Personal & Professional Practice: Salts Mill

I went to Salt's Mill for Valentine's day. (cue audience: N'AWWWWW)

It's marvellous I love it.

First, what a grand building.

So many windows, and that red sign is great

And I stood under this chimney for a good ten minutes contemplating the majesty of perspective when witnessed first hand and feeling like a tiny ant

And then inside its a cornacopia of all things nice to look at.

The history, in a nutshell, is that this guy called Titus Salts owned a big mill and built Saltaire around it as a town for the workers to live in with a hospital and a school and stuff so he was a nice guy, as rich white men from the 19th century go, and then like ages later after he died it went into disrepair and then this guy Jonathan Silver took it over in the 80s and made it an arts hub type place with gallery space and shops, and Adams parents remember going and he'd just be chilling about in the shop. Also he was like school friends with David Hockney, conveniently, so Hockney donated loooaddsssss of work to him and it basically became a space devoted to his work (which I am well into). Then Jonathan Silver got cancer and died unreasonably young and theres loads of nice paintings David Hockney did to cheer him up while he was dying.

Here is one
(I bought a postcard of this one but it's aura isn't fully represented in the reproduction)

That'd make me about as happy as I could possibly be while on my deathbed.

The shopping potential is very exciting and dangerous.
There's art supplies on the entrance level, interspersed with casual Hockney works and Burmantofts jardinairs

I bought some china markers and more postcards, these ones were of Hockneys ipad drawings - which are really pretty but I'll go on to that in a minute

So then there was the bookshop which was equally or more exciting I'm not sure.

There's a whole big section of children's books, but like nice ones, not those ones that make me mad that this garbage is being published but I'm not, they have the ones that make you excited about kids books, and also thing goddamn maybe I should give up and just read them instead.
Here are some of them

Then theres the aspirational homewares shop full of beautiful things I could never afford to put in my house

They have all the legit designer chair reproductions like Eames chairs and that one that begins with A i think but it's like all one piece of plastic, and theres loads of sets of Hornsea and Wedgewood pots from the 70s and theres just everything I could hope for but will never get unless some blind old dear in the charity shop ignorantly prices them up at £2.50.

And there was this nifty example of packaging making a product look even more exciting

Although slightly disappointing because I thought it had a pointy roof lid to go on the mug but it was just card. Still cool but I was almost willing to pay £15 for a moomin house mug with a proper roof lid.

And then at the top floor theres the most excellent antiques shop. So many beautiful things like googie-esque clocks and huge solid wood tables and desks with inlayed jewels and lacquer and crazy paintings and original run disney posters and rotary phones in every colour and a big round yellow tv and endless trinkets and tv merch from the past still in boxes and this life size ornament of Charlie Chaplins head and I could go on but I won't. It was amazing.

I can't find a good photo that encapsulates it's glory but this'll have to do

I didn't buy anything cos it was all too expensive but Adam got a knitted tie.

Also David Hockneys iPad drawings are on display at the minute
They seem to divide opinion a lot but I really like them
I think it's strange to take a traditional painter, impliment his skills onto a new digital medium, print them back out and then display them physically in a gallery space. Thats pretty weird to think about.
I was reading that he was a pioneer of digital drawing and even did this project in the 80s where he'd try and draw with the coding instruction system on a big printer, which I cannot find pictures of.
I think its clear that he's using techniques and knowledge gained from working with paint and being traditionally trained, and transferring it to a medium that supposedly makes it possible for everyone to be an artist (for the record I don't think it does - you still have to be able to draw, it just makes it easier to undo the bits you cocked up)
You can still see the consideration of colour and composition even though theyre on a different, less reveered tool.
And, I guess ike impressionism, they look quite boggling from afar but horrible up close. Probably because the size you see it at from ten meters away when its printed at A1 ends up being the size he drew it at.
Here's some I like