Maybe I'm the wrong person to do this...

I feel it is now time to come take part is some of the assignments that I have been dreading. Not because of how uncomfortable they will make me feel or their difficulty, mainly it’s the fact that I can't draw. I have about as much talent for drawing as a duck would have for playing the didgeridoo or a toaster would have for managing your debts into one manageable piece. So it is at this point I arrive nervously at assignment number 32. Draw a scene from a movie that made you cry.

Now this really got me thinking. I’m not trying to come over a macho and hard man like because that, frankly, would be ridiculous but I can count the amount of times I've cried at a film on one hand and still have a spare thumb.

Now I remember the first film I cried at. That prestigious honor goes to the emotional roller coaster that was Homeward Bound where the older dog couldn’t escape from the ditch only to be reunited with his owner right at the end. Still makes me all teary eyed just thinking about it, and now it’s with added nostalgia.

But for this assignment I went for a more contemporary film and went with the last scene of a film that made me cry, one that appears in Wes Anderson's amazing The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

Firstly if you haven't seen this film, stop reading now and go watch it and return later. Then once you've done, finish reading and watch the other brilliant films in the Wes Anderson catalogue Rushmore and The Royal Tennenbaums and thank me later. If you have seen it, hopefully you can guess which scene I'm talking about from my picture (and let me remind you that I admit I can't draw so be nice.



For those of you who are still a bit bemused here is the scene I have tried to recreate


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPMf8G8Pi5o
But like I said I insist you watch this movie, if just to see what your reaction to this scene is.

Now for one of my assignments (35. Ask your family to describe what you do, but more on that later) I had to ask members of my family for assistance. So I emailed my dear Mother, Father and eldest brother Alex to assist me. Alex, god bless him though I wanted him to also draw a scene in a movie which made him cry. His result is both astounding in the amount of effort he put in and shameful that his picture trumps mine in almost every single way, so here it is with his own explanation



'Ello

I've decided to draw the heart-breakingly beautiful scene from Beauty and the Beast, where the Beast (played in this piece by what looks like a giant squirrel in a dinner jacket) tells Belle that she can leave to save her father, thereby sacrificing what is perhaps his final chance to find true love. Sniff, it truly is a tear-jerker. I particularly like the use of perspective in this scene, while I found I really captured the Beast's pain in his face. Fantastic, if I do say so myself

I'm tempted to just let him do everything now purely based on this fine piece of work, and he didn't use none of this Photoshop business either, just a pure old school paint job.

I'm also curious now to see how assignment number 27. Take a picture of the sun would look if I asked Alex to do it too, I'm guessing he would produce something of such hilarity/beauty that it would completely overshadow my effort

A good and bad day at the office

After my completion of my first few assignments I thought it was now time to head out into the world and see what I could complete now the weather finally decided to become sunny and warm after a winter that was so cold it was pretty much soul destroying.

So it was onto my next assignment, one that I was pretty pleased with, no 8. Curate an artist's retrospective in a public place. Now I'm not to ashamed to admit that when it comes to artists, I don't particularly have a favourite or even know too much about the subject. I'm more of those 'I know what I like' type person when it comes to art and what I 'like' are the usual suspects, Dali, Francis Bacon, Lowry but not enough that I feel I can write about them and hang it up in a public place as this assignment requires.

So I did what every what every person who doesn't want to appear completely ignorant when it come to art, I made a claim for graffiti artist Banksy. I chose Banksy for two reasons really, one being that since Banksy's work will never actually appear in any exhibition, this was my way of giving him one. Secondly there is nothing that upset and depresses me more that a pathetic piece of graffiti that someone has sprayed painted in some town or city centre. So I hung up next to a fine example of what I'm talking about to suggest that unless you are going to do something anyway near this quality, seriously don't bother.



I now just have to play the waiting game to see how long it will take for someone to rip this down, so if you do see anyway please return it to its original spot of the subway near the bridge, full of rubbish graffiti .

Shortly after this successful assignment (no matter how long it stays up I still consider it a success) I somewhat failed slightly on my next assignment no.15 Hang a wind chime on a tree in a parking lot. I failed mainly because of instead of purchasing a decent wind chime because that would of taken time, effort and money. I instead I thought a novelty 99 pence one would be just as good. It wasn't. It didn't even make a noise really which really defined the point of it. Add to that the fact I couldn't find a parking lot with a tree in it and I decided to do this on a wind less day (who would of thought I would ever be disappointed that it was too nice a day?) and the result is this pretty pointless video. But never mind, it still cheered me up and I can still strike assignment number 15 off my list. Kind of. (I should point out here that I did have a recording but it wouldn't upload to my blog and now some evil human being has stolen my wind chime so I will have to do it again and when I do, it will appear here as if nothing has happened)

One I did complete with absolute satisfaction and no complaints was assignment no.23 Recreate this snapshot. Basically here is the original snapshot...



and here is my recreation with help from my dear friend Miss Pippa Whiteside. Pretty spot on I think you will all agree.

What with my first assignments now under my belt, I was in a frantic almost giddy mood deciding on which one I should complete next. Still really trying to get the easy ones out of the way I thought no.9 Draw a constellation from someone's freckles would be an easy one to strike off so here it is.


Not really much else I can say about this except if you want to take part in this exhibition yourself, don't do the dishes before you have taken the picture or an unfortunate smudge may happen, which was my ingenious idea.

