‘“Tonight’s a monument which Earth has made
From brooding on July.”’ – July Moon by Louise Townsend Nicholl
Is that another month gone already? It must be time for my July newsletter!
Happy Birthday to me.
I turned 51 on Bastille Day. Getting to the point that birthday cake candles have to be ignited outdoors under the supervision of a fire crew with a hose. Feeling pretty good though!
A word of gratitude to The Framing Loft Galway.
After 24 years Mark and Sandra are relocating the Framing Loft from Galway City to Athenry. They’ve framed hundreds of caricatures for me in that time and been an invaluable part of my operation, turning around high quality work in a short time when they knew I needed it (which was every time I went in their door). It’s the end of an era and also a new beginning and I wish my good friends the very best in this new departure.
Framing Loft new location: Northgate Street Athenry H65 FV08
Contact: 0874072252 091336633
Oliver Jeffers Coming to Kennys
Children’s author and illustrator Oliver Jeffers is coming to Kennys bookshop in Galway in I am inordinately excited about this and of course I camped out overnight visited Kenny’s website to book tickets straight away.
“World-renowned picture book maker Oliver Jeffers is a genre-busting creative force in the world of children’s books. His Boy and The Penguin books have sold over 1.2 million copies in the UK alone, with overall sales of Oliver’s publishing now exceeding 18 million copies worldwide, with translations in forty-nine languages.”
Book tickets for Oliver Jeffers’ Galway visit here.
Galway Hurling Final
While there was great excitement in the county for the recent hurling final against Limerick nothing will ever top my experience in 2001 working at the Galway V Tipperary Senior Hurling Final in Croke Park. I got to create an artist’s impression for the pitch (no pun) for the pre-match entertainment (pictured above) which was a huge re-enactment of Setanta and the Hound, and I performed on the pitch on the day as one of Macnas’ famous Fir Bolgs. I’m no sports fan but the whole experience was absolutely magical and I got to go places no-one but players and officials are supposed to even look at. In the end I got to watch the entire game from the tunnel the players enter from, we absolutely should not have been there but an especially sound official pretended not to see us (while chatting away to us) and we presented him with Setanta/Cú Chulainn’s oversized hurley, which we all signed, as a thank you. I just don’t think there’re any young artists today getting to experience the things I took for granted as a young artist in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Commissions:
A busy July means I didn’t get to post much new work but it’ll be coming soon. Co. Clare TD Donna McGettigan contacted me when all that Gen(eric) AI business was happening as she wanted to support a real human artist which absolutely filled my heart at a time Sam Altman wanted me to despair. She commissioned the above piece for her social media and was delighted with how it turned out. Thanks again for the morale boost Donna!
The law is a constant source of new commissions with the Gardai accounting for a sizeable portion of my commissions, and not far behind them are the barristers! This was a piece I published to my site this month featuring a barrister on the Bat-Phone (based on the classic 1960s version).
Weddings
I posted a selection of live wedding caricatures in my regular haunt the Galway Bay Hotel here. I was back in the Galway Bay Hotel last weekend for a corporate bbq and got a great reaction from my sitters, I had a queue all night!
In July I entertained with my live wedding caricatures in Mount Juliet Kilkenny, Castleoaks House Hotel Limerick (twice!), Dunmore House Hotel Clonakilty, Devon Inn Hotel Limerick, Bellingham Castle Louth, Hotel Kilkenny, Greville Arms Hotel Mullingar, and I finish the month back in Cabra Castle Cavan. I met myself on the road twice.
Cartoons
For a week in July I tried to draw something every day so I have a raft of cartoons, topical and nonsensical. Above is Count Binface’s opponent in the Clacton by-election, I forget his name: but I did realise he’s basically Beaker from the Muppets, crossed with a frog (no offence to Beaker or any frog reading this).
Mitch McConnell became Schrödinger’s Senator in July, in a political superposition of being dead to his constituents while alive to several Republicans by telephone for exactly 20 minutes each time. Almost as if all these Republicans were regurgitating the same circulated brief. The fascist party of America would never be that cynical surely?
An older one I finally put a caption on. Ages ago I had this notion of an Old West town where some parasite had killed off every equine mode of transport and the town had to resort to whatever was available. I haven’t researched it but this definitely happened.
Sean Henry’s exhibition for the Galway (International) Arts Festival was absolutely superb, and I took copious notes that I will turn into a review at some stage, but for now this was my cartoon reaction to the installation of his Seated Figure in the Middle Arch Galway.
Another flaming brainfart (look that’s how this works for cartoonists): what if baby dragons got the scoots? Well, it would look something like this.
I made a submission to Galway City Council in July about the provision/imposition of CCTV. Within a few days of the deadline for submissions Galway City Council had proudly posted, then deleted, their shiny new spy equipment being installed on Instagram. I’m waiting to hear back if any submissions were actually read.
“Every single CCTV camera has the implication of guilt for the public simply by walking down the street. The state has diagnosed us all as potential criminals and created a vast panopticon while ignoring that the original panopticon was a prison, with inmates who at least had been found guilty of some crime. We are afforded no such due process in this closed-circuit permanent gaze by the state.” Link
Read the whole submission at the link if you like. It’ll be more than the Council did.
I also made a complaint (look I’m 51 this is the age this sort of thing starts increasing) to Westside Public Library for the use of generic AI to promote an event in the library. I will save you the nightmare of the image suffice it to say cups tend to have a single handle, and people tend to have just 2 hands.
“By promoting events with generative AI Westside Library is tacitly approving this culture of artistic theft and its consequent disturbing output as an adequate standard of communication. The Library is essentially endorsing the theft of artistic work, and the low standards of generative AI imagery, as appropriate. The Library is conceding some sort of implied inevitability in a process that is literally stripping humanity of literacy.” Link
Fighting Back Against Generative AI
Sometimes fighting back is as simple as writing an article.
I’ve noticed Google suggested humans are searching for the term/question Can ChatGPT create a caricature?, so I wrote an article in answer to it, and it’s now the second result on Google, in Ireland at least. I’ve tried to enlist other artists to do the same but collective action seems a big hurdle for us rugged individualists artists. The article is here with some gently-phrased reminders of how Altman and co. are attempting to kill human imagination for profit.
Napalm Death on Tiny Desk Concert!
I could not believe when I saw this pop up on Youtube. Barney Greenway’s braces and whole Future Islands/Joe Dolan shape-throwing just cracked me up. The Doechii Tiny Desk Concert is still one of the greatest musical performances I’ve ever seen. (I like a broad church of music.)
Archaeology: Ancient settlement older than Newgrange discovered in West Waterford
“The two Early Neolithic homes date from between 3600 and 3700 BC, meaning they pre-date Newgrange by several centuries, were built more than 500 years before Stonehenge and around 1,200 years before the Great Pyramid of Giza.” Source
Meanwhile in Galway: ‘Rare’ discovery of adjacent tombs in Co Galway offers insight into prehistoric burials
Look thanks once again for reading, I know there’s 50-odd of you out there and I appreciate you! Feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you think might enjoy it! Catch you again in August.
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