The shared workshop space i’m involved in , had its open day event last Saturday . The weather was against us and heavy snow first thing in the morning stopped us putting up the tipi outside  and the general cold and rain cancelled all the outdoor stuff we had planned . Not to be put off we reorganised and carried on regardless and hoped people would still come . And they did .

Danna’s kitchen

Downstairs Danna cooked up some tastey Slovakian Goulash and for a small donation you could fill yer belly and get a pint from local London Fields Brewery .

artisan Teddy

Live stencil painting by our mate Teddy Baden throughout the day put a couple of nice new pieces on the workshop wall . Bits of our work were on display including gas bottle burner , shopping trolley chair . donkey dharma wheel , some forged sculpture by  Fle and prints by Dawn .

Punter and wheel

Mutant burner

Babs of Puncture Sluts fame had a new inner tube dress on the go and everyone got involved during the day .

Im free

Upstairs we brought in some ringers from Hack Space , Michael and Ian who came to show off their 3D printer . Incredible DIY 3D printer technology we may look into ourselves for the workshop .

reprap printer

Alex Binnie came along to tattoo all day . Decided to go old school and do small hand poked tats . Got a pentagram myself to be closer to dog .

Alex hard at it

stabby stab stab

Mantas had the ‘Steenbeck’ out on display and showed some great old 16mm  footage to the crowd . Charlie Hound dog kept the rhythm going with his mix of dynamite old 45’s ( and also got a pretty good ‘harpoon’ tat on his hand ) . A steady flow of people all day made for a great open day .

happy visitors

not so happy visitors

More angle grinding next time i reckon . Mucho thanks to every one for helping and coming . …….Then it was night .

Last weekend seen us have our open workshop event . First up are some photos of the get ready from last week .

tipi poles

Mad dash to the woods to get the tipi poles with Tom last wednesday nite . No one sees the behind the scenes prep , do they . Thursday nite was getting Teds cock up on the wall outside .

getting it up

cock on the wall

Friday hanging the wheel with Eyal , making the fire pit from old gas cylinder and general tarting the place up for Saturday s main event .

donkey dharma

final touch

Eyal in action

This is the third year i’ve helped me mate Teddy Baden putting on the WX Street show . Its an outdoor art gallery hung on the buildings and rooftops of Whitecross Street and is know as Rise of the Non Conformists . It stays up for 8 weeks and is kicked off with a 2 day street party with a food market , music , street performers and general merriment . Got involved in many different ways this year  , firstly with hanging and installing all the art .

bad ass crew

Teddy “the brains ” Baden

you spilled my pint

It takes four of us a long weekend and a fun platform lift ( that im sure is gonna tip over any minute impaling us all on the  railings below ) to put it all in place . The painters put their pieces on 2.5 m square boards and we wrestle em up high onto the walls .

paintings

more paintings

Artists include the likes of Xenz , Ronzo , Busk , Best ever , Dr D , `Shepard  Fairy and Robots , to name a few .

Ronzo ting

Marble carved bone

Got to help Robots for a bit Putting up the massive skull they made in between two Peabody Trust blocks . Hard day at the office darling .

Top of Robots skull

Nick Reynolds Banker

taking shape

The first thing to come out of the new workshop was this giant wooden spoon . Me mate Babs and her mum Dana decided to turn their narrow boat , Zulu Warrior , into a floating Slovakian takeaway cafe . Its called Vareska , which translates into the Wooden Spoon .

termites at work

spoony

I started off gluing together lots of bits of wood I had laying around to make a big block with a long stick coming out of it . Then I set about it with some power tools to carve out a spoon shape .

layered up

making spoons

I used a chainsaw , electric planner , reciprocating saw and thanks to John and Gay , the newly discovered angle grinder carving disk . Grrrrrrrrr. Pretty happy with the results since it was my first go at carving .

had enough sawdust yet

pretty patterns

Weighs a ton and might just sink her boat one day . Its about 15 foot long and looks wicked on top of their boat.

installing it with Adam

on the roof

spoon cannon

 

 

More pics of the finished boat on a different blog . Shes a real beauty .

Not the easiest thing for me is to sit behind a computer and write . Much more up for running around and getting up to stuff . Like finding this old motorbike engine repair shop that was up for rent .

front of building

I started looking about for some work bench space cos the boat is too small and was fed up of all my shit being spread everywhere . The place I found was great . loads of room , upstairs and down .

upstairs

and downstairs

As its way too big for me , a few others are getting involved . Hopefully a core of five of us will set up a new workshop space we can all share with sreenprinting , woodworking , metalworking , sewing machines and maybe even tattooing . The idea is once everything is set up , days when areas are empty can be booked out by others who need only temp. workspace.

oily oily

Shit loads to do . Dirty ,  leaky  ,  oily rooms with no power to transform into industrious workspaces . Its on the way . If anyone got money or tools to donate , please , knock yerself out .

riverside mooring

the compound

Magnificent revolution were asked to come up with some ideas for a human powered water feature to be part of the re development of an under used public space just off Borough High St . They gave me the job and I’ve been meeting with B.O.S.T ( bankside open spaces trust ) . Early stages yet , but these are some visuals I put together . The proposal is multiple rowing boats becoming a pedal powered fountain .

Been busy putting together a couple of bike things for two different kind of bike shops. Bike Yard East is the friendly bike workshop at Hackney City Farm run by Celia . I found an old kiddies bike by the side of the canal and wrapped it in old inner tubes that got cut down the middle . Tried to fasten it to the roof yesterday by the cut in half front wheel . Got to give it some more thought cos failed miserably .

The other is for Bike Kitchen .Its a new workshop space in Hoxton where you pay a membership then rent stand space to work on your own bike under expert supervision . Jenifer gave me an old Giant frame to work with . Been working with this tube wrapping technique . Its gonna have a butchered head jammed between the forks . See how long before the council make her take it down

While up in Hull at my mums 65th birthday party a bit ago we got chatting about cycling and our family . “Your great grandad was into cycling  ” , says my mum . “I think there is a newspaper cutting up stairs about him .”

Well there was a cutting about him , and this is it . I think  ‘into cycling’ was a bit of an understatement . He only started Hull Thursday road club and was a fanatical rider his whole life .Mum reckons he lived til 95 and rode his bike til he was 90 . What an inspiration . Always wondered where i got these cycle crazy legs from . Cant believe I never knew about him til now .

Hull Thursday club became one of the strongest cycling clubs in the country , and is still going today .

Think like a termite

AAAHHHGGRRRRHHHH.  I am a carpenter and maker of things so thought that making my own web site would be a piece of piss . Spent the last few weeks bouncing off the walls trying to collect photos and write some stuff to make a web site of work ive been involved in . Next few weeks should see some shuffling around of what I put up there , adding bits and redoing all the crap bits . It’ll come , as long as i can stop throwing the computer at the wall .