Welcome to IAAY number 15!

This week it's all about artist Micheline Robinson, our first French-Canadian (now resident in Liverpool), who's inspired by the Liverpuddlian musician and writer Brian Jacques. You can see her excellent portrait of him at the bottom of the blog.

The IAAY is published every Wednesday (yes, all of them), so there's plenty of time for you to join in too! Contact me via the comments section or via Twitter: @mickdavidson.

You can also read my blog about writing and randomly related stuff.

It’s All About Micheline Robinson
As I was determined by the age of 4 of becoming a composer/dancer/singer/actor/painter (I was certainly going to have cake and eat it too), I cannot help but think that my parents had something to do with it, real outside inspirations being unlikely at that age. My parents were wild, passionate, energetic beings with a love of the arts (I was born in the early 70's...perhaps can explain some of it). 

Looking back, I guess one of the works of art that inspired me to be an artist was a collage book I created with my mother when I was about 3-4. We cut out images from magazines, I had Sesame Street characters in there with Fisher Price toy shops, a pink elephant cut out of material, a little girl that was meant to be me drawn by my mother. For years I treasured that book and created stories from the images. 

My parents were also into the theatre and I was initiated to the stage quite early on. The world of the theatre created a real landscape of make believe, where sound, backdrops, costumes and people all came together to create a fantasy world that I could get lost in. Very strong bonds were created with the other actor children, and we did get into character quite easily. It provided an opportunity to time travel from 1912's Gary Indiana to 1820's St-Petersburg and back again. Guess from early on, I was converted to that parallel universe which is the world of the arts.

My work has evolved with me. From fairies and gnomes when I was a young teenager to absolute chaos now. I'm exploring depth and space with abstract shapes on a 2-d plane. All about illusions. 

It’s All About Brian Jacques
One of my best works is the one of Brian Jacques. He wouldn't sit for me...too shy I think, but he liked a picture his son took of him as he said it made him look like an old rogue. 

Brian was a docker, a true Scouser, lovely man with wonderful wit. He was a musician, a storyteller and a great writer. He was the author of the Redwall books that did so well in the US but not so much here. 

I painted him on a 100 cm x 100 cm canvas, part of the Spirit of Liverpool event that took place at the World museum in the city in 2006. Viewers had to select their favourite Merseysider. The hat took me forever, I was seeing spots by the end of it...but truly proud of that work, as I really captured him. He loved it, as did his sons. Sadly, Brian passed away recently.

• Micheline's website
  
• Twitter: @ArtyMicheline
  
• Facebook
  

Welcome to IAAY number 14!

This week it's all about visual artist Tia Gillespie, our first participant from Canada, who's inspired by the sculptor, Guy Laramee. The painting shown here is a self-portrait, which I think is a very good example of her work. You can see examples of both artist's work at the bottom of the page.

IAAY is published every Wednesday (yes, all of them), so there's plenty of time for you to join in too! Contact me via the comments section or via Twitter: @mickdavidson.

You can also read my blog about writing and randomly related stuff.

It’s All About Tia Gillespie
It’s All About Guy Laramee
I am inspired by sculptor, Guy Laramee. The sculptures, from his works “Biblios”, offered me the reflective space that I aspire to offer others through my work. 

The piece I have chosen to share with you here has especially touched me, stirring in me the desire to preserve thought and ideas in physical form, as I feel his works symbolize preservation. While carving away at the pages, he keeps their inherent purpose alive, conserving the past within them. 

Guy excavates stories from the pages of the books making visual testaments to the past. I have drawn from literature and storytelling the inspiration for creating my works on preservation. The essence Laramee’s work exudes is mystical and enchanting – like mist in the negative space. I love how he uses the book as his medium. The beauty of the dichotomy between the books’ strength and its fragility has a tasteful appeal to me. 

Having always been drawn to sculpture, I think in a three dimensional way. The problem solving I enjoy in making artwork is taking those three dimensional ideas and translating them into two dimensional forms.

It's All About Me
About my own work: "The Last Brother"

My painting you see here, "The Last Brother", is part of an ongoing series inspired by fairy tales. These works about preserving the images of the fables, runs parallel with another series I am working on to memorialize portraits for animals that have passed away or disappeared.  My pieces are more process driven, starting with the want to pay tribute to something. 

Through the creation of the piece, I preserve that idea in a visual form, frozen in time and memory. Fairy Tales inspire me as they reflect the preservation of someone else’s creative thought as illustrated through literature. 

While reading "The Wild Swans" by Hans Christian Anderson, I imagined scenes becoming paintings. This piece illustrates the last of 12 princes' to be transformed from swans back into human form. His sister, the princess, wove each brother a jacket of nettle, to break the curse. The 12th brother’s jacket was incomplete leaving him with one wing. 

