Little Germany area of Bradford, there's a large portrait of the Bradford-born artist David Hockney. It is created in the style of his 'joiner' photographs but the interesting thing is that it is created entirely out of painted nails, mounted in marine plywood. Its sculptor is Marcus Levine and apparently it took him 15 months to complete. The last panel was added about a year ago. (See HERE for press article.) It's rather effective and quite astonishing to see the level of detail the artist has achieved.

The Arrival of Spring

Whether the weather is playing ball or not, Spring has arrived in Salts Mill. That is to say, the latest exhibition by David Hockney: 33 pictures that are part of the series 'The Arrival of Spring'. The pictures were drawn on an iPad and then printed out five feet high. They depict an area of the Yorkshire Wolds - Woldgate Lane - and were each made on a specific day between May 1st and May 31st 2011, during a time when Hockney was living in his old family home in Bridlington.

I saw them at the exhibition at the Royal Academy a couple of years ago and was captivated then. They look even more stunning in the setting of Salts Mill, where - minus the huge crowds - you can see and enjoy them in a much more relaxed fashion.  The Mill has tight links with Hockney (he is a Bradford-born Yorkshireman after all) borne out of his friendship with the late Jonathan Silver, who resurrected Salts Mill as we know it today.  I am delighted to hear that the Silver family have actually bought these pieces to add to the permanent collection housed in the Mill - so it sounds as if I will be able to enjoy them as often as I like. They are full of life and glow with colour; I find them incredibly uplifting. It moves me that, well into his 70s, Hockney still sees life so vibrantly in full technicolour. There was an excellent documentary recently on TV about him, directed by Randall Wright.

One more good reason to visit Saltaire....

Stewy's Hockney

Stewy, a Bristol-based street artist inspired by the famous (notorious?) Banksy, has created some stencilled art works in local places related to the forthcoming Yorkshire Grand Départ of the Tour de France cycle race. They are of famous artists, writers and musicians with links to Yorkshire - none of them noted for riding bikes but all portrayed cycling.  There is: Sylvia Plath in Hebden Bridge, Jarvis Cocker in Sheffield, the Brontë sisters in Haworth, Alan Bennett in Leeds (though I gather he has already been covered up!) and Saltaire's pride: David Hockney, originally painted on a wall in Keighley. A new picture of (a youngish looking) David Hockney has appeared on the wall of Salts Mill, fag in mouth. I imagine this one might have been commissioned as it is on a canvas, not painted direct on the wall.  Rather good, I think.  You can buy a copy if you want!

7. Inside Salts Mill

 

  

David Hockney at the Royal Academy

This imposing archway is the entrance to Burlington House, on Piccadilly in London, which houses several august artistic and scientific societies including the Royal Academy of Arts.  My main reason for visiting last week was to see the exhibition, 'A Bigger Picture' by David Hockney RA - who, of course, as 'a local lad' is much loved by us here in Saltaire.  (Salts Mill is proud to hold a large collection of his work.  Hockney was a close friend of the late Jonathan Silver, the entrepreneur who 'rescued' the mill.)

I was so excited to see this major exhibition of Hockney's landscape work, much of which has been created in the last few years especially for this show. The paintings, many of them large-scale and wonderfully colourful, were inspired by the Yorkshire Wolds, where Hockney now lives.  In fact, if it wasn't for Jonathan Silver they might never have been created.  It's said that David Hockney came back to Yorkshire from California to support his friend when he was dying from cancer, and began to notice and be inspired again by the Yorkshire landscape.

I treated myself to the exhibition catalogue and
thereby received a plastic bag to flash around too!

There have been many features and TV programmes about the exhibition.  Some of the critics seemed pretty underwhelmed (they often are!) - but I loved the works, especially the amazing series of 51 prints (made from drawings on an iPad) and one large painting recording the arrival of spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire.  In the majestic setting of the RA's huge main gallery, the pictures have a vibrancy and impact that I found really thrilling.  It seems brilliant to me that a man in his mid 70s should be using modern technology so skilfully to create such vivid scenes, bursting with life and beauty.  There were also some video works that I found equally enthralling, taken with nine cameras on a grid.  My reaction was more akin to this writer's (in a Yorkshire paper of course!)

I'm so glad I was able to see the exhibition, despite the crowds (I'd have enjoyed it even more with fewer people to contend with).  When it is broken up in a few weeks time, I dare to hope that some of the works will find their way to Salts Mill, either permanently or temporarily.  Who knows?

iPhone art

Images © David Hockney (these were originally available for free download )

David Hockney's latest exhibition in Salt's Mill in Saltaire is called 'Fresh Flowers'.  It shows paintings he has made using his iPhone and iPad.  A series of images - mostly paintings of flowers - are dramatically projected onto three large screens in a darkened gallery, so that the colours are vibrant and you can see the 'brushstrokes' ... made using his thumb and an iPhone app called 'Brushes'.

