#0039 TOM HICKS - BLACK COUNTRY TYPE!

Welcome to the Creative Nowhere Land Podcast.

There's a certain beauty in the banal, everyday stuff that many people may overlook. 

On this episode, we are lucky to be joined by an artist who has turned his ability to see this beauty into a 10-year project. Tom Hicks of Black Country Type. 

Black Country Type is an ongoing photographic project. Tom applies his unique aesthetic to this region of the West Midlands in the UK, focusing on words, typography, handmade lettering and signs. He also photographs ‘types’ of architectural features, objects and the post-industrial landscape of the area.

It's a project that's been described as willfully mundane. Gently humorous, but with a mournful edge, which I just thought was kind of beautiful. 

And it's a project that he's turned into a book. Seen him have multiple solo exhibitions. He sells his art in galleries and privately. His work's been featured in major publications like The Observer and The Guardian. His images have been commissioned by record labels and other brands. He's created sculptures, worked with poets and has so much more in the pipeline.

And he's about to publish book number two. A book that legendary Rock God, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin fame, has called 'A work of genius!'  You can check it out and get a copy from the link below!

BUY THE BOOK - BLACK COUNTRY TYPE II

Well, now I'm not sure there's much I can say that can really compete with that. So let's get into it.

Check out the links to Tom's website and social media to see more of his amazing work. 

Hope you enjoy this episode of The Creative Nowhere Land Podcast.

BLACK COUNTRY TYPE WEBSITE: https://www.blackcountrytype.com/

BLACK COUNTRY TYPE INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/blackcountrytype

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hello everyone and welcome to the Creative Noble Land Podcast. Now there's a certain beauty in the banal kind of everyday stuff that many people may overlook. And on this episode, we're lucky to be joined by an artist who's turned his ability to see this beauty into a 10-year project. It's a project that's been described as willfully mundane, gently humorous, but with a mournful edge, which I just thought was kind of beautiful. And it's a project that he's turned into a book. That Cinnamon have multiple solo exhibitions. He sells his art in galleries and privately. His work's been featured in major publications like The Observer and The Guardian. His images have been commissioned by record labels and other brands. He's created sculptures, worked with poets, and he's about to publish book number two. A book that legendary rock god Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin fame has called a work of genius. Well, I'm not really sure there's much I can say that can compete with that, so on this episode, we're joined by Tom Hicks of Black Country Type. Let's get into it, but I'm not sure if you're Tom, let's go straight into

Defining The Work And Method

SPEAKER_01 1:39

it. I read something that you wrote, and it said, When you feel lost, your eyes look at things in a fresh way. And it struck me that's quite indicative of your work. Do you want to just tell us a little bit about how you would describe your work and what you do?

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Yeah, uh my work's basically the easiest description is landscape photography. The landscape of the backcountry. So when people think of landscape, they often think of the natural world and then you know it's uh beautiful rolling vistas, yeah, Turner-esque. Yeah, and and obviously early photography was trying a lot of it was trying to replicate that, so like a quick version of painting. But mine's more the landscape is the built environment, although I'll do straight into nature sometimes. It's normally in the middle of like an urban area anyway. So, yeah, so it's that's like the easiest way to describe it. Some people would say urban photography, some people would say abstract photography, but it's basically the landscape of the black country, and it's using the black country as um a place to explore and get ideas, but document as well, so you know, but there's never one overall plan with it.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Yeah, so yeah. With your photographs, I noticed there's this kind of beauty in the banal. There's to a lot of people looking at the images, there's not much going on, but yeah, there's a lot to do with colour, form, shape, words, type, typography is very Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

I mean, words originally was the thing that I noticed was appearing in lots of my photographs. And it was never really I didn't set out to do a project. I just had lots of photographs on my phone.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Should we talk about that? Should we go back to how this project sort of originated? Yeah. Because the project is called Black Country Type. Yeah. And you started that back in 2017.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

Yeah, that was when it first had an exhibition. So you'd been doing it beforehand then? Yeah, on and off, I'd been putting things on places like Facebook where it'd be just an unusual photograph with hardly an explanation. It was just, I find this interesting, I'm just gonna post it. I'd done that for a while, and then somebody said I really like these. Would you think about exhibiting them? And that was the Birmingham and Midlands Institute. They'd got this reception area and said, We like to put people's exhibitions on, we just consider doing it. And I never even thought about it.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