The beauty that he held when still a swan was the image I held in my mind and thus transferred to the paper. Eventually, the swan that I used as subject for this portrait, will pass on and this painting will be a testament to its beauty and its life.

I am drawn to imagine the creation of pieces from my thoughts, but the physical building of the piece is my motivation. The act of recording and creating the image I want to preserve.

• Twitter - @TiaGillespie
  
• Facebook
  
• Blog
  
• Guy Laramee

Welcome to IAAY number 13!

This week it's all about, well, me actually! Many who read this will know that I'm a writer and photographer who happens to play a little guitar on the side. You can read my bio here, so there's no need to write any more about that.

IAAY is published every Wednesday (yes, all of them), so there's plenty of time for you to join in too! Contact me via the comments section or via Twitter: @mickdavidson.

You can also read my blog about writing and randomly related stuff.

It’s All About Mick Davidson
It’s All About Creativity
Yes, I know that sounds like a bit of a cop-out but in reality, creating things inspires the hell out of me. Of course there are many people and things that get my juices flowing: modern architecture or a endless view across the countryside will have me reaching for my camera; a live musical performance will have me itching to get back to my guitar (actually I really do get a bit itchy if I go with out playing for more than a few days); and a well-written TV show, film or book - and sometimes just the odd word - will have me reaching for my notebook.

I love creative processes, love the discoveries along the way, the learning and at the end, I love to be able to give these things away and move on to something new. 

When I was a youth I got into makeing plastic models, Airfix mainly but also the ones made by the Japanese company Tamiya. 

Having served my apprenticeship on 1/24 scale models (mainly WW2 fighters and bombers) I'm moved up to 1/16 tanks and similar vehicles. I would never pretend that I was the best modeller ever, but after a while I got a reputation and with that came commissions. No money of course, but I didn't care: I got to make and paint all these fantastic models. And when I was finished, I gave them back to their real owners. You might think that I didn't get much out of the deal but I did: I never, ever had to look after them - do you know how much dust these fragile things gather?

My mother taught me to read before I went to school, which was the only area I was ahead of the educational game on. I've been reading for a long time and my reading has always been eclectic. When I review the history of my books, I seem to have been reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe alongside The Gulag Archipelago (Solzhenitsyn) whilst studying any number of books on WW2, lapping up American comics and ghost stories and topping it off with whatever they were forcing down our throats at school.

One of the biggest inspirations my writing has though comes from this force-feeding: Laurie Lee. During my late teens we were introduced to Mr Lee's fantastic childhood autobiog (Cider with Rosie), which was totally wasted on about 90% of us. What could be more uninteresting than ploughing through some old man's requiem for a world we couldn't relate too? We were far more interested in fighting over football teams, fighting who were the best out of T.Rex and Slade and climbing out the windows to avoid yet another hour of boredom with Mrs Starchfingers, or being hit with a frying pan by Mr Leadhead the Maths teacher.

Fortunately I had the sense to re-read it in my 30s and I've never looked back. I've read all his books and most if not all of his poetry, and his biography. I can't get enough, but unfortunately, his catalogue is finite. There's no way in the world that you'll convince me that everything he wrote was as written - for a start there's only ever been three people in the whole world who can remember that much of their lives, and none of them could speak English. But I really don't care if these things have been exaggerated in anyway, I love what he wrote and how he wrote it. 

There's magic and poetry in his words and imagry. He seems to write with complete freedom, as if it doesn't really matter what he says as long as his experience is conveyed. 

Personally, I find this highly motivating.

Too many writers settle for second best in their work, and I can be just as guilty of mundane writing as the next person. We don't need to do this and we shouldn't settle for sentences and stories that don't shine for a lack of polishing. If I'm feeling trapped by a lack of sparkle or find myself in a rut or feel like I'm holding back because I'm worried how readers might perceive my work, one of the best things I can do is open any of his books at any page and re-discover that writing is another branch of magic: a branch that I can take strength and inspiration from.

Welcome to IAAY number 12!

This week it's all about writer and photographer Steven Berkowitz who's talking about, well a lot of people.

One of the reasons I asked Steven to take part is that I love his macro photos of insects. The photos are startling to say the least, but also very beautiful. We see bees and wasps everywhere, but they are just pass through our world, they're a hidden secret. Unless you happen to be a man with a camera, and eye for a great photo, and a lot of patience!

IAAY is published every Wednesday (yes, all of them), so there's plenty of time for you to join in too! Contact me via the comments section or via Twitter: @mickdavidson.

You can also read my blog about writing and randomly related stuff.

