Drawing, Walking, Making Marks

I

At the start of this year, I went for a walk.

I walked out of my final group CBT session in Brierley Hill, past the college, and began making my way down the hill. For the previous 12 sessions throughout the final months of 2019, I had gotten the bus straight away from up t’road, back down to Merry Hill, before getting another bus to Cradley Heath station, a train from there to Birmingham Moor Street, and walked through Digbeth into work. Today was different as it was a follow up session in the new year, taking place on the first Monday in January, and I didn’t need to go into work. This meant there was space to really exhale, to engage in processing the psychological distance travelled in therapy and let a range of emotions walk alongside me.

I had packed my camera with me, and snapped some things that interested me on the walk, past a combination of residential and industrial use sites and a great view of the Dudley Number One canal, continuing down past KFC and the ODEON cinema, where, unusually, I stopped to enjoy a rare frothy coconut milk coffee alone in the cafe. As the chair held my body like a mother holds a child, I could almost swear I felt the world spinning gently beneath me as I stared softly into the space around me, alongside a constellation of other people also drinking frothy drinks, eating overpriced toasted sandwiches and staring into the spaces between us.

Greatest Hits: March

The story of Rodriguez single-handedly inspired the theme for my calendar this year. If you haven't checked out the Searching For Sugar Man documentary all about him then I'd urge you to give it a watch! He's a humble, talented icon whose music never gained popularity in America, but people spread it around via taped recordings and copied albums leading to a huge fanbase in South Africa that he had no idea about until decades later.

"GREATEST HITS"

“Music is my beach house, music is my home town
Music is my king size bed, music’s where I meet my friends.”
— Cansei de Ser Sexy

Following last year’s calendar about something I find most challenging, I decided to theme this edition around something I adore, find freedom in and lean on when things get real - music.

I almost gave up multiple times on being able to make anything calendar-shaped for 2020. After 5 years of producing these you'd think it may have gotten easier, but 2019 was my greatest challenge yet. I didn't want to give up, so instead kept finding ways to still make the calendar happen despite my critical lack of energy at the end of last year, soundtracking one of the busiest times of my life as we closed Impact Hub Birmingham.

A New Year's Resolve

How do folks and welcome to my wee blog. It's so late on Sunday night that it recently became Monday and, unfortunately, it's less socially acceptable to not know what day it is from approximately, now. Things are gearing up around us as we move gently into all that this year has in store, and me and my laptop are getting reacquainted enough to pen (well, cursor) a little something to mark the occasion, and say a public hello to 2020.

Weirdly, I think if I was inclined to do a year-in-review style rundown of 2019 it would probably be my most exciting year to date. I travelled to attend Glasgow Zine Festival for the first time, visited Brooklyn Art Library in New York supported by a-n, went to Copenhagen, tabled at the dreamy Dundee Zine Festival, held Brum Zine Fest for the second year running, organised an artists residency, organised events and exhibitions, got featured on the BBC, got interviewed at the House of Illustration, worked on some amazing brand projects, campaigns and documents and ultimately levelled up professionally, much of which happened in the final months of the year.