But at that point, did you consider yourself an artist? Not really, no. No, I've been involved in the arts for a long time. Should we do the classic then? Should we go because this is a pro this is a project that's in the last 10 years propelled you to doing lots of really interesting things. But you're not per se a photographer, you're not per se an artist.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Not a trained photographer. No, it's all just been developing as I've been going along, really.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

But I think it's interesting because

Cycling, Doors, And Finding Subjects

SPEAKER_01 4:33

for the last 20 odd years, you've been a librarian at the Wolverhampton Uni. So you have been sort of filling yourself with inputs inadvertently. So I guess what was the catalyst to make you go out and start taking pictures of your own, or were you influenced by the inputs that you were getting being in this environment surrounded by all this sort of art, design, social science?

SPEAKER_02 4:57

Yeah, so I the the work at the U N worked originally just for the School of Art. So I was the librarian for the School of Art at Northampton, which is long established in the city. So your art history knowledge should be pretty Yeah, yeah. Um I've looked at a lot of images. My main role is to develop the library and help students research. The idea that you arrive at UNIN and just create work is kind of a misconception. You have to set your work in context. So the library and print books is still really relevant, even though the internet's obviously everyone's first go-to. But over the years, I've helped a lot of students work with academics, built up the art and design library. So I've been exposed to a lot of imagery from all aspects of the arts. So graphics, ceramics, photography, fashion, textiles.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Inputs are full. Yeah, yeah. We talk about that a lot on the podcast about how if your inputs are limited, your outputs are going to be limited. Yeah. So did you feel like that you had all these inputs, but potentially you weren't doing the output?

SPEAKER_02 5:59

Yeah, I mean, at one point I was I was doing a fair bit of writing about art, so I was reviewing books, which was uh interesting. So I was writing book reviews about new art books, which seemed really obvious to me that I assess book, I show students how to use books or how to access them. So to write about them and appreciate them was interesting work, and I always thought writing would be the thing that I'd get involved in, I think. But actually, I think photography, it's I found a way of expressing a lot in one image, and I think it brings depending on your viewpoint, five separate people will see five different things in one one photograph. Yeah, and I think that's there's something really magical about that. It means something to to people in different aspects. So some people might like the colour in a photograph, some people might like typography, they might like the clouds in the in the photograph. It doesn't have to be like a one kind of unifying message, and I think it's that's art though, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Yeah, it just gives you that it's all open really. So was there a moment you said that you shared an image on Facebook and it got some interest, but presumably you've been taking pictures. What was the yeah, yeah. I mean Was it just a hobby? Yeah, I think there's a lot of cycling and a lot of walking involved in this, isn't there, Tom?

SPEAKER_02 7:15

Yeah, that's it, yeah. A lot of it stemmed from cycling. So on Sundays I'd go on my bike quite a lot, go on the canals, go into towns that I'd never really bothered to visit.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

And this goes back to that quote when you feel lost, you always look for things in a fresh way.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

Yeah. Cycling in particular is a great way to do it because you can change direction really quickly and you can cover a lot of ground in in one day. If you're driving and you're trying to look for stuff, it's very difficult, particularly in this area because the traffic's dense. People have got no patience. You can't really like linger and look at a look at the side of a building.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Beautiful side of a building while you're waiting, the traffic's building up behind you.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

And then you've got to like um think about not getting a parking ticket and all that. So with the bike, you just get off, lean it against the tree or whatever, and then take a photograph. But I'd been taking these photographs and I've done some kind of playful stuff on Facebook. I'd got this mini-series called Doors of Wolverhampton. When I was a kid, I used to go to Ireland quite a lot, and we'd bought this calendar back with us called Doorways of Dublin. And they were like Grand Georgian doorways, remnants of the Georgian period in Dublin. And I'd got this calendar, and I think I still got it knocking around somewhere. But I was noticing there's lots of beaten-up doors in Wolverhampton, particularly the town centre, where there's a lot of wear and tear, graffiti, people using them as a toilet, and a lot of expense given to the locks rather than the door itself. People just didn't want people to get in there. So I did this almost like a mini-series, Doorways of Wolhampton, and it was quite humorous, but also it was showing, I guess, the neglect and the change in use, I suppose. But people start to really like those.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Is this where your

Psychogeography And What The Black Country Is

SPEAKER_01 8:54

idea of psychogeography comes? Because there's something I see in your images where yes, there's often a a beauty in the banality, but there's a documentation, there's a history of a bygone era. There's something about especially this era, very industrial, the things that are now not there. Trump traces, yeah. Yeah, traces of history.