“After all, this is a medium of pure light, not ink or pigment, if anything more akin to a stained glass window than an illustration on paper.”

They do look very soft-focus, as in this photo, no doubt on account of being enlarged so much from the original iPhone size.  But the colours are wonderful, the paintings deceptively simple and - as with much modern art - you kind of feel that you might be able to create something similar, at the same time realising that really you couldn't!  (I did, however, create a very satisfying impressionistic photo made up of three of the images - only fear of litigation prevents me posting it here!!  The two above are by no means my favourites but they were available to download whereas the others are all copyrighted.)

There's an interesting article by Lawrence Wechsler from The New York Review of Books that explains this new development in Hockney's work.  One of the things I most like about David Hockney is his willingness to experiment and to embrace new technology, and I am always fascinated to hear him talk about his thought processes:

"It [ie: the iPhone] is always there in my pocket, there’s no thrashing about, scrambling for the right color. One can set to work immediately, there’s this wonderful impromptu quality, this freshness, to the activity; and when it’s over, best of all, there’s no mess, no clean-up. You just turn off the machine. Or, even better, you hit Send, and your little cohort of friends around the world gets to experience a similar immediacy. There’s something, finally, very intimate about the whole process."

(The artist David Hockney was born in Bradford, studied at Bradford College of Art and currently lives on the Yorkshire coast at Bridlington.  Salt's Mill in Saltaire holds a large collection of his work.)

Punchinello

The 1853 Gallery is only one of several galleries in Salts Mill, Saltaire.  There are gallery spaces on both the third and fourth floors.  Unlike the 1853 Gallery, which has a permanent exhibition, the other spaces have visiting exhibitions, by David Hockney and by other artists and craftspeople too.  In order, I suppose, to protect artworks that would be damaged by too much light, the galleries are shaded with blinds. The third floor has this lively red and white fabric, called 'Punchinello' (if I remember rightly) and designed by David Hockney.

[For those readers who have come to my blog more recently, the artist David Hockney was born in Bradford and studied at Bradford College of Art.  After many years of living in California, he now lives for much of the time on the Yorkshire coast. He was a personal friend of the late Jonathan Silver, the man who bought and redeveloped Salts Mill in the 1980s when it fell derelict after the textile business closed down.  The 1853 Gallery - the largest single collection of Hockney's work anywhere in the world - was the first part of the Mill to be reopened. There's more info if you click the David Hockney label below. ]

Diner dog

Driven back inside by the weather, we might need a snack and a drink!  The main restaurant in Salts Mill is on the third floor, through the Bookshop, and is called Salts Diner.  It has this rather appealing dachshund as its logo, found on everything from the menus to the paper napkins and the T-shirts of the waitresses.  Sketched by David Hockney (who else?!) it depicts Stanley...or maybe Boodgie... one of his two pet dogs.

Salts Diner is a large, bright space and does some imaginative food (see here for a review) - but at weekends it gets very busy so the service suffers a little, and it's very noisy.  That's the only trouble with the high ceilings and hard floors in the mill - everything clatters. Imagine what the noise must have been like with all the spinning machines working.  I was talking to a friend the other day who used to be a local doctor in Shipley.  He said he visited the mill once when it was still working and was warned to be careful what he said as he walked round, as all the workers were excellent lip-readers!

Cubist Post Box

Here's another of the many treasures to be found in the 1853 Gallery in Salts Mill, Saltaire: this wonderful pillar box red cube is actually a post box. It was made up to a design sketched by David Hockney in 1992, and was used for just one month as an actual post box in Salts Mill. That year, David Hockney designed a special commemorative stamp marking the European Single Market. The stamp was launched by the Royal Mail in Salts Mill and all letters posted in this box for one month were hand franked as a special issue to mark the event.

The inset shows the stamp itself, a special edition envelope with a picture of Salts Mill and Hockney's sketch for the post box. Probably the only time you could buy a Hockney print for 24p!

If you're in the market for a Hockney print now, there is a sale of some of his etchings (Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm) in the Victoria Hall from today until 10 April. Just think, you could not only be the proud owner of an original Hockney, but you'd have licence to use that immortal chat-up line: "Come up and see my etchings..."!

There's also chance to apply to be a volunteer steward for the BBC Antiques Roadshow, to be filmed in the Victoria Hall on 29 April, if anyone is interested!