It’s All About Steven Berkowitz
It’s All About His Students
When I began to think about who had inspired me to first start writing, I struggled with which author or artist I would choose. While I recently have jumped back into reading the genre I love to write, no author has changed the direction of my life. Sure, there are some authors whose style I love, but to say they inspired me to write would be a lie. 

The events which inspired me to write occurred back in the spring of 2009. I was teaching English in Taiwan to students who really didn’t want to learn from the textbooks I was given. They were bored, tired, and unengaged. I thought about how I was going to inspire my own students to enjoy learning a foreign language. A language that would help open doors for them later on in life. While trying to inspire my own students to learn English, I was inspired to write.

One night, while sitting on my couch in Taipei mulling over how to engage my students, an idea popped into my brain.  Stories! I had seen everyday that my students loved to draw; they doodled in their textbooks and on the whiteboard before class. So I thought to myself, why not create stories for each and every class, and have them use their imaginations to illustrate the tale.

What happened next was amazing, I brought this idea to class and it was an instant hit.  They sat quietly (couldn’t believe it) while I told and wrote a story on the board in front of them. Later, they drew imaginative illustrations which we posted on the walls of the classroom.  By the end of the year the walls were covered in stories and illustrations.  Eventually we started creating stories together as a class; on the fly, they would give me ideas and characters, and I would weave them into a tale.  

When it was time for me to leave Taiwan, one of my students who loved to draw elaborate illustrations told me that I should write stories for a living.  This student, Michael, seared the idea of writing into my mind, and I will never forget the inspiration that he and his classmates gave to me that year. 

It’s All About Me
It was not until after I returned home from teaching abroad in Taiwan and China that I decided to finally write.  I had been teaching English overseas for 3 years, after graduating with a marketing degree from the University of Massachusetts. My career and life in the US needed to begin, but which path to take was a question that was hard for me to answer. The problem was that business seemed to bore me, while teaching excited and continuously challenged me with every new student.  I eventually decided to seek a career doing what I love: teaching. 

I enrolled at Lesley University in the fall of 2010 seeking a Masters degree in Elementary Education and Creative Arts in Learning. The creative arts part of my degree is what drives me to write. I did not want to just be a typical elementary school teacher. I love to write, shoot nature photography, garden, cook, create and tell unique stories. I wanted to bring that love for all of my hobbies into my future classroom. 

My very first graduate class, Arts and Education: History and Philosophy, gave me the opportunity to challenge myself to write a story. My inspiration came from class discussions regarding questioning in the classroom. We were discussing the merits of questioning and the Socratic method of inquiry, when the idea for a world without question came racing into my mind. I had lived in China, where some questions were not allowed, and I decided to use those experiences to create a world where no questions would be tolerated. Chocrotes and the World Without Question was born in that classroom in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

From there I sat down and wrote an outline of the very first story I would ever create. That first outline was expanded upon; as was the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth one. I worked out a plot until I was satisfied with what the world would look like. As this was written for a term paper, and for children, I felt like I should keep it simple. This first story is simple yet serious, focusing on the merits of questioning while keeping my audience, ages 9 and up, entertained and curious. 

I have also written other stories and shared them with my enthusiastic target audience.  My next book, to be released around December of this year, will follow a young girl who gets lost in the forest behind her family home and stumbles upon a doorway to another dimension. This other world will hold devious elves and fairies who sing and dance to haunting tunes, while the heroes of the story are trapped in time and vines by Elvish magic.

To end this IAAY, I will include some of my favorite macro photography I have taken over the past two years. I hope you enjoy these two critters! Yellow spider and Spicy Dragon #3.

• To read my blog, more about my book, or to view my photography please visit me at www.MrBsReads.com.
• To purchase prints of my photography, please visit my online store. 
• You can also buy Chocrotes and the World Without Question for your Kindle here and Nook here.

Welcome to IAAY number eleven!

This week it's all about musician Robert Rich who's talking about photographer Brad Cole. 

During the last 30 years Robert has recorded over 30 albums and has helped define the genres of ambient music, dark-ambient, tribal and trance. He does this using all manner of instruments, ranging from home-made acoustic and electronic instruments to computer-based signal processing and slide guitar - always a winner with me.

IAAY is published every Wednesday (yes, all of them), so there's plenty of time for you to join in too! Contact me via the comments section or via Twitter: @mickdavidson.

You can also read my blog about writing and randomly related stuff.

It’s All About Robert Rich
It’s All About Brad Cole

Brad Cole’s photography: the Remnant series
Commentary by Robert Rich

Brad Cole’s Remnant series creates poetry from the detritus of the industrial age, juxtaposing the human-built landscape with the corrosive forces of nature and time. The photographs themselves look old, like long lost glass plates discovered in a desk drawer last opened in 1860. They echo the haunting beauty of those Romantic era albumen prints depicting the ruins of Greece or Rome, yet instead of temples and coliseums we see the crumbling docks and rusting pipes of our own forgotten wastelands.