SPEAKER_02 9:17

Yeah, I mean, psychogeography is quite can be quite a complex thing, but basically it's the way that a place affects your way of thinking or the feelings that you get in a place. So it it's linked to explorations of cities, really. You know, it's the way the atmosphere can change.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

And can you sort of explain how that relates to the work that you take? Yeah, so it I've lived in the black country all my life. So you should we explain a little bit about what the black country is to people? Yeah. I mean, we are gonna have listeners worldwide. Who don't know what it means, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it can get you into trouble if you don't explain it. Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. Maybe we should actually go into a bit more detail about what the region, the black country, the area of the black country is.

SPEAKER_02 9:57

Yeah, it's it's it's got the uh the black country's name that due to its industrial heritage. So it it was heavy industry in this area, steelmaking, all the industries surrounding that, engineering, a lot of burning of coal. So at one point it was known as a really smoggy and dense area. So in the day it was hard to see. It was quite polluted, heavily polluted, really. There's no restrictions on what you could burn or melt or bang. And at night it would just be lit up by furnaces and the engineering works. And it's still got that kind of reputation, but it was called black because the atmosphere was black and sooty, but also the ground was underneath it all was coal. So there's a big heavyweight seam of coal running underneath the black country, which is why industry developed here really. So it's known as the black country to this day, it's got its own dialect, which is unusual, it's not an accent, it's no, it's an actual language. Yeah. Sometimes it's fairly impenetrable if you don't come from the area. Definitely. But also if you're from the area. Yeah, I could sure. There's words I have to still look up or get explained to me. But so it's got its own culture and language, definitely its own sense of humour. I think it's uh very dry. There's quite a lot of humour mixed up in your images as well, especially with the typography. Typography, signage, graffiti, some really humorous, just bits and pieces written by people just on canal bridges, but also businesses have their own humour, so they want to express that through their signage. I often look at vernacular slang that's on signage because it's a way of demonstrating the humour.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

So, what happens then, Tom, when you're you know, you're you've had all these inputs, you've done your mini project of the doors of Wolverhampton, yeah, and suddenly you're thrust into doing an exhibition around 2017. Yeah. And is that really where the BCT everything cemented for you? And you thought, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:54

I think even then it it was still kind of early days for me. So I was offered an exhibition. I didn't know, I'd never staged one myself, so I was literally going to get some stuff printed on the cheap and pin it up. But a friend of mine, Sarah Zachary, her favourite thing was to stage exhibitions, which was really helpful for me. That's a handy friend. So yeah, she helped me hang it, she took me through the idea that you can't just run things to your home printer. I mean, this is the level I was at at that point. Yeah. There's other aspects that you know I don't mind sharing that. You know, I was using Microsoft Word to edit my photographs.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Should we also say as well? It's all self-taught. But I guess, Tom, we should also say as well, all your photographs, they're not shot on any fancy cameras, even though like you're now publicated in books and exhibitions.

Why iPhone Photography Works

SPEAKER_01 12:37

The best camera is the one you've got on you, and most of the time you use your iPhone, right? Yeah, always. Always. Yeah, so that's a big talking point as well, because I think creatives often put a stumbling block in something that's oh, I'll do this when I've got the right gear.

SPEAKER_02 12:50

Yeah. If I only had the right lens, I can capture the best stuff. Yeah. Well, actually, for me, it's just about what you look at. That's the basic for it. The method of conveying it doesn't have to be expensive. Because I'm mobile and I'm either walking or cycling, I couldn't get on with a digital camera anyway. I I did try it, but I find it clunky. Yeah, and it also seems to give a separate message to somebody with an iPhone as well, or or any kind of phone. It I think the minute you pull a camera out in an industrial estate, it becomes a different proposition, I think. And people say a little bit more suspicious, or just attract attention, it's just clunky as well. And having a camera swinging around my neck while I'm cycling isn't the thing I want to do, really. Yeah. Whereas the phone, you can put it, I can put it in my top pocket, go from one thing to another.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

So, did you have to look at any different techniques to get your iPhone images printed up to the sizes and stuff that you wanted? As I say, luckily you've got this wonderful friend to help you who are maybe not use your home printer.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

She and she said, Don't use blue tacky, that's all no blue tack.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

