Rolling Stock Oliver East
14
Ever mindful of the effect full time employment has on the practice of the artist/illustrator, December continued the theme of scratching around the gaps in my commute for loose threads of ideas, with the knowledge that I wouldn’t be able to see anything through to a finished article anytime soon. Which works just fine right now. I have a ten-day residency booked for July next year (fingers and swabs crossed), and if any of the frayed edges of these past few months are worth running with, then these directionless months won’t have been for nothing. Once such thread might be an animation I made on my commute. If I leave my bicycle at home, then my commute starts with a 45-minute walk. One morning this month I created an animation along this route (a long road through Old Trafford and Hulme) by drawing a simple graphic, representing a peak in the distance, and affixing them to each and every lamppost on the way, photographing them as I went. I then collated the 80+ frames into a gif on the train to work. It’s this almost impromptu (I had the materials and a vague plan to hand) approach to image making that might warrant deeper inquiry. My commute has ripe for further harvest later in the month. After rediscovering the work of George Perec, I recorded the walk section of my commute with a concerted effort to “look flatly”. Again, I collated the results into a multipaneled one page comic on the train. I did this twice. More traditional (for me) observational fayre was collected on a road trip to France, which included a ferry across The Channel (The Sleeve to the French), to spend Christmas with my partner’s family. The first four days of this week stay was spent working remotely, but even after I’d put my auto reply on my email account, the holiday was quite sedentary. I’ve decided against including any walking-drawings in this issue from my stay. They’re quite rural, which is a change of pace at least, but there’s nothing particularly foreign about them. Instead, I’ve chosen to illustrate my stay with drawings that reflect the sedentary nature of all my time in Le Bono. It’s rare that I sit and consider space for very long. And I had new pens to play with. It seemed to take forever to get my eye in, but once the nibs and I clicked, I was able to see as flatly as anyone. My hosts accepted a couple of the drawings as gifts, commenting they offered views on their long-time home that they hadn’t considered before. The animation made along my commute can be found on my Instagram feed @olivereast Thanks Oliver