Painting my way through Nina's absence

My proposal to create and pilot a workshop for the University of Derby has been accepted! I don’t have a lot of details at this point other than a confirmation they have green-lit my project. I do know they have allotted me the full amount I was asking for and so I assume the scope of the project is the same as what I outlined in my proposal.

I proposed to set up a workshop on website usability focusing on user centered design. There are a lot of workshops and courses on this subject, but they are all catering to web development professionals. Mine took a completely different approach. My target market is micro and home-based businesses within 20 miles of the university. I will gear the content toward people who run a business and have perhaps one or two employees (or run it all themselves) and have to wear many hats. It is for people who have limited knowledge of web development yet had to create their own website because they didn’t have the money to hire a professional. They didn’t want to make their own site; they had to. I am not going to teach them how to do it since most of them will have already done it. I will empower them to see it with fresh eyes, to see it the way the user sees it and to give them the knowledge they need to go back to their site and assess (and fix) its weaknesses. Based on my research, there is nothing like this out there.

I will offer this as a half day (4 hour)workshop. I want these people to really get their money’s wort h and I think taking notes can detract from that. I also have an issue with handing out a copy of the PowerPoint presentation as it will only cover the key talking points which might not be enough if they refer back to it a year later and want more detail.

So my proposal includes writing a hand book which will cover the full course content written in pros which they can take with them. This frees them up to pay attention during the workshop and lets them take every point, example and detail away with them in a book format for future reference.

I had initially hoped to have completed the research and have the course fully written by the end of this year. However, Kevin (the gentleman I met with at the university’s corporate office) wants to meet with me before I start and the earliest he can meet is early December. So I will likely start to work on this project right as my work with The White Door winds down toward the end of the year.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, I had some projects I had to attend to while Nina was away. First on the list, and the biggest project of all, was painting two of the four living room walls.

When Nina and I first viewed this flat in early August we immediately fell head over heals in love with it. It was perfect. Granted, we both (luckily) had the same vision for the apartment as in actual fact, it was anything but perfect. But we saw massive potential and we were both on the same page.

The living room really jumped out at us. The detailed 6 inch moldings that frame the ceiling and the dining nook with the seven large windows framed by theatre-style red curtains sold us. Another appeal was the carved wood fireplace, although it was on one of the brown walls which detracted from it. We immediately knew this was the place for us and we detailed (and liaised with the landlord) about all the changes. One thing all three of us agreed on was how much better the room would look once we got rid of the awful brown paint.

We based the whole room around the red curtains. We bought the end of a roll of red carpet and had it made into two rugs for the living room. We bought a TV stands, coffee table, book case and end tables that all matched the teak and glass cabinet that came with the suit and the one remaining job was to eliminate the two brown walls.

Although Nina has my camera in Italy with her (and she has fully recovered now) I remembered my laptop has a webcam so I snapped the pictures in this blog. You might have noticed the paint between the windows has chipped off and that is due to work in progress. The landlord is having all seven of the windows restored which is quite a job. The lads come for three days a week (for each window) which will last for 7 weeks in total. Once completed, they will paint the wall in one go so in the meantime, it looks less than ideal.

Nina commissioned me to do the other kind of painting as well. We wanted some pieces to cover the large expanses of wall in the living room and in the bedroom. We sat down together and browsed through my portfolio of work. To my surprise, I have close to 70 paintings photographed on my computer. I took notes while she perused and made comments.

As it happened, not surprisingly, the two she settled on were two from the set of four that drew the most attention from my art show back in 2004. I had painted a set of four (red, blue, purple and green) that everyone loved and the red and blue were the basis of what Nina wanted for our home. She wanted the red to be more orange-based and had a few other suggestions in order to customize it to our living room. So, more than five years after painting the original, I found myself back in familiar territory planning out my attack on the massive canvass.

As I can only work when hit by inspiration, it has been a drawn our process. Although after finishing the living room walls I decided to paint the door frame as it was painted magnolia (to match the walls) while all the moldings in the room were contrasted in white and I could see the doorframe would look better if it was consisted and also framed in white. After that I ran out of things to paint on the wall, so I went back to the project of painting something for the wall.

With Nina away and the painting behind me, I had a free weekend. The weather on Saturday was forecasted to be decent and I wanted to do one of my favourite things; a day trip! A few times a week I walk over to Queen’s road to visit Olive’s; a cozy neighbourhood pub. I have become quite friendly with a few of the bartenders and, one of the lads who has been working on my windows goes there frequently and we have become friendly. They recommended Nottingham, so that is where I went.

Nottingham (like hundreds of cities in the UK) is one hour from Leicester. It is most commonly known as the home of Robin Hood and I thought that might be the best place to start. I went to Nottingham castle which proudly displays a Robin Hood statue. The castle was the residence of the Sheriff of Nottingham during the third crusade. Although, that building is long gone as many incarnations of the castle have stood on this spot over the years. The current castle was built in the 1660s.

Part of the castle is now used as an art gallery and so I took a stroll through. There was a long hall with traditional portraits and landscapes which didn’t impress me too much. One room, however, had some avant-garde modern art. Along the walls were framed Lego boxes that had been flattened and mounted. I didn’t think too much of it until I inspected them a bit closer and looked at the pictures on the boxes that showed the finished Lego models. They were all scenes from Auschwitz depicting holocaust scenes in Lego. The Jews were symbolized with skeletons and showed electrocutions, torture and other atrocities. As horrifying as these scenes were, I was impressed with the creativity of the Polish artist Zbigniew Libera in the way he depicted these scenes. He used something as innocent as a child’s toy to show how horrendous man can be at his worse. Innocence in the medium and brutality in the depictions. I did some research on the Internet and was able to find these pictures of his Lego creations.