No, that's the go-to.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

But we had we had this really great system of just for that exhibition, it was the first one I'd done. We had just um string with individual prints hanging from it, pegged to it, because it was cost effective, and then I had a large print done. The School of Art's got its own print unit, so I spoke with them and that they helped me do that. Amazing, and I think that's really important that the idea that nobody starts out knowing everything, and all along the way I've learned little bits and pieces and spoken with people, they've advised me on this, that, and the other. And so, what I'm doing now is the result of lots of hell conversations with people, looking at other people's work.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Nobody arrives from space. Did you find it daunting going into that sort of world of being quote unquote artists from your librarian and almost being behind the scenes a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 14:44

I think I was just really pleased not pleased, just I think I was encouraged that somebody was interested, and perhaps it does mean a little bit more than even what I thought, really. I didn't really think much of it. You know, I thought perhaps everyone sees things in the same way anyway, but they don't. And I think something about the style of of my photographs stood out to a few people, and then it it's just kind of snowballed from there, really. So I think the subject matter is quite unusual. The area's not heavily documented either. There are some great photographers who've worked in the area or visited, Martin Parr did some work here, but he didn't live here, so he hasn't got access to the place every day, I guess, like I have. And then there's some great photographers who've worked in this area, so John Myers, may well talk about him shortly, but he documented Stelbridge and Broyle Hill in the 70s and 80s. But there's not a lot of people working in this area and investigating it. What do you think that is? I don't know. I think maybe people think that there's nothing to offer. I don't know. There's a that self-deprecation in terms of humour is often a thing that also holds people back, I think. So I think one thing I do notice is that people love it, and it's just I think it's often the case that nobody's took the time to do it. Yeah. People tend to love trying to identify where the photographs are, that's a common thing. Sometimes people are convinced it's in Billston where it's actually in Warsaw. Yeah. Because there's never anything too obvious, I don't think. I don't really go and photograph places that say Duddy Council would want to promote. So yeah, it's not your picture postcard stuff. Like I wouldn't go and photograph Dudley Castle.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

No. Because everyone knows what Dudley Castle looks like. Unless there was a massive load of graffiti on one of the turrets that said something interesting.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Yeah. But it's maybe that idea. The psychogeography thing is really a method of exploration, I think. It's that idea that you're going through places and observing slowly.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

It's a term I hadn't really heard before until I started doing a little bit of research on it. Psychogeography. Yeah, it's the psychological effect of the landscape on people, yeah. And like you say, when people view your images, they all view them in their own subjective manner.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

Yeah. But writers use psychogiography. The atmosphere of a place can change from one street to the next. Yeah. We're in Wolverhampton today. There's a Georgian area of Wolverhampton. If you go there, it's got a different atmosphere to say the industrial areas of Wolverhampton. There's individual streets where you go from 60s architecture to Victorian architecture, Pugin has got buildings in Wolfhampton. So the way you feel and the way you respond can change from one street to another. That's really what it is. But writers use it as a way of developing stories, describing feelings

Sunlight, Style, And Editing Simply

SPEAKER_02 17:40

or the effective place, maybe atmosphere. Yeah. So I think that the method of cycling and walking to to a place lets you take your time a bit more, slow down. Often we're in a town or or a village even, just to do one thing, so go to a shop, go to the bank, yeah, post office, see your friends, get in, get out. But you don't really take the time to look at the buildings or wonder how a doorbell's attached to that door. Like there's a scrapyard in Cradle Heath that they've got an old-fashioned door knocker that would be on a bungalow, really, but it's on the front gate, which is huge. So to get their attention, you have to knock this kind of intricate No, this kind of um the way things are thrown together, the juxtaposition of those items. Yeah. But also things like how you'll have a factory and the door will be pink, and it wasn't designed to be pink. It was red, and then they've just not painted it for years and it's gone pink in the soil.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

Again, going that sort of historical documents in a way as well, these traces of time's gone by, shall we say?

SPEAKER_02 18:46

Yeah, the effect of time, I think, and like how a lot of 60s developments are really the idea was good, but they weren't very well maintained. So, you know, you get like subways, which that's a great idea, rather than trying to cross a really dangerous road. You go through a a well-lit subway, but over the time that the lights get smashed, people use it as a toilet, they flood, yeah, and it becomes something else, but it's it still has an atmosphere that people relate to, I guess. Yeah. So it it's really about things that I find interesting, and I think for other artists that's a really important thing, because if you find it interesting, at least one other person going to, I think.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

I think more than one person's found interesting. You've had quite a buzz over this.