The sheer beauty of these images veers away from social commentary, and transforms them into a meditation upon the smallness of our own endeavor, the inevitability of time, the certainty of impermanence. They show the earth reclaiming the artifacts of a lost civilization – perhaps ours, following our own extinction.

These photos also expose artifacts of the photographic process itself. Cole has intentionally marred them with scratches, washed them with bleach, abused the negatives in ways that obscure the image (see the examples at the bottom of the page). These visual intrusions distance the artwork from its subject, and declare it as a story, a myth, rather than as a depiction of the literal world. While the abused surfaces make us aware of the plastic character of photography, they also create a self-referential echo of the theme of time and decay, merging the artwork with its content; yet their aura of poetic mystery helps avoid ironic sensibilities.

Brad Cole’s photographs do not depict exterior locations, but interior states of mind. One could imagine that their isolationist solitude conveys a kind of depressive pessimism, but I don’t personally sense negativity within these images: perhaps, an existential resignation. Certainly, the Japanese idea of Wabi Sabi resonates strongly here, accepting transience and venerating the patina of age. From art such as this, I feel a sense of wonder, as I ponder the deep recesses of time and the relative smallness of my own activities. I respect the moments when an artwork places me in such a state of awareness, an awakening of relationships between myself and my universe; perhaps briefly pausing the incessant chatter of my internal dialog, as it reminds me of the vast silence from which all things come and to which all things return.

It's All About Robert Rich
“Temple of the Invisible”
By Robert Rich

Just as I’m drawn to the idea of vanished civilization portrayed in Brad Cole’s Remnant series, I am enchanted by the idea that certain artifacts of culture are completely evanescent. As a musician, I am aware that music is one of those art forms that evaporates in time, and only thrives when people engage actively in its creation. For example, only a few partial fragments of musical notation remain from the entire Greco-Roman era, and we can only speculate about details such as intonation and performance inflections. I ponder what rich musical languages have been lost to the shadows of history.

My album “Temple of the Invisible” began with this question of lost language, and with an idea of creating a musical culture from the imagination. At first, I placed my fictional culture somewhere in the Sumerian-Akkadian era, imagining a re-enactment of cuneiform mythology; but I realized I wanted to use instruments that could not have existed then. So I placed my civilization perhaps 1500 years ago, located somewhere in western Asia, maybe in the shadow of the Himalaya or Caucasus. Perhaps, every trace disappeared after the confrontation between Islam and Zoroaster, or when Genghis Khan moved west.

I imagined some words in this language, sharing roots with Indo-European. The titles of each piece hide meanings, even from me. I imagined a ritual, perhaps a seasonal re-enactment of communal myth, much as Karnatic songs preserve stories from the Upanishads. “Temple of the Invisible” is the music from one such ritual. It has a chorus like Greek theater, soloists representing the main protagonists, instruments calling to each other to symbolize an arc of mythic action. Yet the libretto is lost. We can only guess the actual meanings and significance of each act.

Something strange happens when creating a fiction like this. Many writers attest that fiction can tell truths that nonfiction cannot reach. Sometimes those truths come as a surprise, even to the authors. Listening to “Temple of the Invisible” gives me the strange feeling of looking into my own private universe from the outside. Somehow, the act of inventing a fictional culture gave me permission to expose a part of myself that stays hidden even to me. I don’t know what these songs mean, but they are very personal and expose a mystery that even I cannot quite decode. 

Do I write a new libretto for this album each time I listen? Perhaps I imagined… a young prince is born of high parentage. The exuberance of youth follows a hero’s path, forsaking love for power. The journey of life takes the hero to high places, hubris grows and leads to the inevitable fall. I can say this: the song “Tulchru” depicts two vultures circling over a battlefield, mountains on all sides. Two dancers, dressed in black feathers, circle each other slowly towards the center. In the last two acts of the ritual (“Lan Tiku” and “Otranon”) I imagine a coda of loss and resignation, battles lost and loves departed, yet a hopeful serenity informs this fall from grace. We know that civilizations rise and fall, our own included, with our great hopes and great arrogance; while somehow the flow of life and death circles onwards, erasing all traces.

You can find out more about both men by following these links:

• Brad Cole
• Robert Rich CD discography
• Temple of the Invisible audio samples.
  

As of Wednesday 29 August the It's All About You blog will be posted here. it will then be published every Wednesday as usual.

If you want to take part, please read the guidelines.

The IAAY is published every Wednesday (yes, all of them), so there's plenty of time for you to join in too! Contact me via the comments section or via Twitter: @mickdavidson.