'Salts Mill' in Salts Mill

The iconic painting by David Hockney, 'Salts Mill, Saltaire, Yorks', featured yesterday, can still be seen in the 1853 Gallery in Salts Mill, where it is hung on the end wall of the gallery. The stone nicely sets off its bright colours. I like to be able to get up close to a painting to see the brushstrokes and colours, but also stand well back and see the overall effect. You can do both in the 1853 Gallery and the painting does have quite an impact when viewed from some distance away.

I spent another pleasant hour or so mooching about in the Mill at the weekend - and yes, as always came home with a book (!) and some lovely cards. It really is a most delightful experience, listening to the gentle background music, smelling the fragrance of lilies, feasting on the paintings and wonderful books...plenty of eye-candy for the likes of me!

Hockney's Mill

David Hockney "Salts Mill, Saltaire, Yorks" 1997
Oil on 2 canvases. 48 x 120" overall
© David Hockney

I have mentioned before (see 1 July) the link between the Bradford-born artist David Hockney and Saltaire. There are two floors of gallery space devoted to David Hockney's work in Salts Mill - the largest permanent collection of his work in the world. You can also buy prints of many of his works.

Lots of local people have this colourful painting on their wall. Entitled "Salts Mill, Saltaire, Yorks", Hockney painted the original in oil on two canvases. It's actually a fairly faithful reproduction of the Mill itself, and has become an iconic portrayal of Saltaire. It references the village houses, with their allotments alongside the mill, the all-important railway and canal, and of course the familiar shape of Saltaire's Congregational Church. Its exuberant colour and swooping lines are a neat rebuttal to the "dark, satanic mills" idea that many have of our Northern towns. Personally, I think the red train is a nice touch!

David painted "Salts Mill" in 1997, along with five wonderful landscapes of North Yorkshire. This was during the period that his friend, Jonathan Silver, who re-created Salts Mill in 1987 as the amazing enterprise it now is, was terminally ill with cancer. Hockney extended his customary summer holiday in the UK to support his friend. Jonathan died in September 1997 at the age of 47. The six new paintings were exhibited for the first time, in the 1853 Gallery, in December that year.

The above image is, of course, copyright to David Hockney and I would like to thank the artist's representatives for giving me permission to reproduce it here.

Hockney by Silver

Glimpsed through a doorway in Salt's Diner, the restaurant at the heart of Salts Mill, this series of photographs of the artist David Hockney remind us of his connection to this area and to Salts Mill. I think they were most probably taken by his friend Jonathan Silver. Jonathan was the 'saviour' of Salts Mill, rescuing it from dereliction in the 1980s and setting it up once again as the vibrant heart of this small community of Saltaire, albeit in a very different form from its origins as a textile mill. I have written before of his friendship with David Hockney, which led to Salts Mill becoming the home to a large collection of David Hockney's art.

1853 Gallery

I watched a fascinating programme about David Hockney last night, in the wonderful "Imagine" series on BBC. What so excites me about Hockney is that he is on a journey, exploring, experimenting, learning through his art. His work shifts and turns and yet retains some kind of core thread through all the different media and choices of subject matter over the years. His most recent paintings of the Yorkshire Wolds could be the most consummate works of his career.

The 1853 Gallery in Salts Mill houses the world's largest permanent collection of David Hockney paintings, including some of his earliest work, photographic 'joiners', bright abstracts, portraits, prints and drawings and some of his more recent Yorkshire landscapes. It is one of several galleries in the Mill, one of which displays a collection of opera stage-sets by Hockney. The Gallery also has a beautiful collection of Bermantoft pottery.

The entrepreneur Jonathan Silver, who bought Salts Mill in 1987 as a disused and near-derelict building, was a friend of David Hockney. They both attended Bradford Grammar School, albeit several years apart. Apparently the schoolboy Silver first met Hockney, by then an established artist, when he asked him to design the cover of the school magazine. They developed a lifelong friendship. Jonathan Silver sadly died of cancer in 1997 but the Silver family still manage the Saltaire enterprise, with continuing vision and commitment.

(According to the TV programme, Hockney started painting his Yorkshire paintings largely for Jonathan, because he wanted to be here when his friend was ill and wanted to cheer him up.)

Salt and Hockney

Here's the great man himself - or at any rate a depiction of him....Sir Titus Salt. Marvellous beard, I think! This marble bust sits in the 1853 gallery in Salts Mill, which also displays a large collection of original artworks by David Hockney (as you can see from the painting behind). I love to wander round this gallery. It's a huge space, part of what is known as the West Mill, but it's only a small fraction of the whole enormous mill complex. They have a wonderful selection of art books and artists materials for sale. And there are invariably several huge vases of lilies dotted about, so that the air is always richly perfumed. Whenever I smell lilies now, I am always transported 'home' to Saltaire.