Becoming An Artist And Sharing Work

SPEAKER_01 19:30

You've got lots of Instagram followers who love your work and are interested in your work, yeah. And since that, I guess that exhibition of the pegged images on string, yeah, it's kind of gone from one thing to another. So exhibitions galore publications featured in The Guardian, The Observer, yeah, uh commissioned by Blooming record labels to make that's that's an interesting one, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. If people look at your work, there's lots of square format, and I've heard you mention there's lots of old school visuals from your album artwork.

SPEAKER_02 20:00

Yeah, I mean I've got one here, but it's I mean it doesn't come across on the podcast. No. This is uh Brotherhood by New Order. I bought this as a kid, and I couldn't first of all, I couldn't fully understand it because it's just a photograph of a piece of steel. So Peter Savile, who designed it, had this huge sheet of steel just photographed by a really well-known photographer, Trevor Key. But that's the cover. It there's nothing to say new order on it. But to me, that showed me that the industrial can be cultural.

SPEAKER_03 20:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

This was a real statement. You do get the band's portrait inside, yeah. But what a statement, you know, there's actually there's nothing to say who it's by, it's just a piece of steel. But obviously.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

And that that comes across in your work as well, isn't it? That like you say, that sometimes inability for the viewer to go, oh, that's that place, and you go, No, it's not. Yeah, but that similarity that Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

And I think there's that thing about photography where it can put the viewer in that place. So if it's a photograph of a doorway or a shop front, the way you photograph it can put that person seeing it in that place, and they can appreciate it as if they're there. So there's that kind of element. And then there's just things like traces of people, so that's why there's no people in it, because I think portraits of people is a different skill and a different arena, really.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

But these are all landscapes that are used and like you say, inherently used, aware of people, the impact of people is always in your that's it, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

So they're all about people, really.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Because without people, the places wouldn't exist. But um It's interesting because I've also someone described a work as willfully mundane, gently humorous, but with a mournful end.

unknown 21:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

I thought that was quite beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 21:45

Yeah, I mean that they're quite sparse, I guess, because it there's no people in them. Even if it's a street scene, I've tried to I want to focus on one particular aspect rather than the whole street. And I think the pared down nature of it can create atmosphere, but also I guess the A sense of loneliness because there's nobody in them. Like this photograph here is just the side of a an industrial unit. But what struck me about this really was the shadow at the bottom of the picture. And without that shadow, I probably wouldn't have taken the photographs. Yeah. But it's it is it's a very empty space.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

What is it about your images? You always shoot them quite bold sunlight. Is that something about wanting to shine a light on the places that you're doing or photograph them? And because realistically, as people who live in England, a lot of the time this is not how we see them. On the day to day, most of the time you see it with a grey sky, it doesn't look very aesthetic, shall we say? What is it with you and waiting for blue skies, Tom?

SPEAKER_02 22:44

I think it if you see my early photographs, and I've on Instagram I've not deleted my early photographs. So if you do bother to go to the very start, you'll see that they're taking in all weather. Sometimes it was raining, so you can actually see the rain. And what I've done, I've left them on there on purpose, really, because it shows I think it shows the development as well.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Progression of your work, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

And there's a period where you can see, for me anyway, where I start to really focus. So at one point I was posting every day, and they were all weathers, and there's no real cohesion other than I like this, I'm gonna post it. I'm posting daily at one point as well, which can be quite a task. But I think I eventually started to realise that sunlight is the thing that really it brings out all the detail in the photographs, so textures, surfaces, it looks better when it's in as a strong light, and that's all it was, really. Yeah. But the side effect of that is often the sky's blue and the colours are more intense.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

And when you found that cohesion in the work, did you notice that more people were affected by it, more people were interested by it, more people were maybe there's a bit of a maybe a change in the attention on it because early photographs it was I wasn't even getting off my bike, literally just snapping and then move it off.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

But I think you could see there's a transition from the more candid stuff to more considered stuff.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

Is that because you became more Yeah, I think so, yeah, treating it a little bit more seriously. And is that as a result of having an exhibition, being in thrust into this world? I think so.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

It does focus you when you've got someone wants to publish a book or exhibit your work. I think it it becomes something where you a little bit more care is needed than just like stopping for two minutes and then try to cycle into the next thing, you know. But also the process has developed, but I still do the same stuff that I've always done, apart from I don't edit on Microsoft Paint anymore. I edit in camera, so I edit using the iPhone's software. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

So again, important for people to hear, I think, yeah, because you don't need fancy software, you don't need this.