The next one I completed I felt was more associated with what the exhibition is trying to achieve as a whole, no.11 Photograph a scar and write about it.

Now this one was the first I had to really think about. Not because of my lack of scars, I have so many I could literally have my own photo exhibition of them all, it was more a case of which one to choose. I’ve got everything from the small, like where my brother accidentally stabbed me with a letter opener, to a huge one across my head where my other brother, again accidentally, hit me full swing with a baseball bat.

Looking on the website where other people have sent in their photos, they range from the typical ones that you got when you were younger and barely remember now, to the falling over when drunk scars.

But every now and again you saw someone with horrific burns, surgery scars and even a few self harmers who are happy to point out their problems are now behind them. It is these ones that really make me think about my own scars and how each one of them is a different mini story, and it’s the same for pretty much every single person. If you want a fun game to play to see what I mean, just shout out 'lets compare scars!' next time you're at the pub with your friends, just to see what stories you do get. With this in mind here is my photo and my story.

In January of 2007 I woke up on a Sunday morning with a slight pain in my chest and struggling to breathe. As the morning went on the pain and my ability to breathe continued to worsen to the point of agony/fainting. It is at this point my Mum drove my to A+E and it was there I found out I suffered a spontaneous pneumothorax; basically my right lung had collapsed. The doctors inserted a chest drain, basically a plastic tube into my chest to drain the air, which is why they kind of look like knife wounds. They removed that when they thought my lung had healed, but when x rays showed otherwise a second one placed back in straight away followed by a third after my surgery to fully correct my lung. I also have a similar one on my left hand side after a suffered another pneumothorax last year, only not so spontaneous this time.

Now I know you’re thinking two things by now, firstly 'woah, no one wants to see pictures of you with your top off' and for that I can only apologise. Secondly you will be thinking 'crikey, this has gone a bit morbid hasn't it?" Well not really, ask me what my favourite scars and these three beauties are the answer and I get asked about them constantly. So for me this is really my version of 'I fell off a diving board in Mallorca when I was eight' and is nothing on some of the scars you can witness on the website.

My First Completed Assignment

Now as I have a long list of assignments to plough through, I thought it best to start off slowly and ease my way into the whole operation. So I'd looked through my list to see what I can chalk off straight away. I have started to carry around with me my list of assignments at all times nowadays like Earl Hickey from My Name is Earl, except without the perfect moustache and I'm not thinking about the consequences of my actions will take in a sort of hippie/karma way.

Then I saw the perfect one to get things going, assignment no 60. Write a press release about an everyday event.

Now from here on out I feel that it is a good thing that I'm not taking karma or any other Buddhist preaching into account for this project as the first chance I got, I basically took the opportunity to cause mischief. As an aspiring journalist I will be dealing with press releases all the time except for this one the exhibition tells us to:

“Write up a very official press release for something that you encounter on an everyday basis and send it to at least three news publications.”

As it happened I went through something that people do encounter every day up and down the land just a matter of hours ago, waiting all day for a delivery that never comes. To cut a long story short, lots of people drinking at my house, washing machine got destroyed to the point of no return, new washing machine required, told to be in the house between the hours of 1 and 6. Although in hindsight it might as well have said between the hours of 1 and next September...and it still would of turned up sometime in November. With my rant over, here is the actual press released I distributed to three publications.

For immediate release: Man waits for new washing machine to arrive.
A man living in Sunderland was told to wait for his new washing machine between the hours of 1 and 6 was left disappointed as the machine never arrived. The man who wished to remain anonymous was left furious as he mentioned how he "wanted to go outside and see the wonders that this Earth has to offer rather than stay inside all day making sure I didn't miss it." It was only after checking his voicemails later that day that he found out that the delivery address was spelt wrong and that the delivery man was looking for a different address all together. "You couldn't make it up" added the washing machine less man.

The three papers I sent this to were the Sunderland Echo (you never know they might just have printed it) The Daily Mail ( just because what I imagine the person’s face who works for this paper would look like as they read through it amused me) and the New York Times (well, you have to have ambition don't you.) As of yet I have received no reply or found my story published anywhere.

Learning to Love You More-An intro

Learning to Love You More is a project currently running at the Baltic in Gateshead until the 8th of March. The idea is that visitors to the Baltic (or the website www.learningtoloveyoumore.com) choose from a list of 70 assignments given by the artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher. The list differs from the simple and obscure (assignment 12-Get a temporary tattoo of one of Morgan Rozacky's neighbours) to the extreme (assignment 31. Spend time with a dying person)

Each assignment requires the public to send in a report, be it a photo or written piece, to show they have accomplished the assignment and it is these reports that are placed on the website or at one of the many exhibitions worldwide.

The idea is that each person who takes part in these assignments has their own unique experiences in realising how simple creating something that can make you think can be if they think about their own lives.

It is my intention to complete as many of these assignments as possible, write about my experience of this and regularly update my blog depending on what assignments I completed. The main challenges that I can see is that a) I absolutely cannot draw or create anything which these assignments ask me to do and b) some assignments will be just too hard. For example assignment no 39. Take a picture of your parents kissing, my parents have been divorced for over ten years now and can't imagine they can be persuaded to kiss each other all in the name of 'art'.

The full list of assignments can be found on the website and will keep blogging any future assignments I complete from here on out.