At the base of the mound which the castle is perched atop sits Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem which claims to be the oldest pub in the UK (along with 20 others). The building dates back to the same time as the castle but the caves beneath it which were used to brew beer date back to 1068 AD and there has been a pub on this land ever since. So to say it is the oldest is a bit of a stretch. After a half pint of the local cider I was on my way.

Next I headed to the wharf. The River Trent runs along the side of central Nottingham and a canal was built to run an arm of the river through downtown to the edge of the castle mount. Nowadays there are old warehouses running along its perimeter and many of which have been turned into pubs and restaurants. Feeling a little nippish, I was looking for somewhere scenic to stop for lunch. I wandered into one pub that used to be the moorage for canal boats and still was! A small finger of the canal ran into the building, shut off from the rest of the water by a garage door. The pub was U shaped and surrounded the floating boats.

Content from my fish, chips and peas, I headed into the town centre. I walked along pristine alleys and realized this is what Leicester would look like if it had a tourism trade. I found myself at the Old Market Square where the Council House stood. This magnificent building was built in the 1920s and is Nottingham’s town hall. The main floor is an upmarket shopping mall called Exchange Arcade with vaulted ceilings and a wonderful glass dome.

I had a walk through and came across an art gallery specializing in British contemporary artists. This was my first look at a gallery since arriving in the UK and I thoroughly enjoyed having a look through. I have to say, from what I saw in this one gallery, Britain has some fantastically talented painters.

I should give credit where credit is due; all the pictures of Nottingham I sourced from the Internet as I didn’t have a camera to take with me. I can’t credit the photographers as I do not know who they are, but, I only included pictures of things I personally saw and wished I could have photographed. Although I doubt that excuses my sheer disregard for reusing other people’s photographs without permission.

I headed back to Leicester as I had bought myself a ticket to the theatre. Leicester has a new theatre called The Curve which is ultra modern and a fantastic venue. I had been monitoring their website for some time with the intention of going to see something as tickets are rarely more than ₤20-₤25 which seemed like a pretty good deal. I picked The Fastest Clock in the Universe as the name seemed catchy and it was billed as a dark comedy. The dark part was right! It was graphic in places and all four of the characters were hard to sympathize with. But the production was excellent as was the acting and I left feeling entertained.

Recently Marie and I were Emailing back and forth and she made a comment that got me thinking; “Leicestershire sounds like a 50/50 deal, some good and some not-so-good”

After spending the past year and a half in Amsterdam, there are certainly things I miss now that I am in Leicester. I loved the canals because they were pretty and added a charm to the city. But more than that, I just like living near water. Leicester does have one canal, but it’s on the other side of town and it’s piddly in comparison.

Amsterdam is a city meant to be walked or cycled and I miss that infrastructure. I used to love exploring and taking different routes into town to investigate different neighbourhoods. I do that here as much as I can, but it’s difficult when there is no resemblance of a grid system at all and in most cases, only one or two streets will go the direction I want.

Both Nina and I have noticed there are practically no cats in Leicester, or if there are, they don’t go outside. I can go weeks without seeing a cat on the sidewalk.

It’s natural to look at where you have lived in the past and compare it to where you live now. In my progression from Vancouver to Amsterdam to Leicester I have had to make sacrifices in order to receive other things in exchange.

But ultimately, the comparison is not a fair one. Both Amsterdam and Vancouver are world renowned cities that everyone has heard of and most people want to visit if they haven’t already. Few people aspire to visit Leicester.

Leicester was once great, but that was a long time ago. In fact, it was at a time when the ink was barely dry on the document incorporating Vancouver as a city. Now, the sad reminders of those days litter the city. Massive abandoned turn-of-the-century brick factories can be found in most corners of Leicester, some in areas that ceased to be industrial ages ago. Some are still in tact with their boarded up windows and other were partially demolished and then forgotten in their sad state. The reminders that this was a thriving city swept up in the wave of the industrial revolution are everywhere.

So to go from a city frequently considered one of the most livable in the world, to a truly world-class city, to a small old post-industrial town in the British midlands takes some adjustments.

Vancouver still has its youthful good looks and a bright future. Amsterdam is mature, sophisticated and classy. Leicester is old and past its prime.

Vancouver and Amsterdam have massive tourism industries that attract millions of people. They have a certain expectation they must live up to and resources are used to ensure they meet those expectations. Leicester is free of that sort of pressure and as it’s almost exclusively populated by locals, it brings a different air to the city. It isn’t trying to live up to any expectations or cater to a certain crowd. It just is, and that is something I like about it.

I know I have made Leicester sound so drastically depressing and dire, but it isn’t. The fact is, most cities in the world aren’t Vancouvers or Amsterdams, they are just towns or cities full of people living their lives uninterrupted by the outside world peering in. The people in Leicester are down to earth and there is a calmness here that I find very appealing. For young people, this may not be ideal as there is a noticeable lack of excitement. But for someone who wants to live a quiet life, it works. I have met a few locals in their twenties and they all hate it. They were born here and want to be anywhere else. I can understand that. But for me, even with all its imperfections… I like it here.