SPEAKER_02 24:53

Yeah. And I think the advantage with an iPhone and a digital camera for me is you can look at it while you're there. So I can actually crop it, view it. And I know you can do this with a camera, but I find it quite clunky on a digital camera. Yeah. Whereas I can pretty much see how it will look on the phone and how that will then translate to say Instagram or a print. And if I like something that day, I can email it to my printer and he'll run off a print. And within a week, I've got a set of prints. Digital camera, you have to go home, load it onto a laptop, process the raw phone, process it, go into Photoshop, twist things, and it slows me down, and it's not how it works. But it's all developed, it's very self-contained, so really the majority of it happens on my phone. Yeah. Editing, cropping, it's all done on the phone. The sun means I don't have to change filters, I don't change the settings either.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Yeah, I know there's a million different settings on an iPhone.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

I'm not interested in that.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

I just I want to know how to goes back to what you said, it's about what you see. Yeah, yeah. Documenting what you see. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

I do photo walks, so we go on uh I'll pick a town and announce I'm doing a walk, and people just come along for a couple of hours and we go for a walk. But often people will bring lots of expensive gear, and it's quite common when you tell them that all I use is a phone, there's a sense of relief, like they're surprised at first, I think, and then for a lot of photographers, there's a sense of relief, like they say, Well, actually, I'm a little bit fed up of using lenses and I'm gonna get one lens out for this, one lens out for that.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

And it's really about what you're and also I guess they can see that you're an artist, you've had exhibitions, you've got published books. Yeah, yeah. You know, you've been featured in all these things, like we said earlier, the Observer Guardian. It's like, oh, yeah, it's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 26:43

I mean, um like you say, relief. The Guardian published some photographs of mine, and they were looking at colour, really, colour and shape, and then the Zine Magazine, which is an architecture magazine, they talked about the post-industrial landscape of the West Midlands. So they're two publications looking at very different aspects how we see things. And I think the term artist is important because I don't really see myself as a photographer. I'm not a trained photographer, but what it's doing is photography is letting me put across these ideas, atmospheres, colours.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

So, do you consider yourself an artist? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, rather than a photographer. Yeah. And you find that easy to say you're an artist?

SPEAKER_03 27:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

And I think we you know people stumble with that.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

People stumble. Yeah, yeah. I've got a friend who did filmmaking as a degree, and he's made films, and he still struggled for years to call himself a filmmaker. And I said to him, we've made a film, haven't you? He said, Oh yeah. So well then you're a filmmaker. You don't need to wait for someone to say you're a filmmaker or get a special certificate.

SPEAKER_01 27:47

I completely agree, Tom, but it's amazing how we put those barriers up to our top.

SPEAKER_02 27:52

Yeah, and I I think the other thing is there's lots of talented people in the black country and the the world, I guess, but who they've got great talents. And they might show one or two people, but don't put it out there because they feel a little bit self-conscious or vulnerable. Vulnerable, yeah, worried about it, which is a shame. Yeah. That's where a pseudonym's brilliant. It's Black Country Tight, is a catch-all for everything I do. But if you look at my Insta, it doesn't say Tom Hick. No. It's just one project, really. You know, it's a project that can be an umbrella for lots of things, and then you can also be a librarian or a dad. I think if you sit on things and don't ever show it to people, it's uh that's fine as well. I think people do personal projects and they never go anywhere. Making for the sake of making, but there's

From Photos To Sculpture Commissions

SPEAKER_02 28:39

something to be shared for sharing. So I do a lot of work with schools and colleges and universities. Is that rewarding? Yeah, it's great, yeah. Because, you know, I I've been there, I've been at school with ideas.

SPEAKER_01 28:51

And I can imagine that's quite interesting, getting the reactions from, say, school kids to someone who's maybe paying to come on a photo walk with you.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

Yeah. I mean, when I was at school, we did art, but it was a very strict curriculum, and the ideas that you got wouldn't be listened to.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

What in the sense that yes, you've got to draw the still life of the fruit bowl, you've got to do one life drawing piece. You've got to do the work had to be markable and had to be accessible. Within parameters. Yeah. Which isn't real creativity, doesn't really flow within parameters, does it?

SPEAKER_02 29:21

But the idea that someone can come in and say, look, this is what I use, the kids have often got or the students at uni have often got better phones than me. Yeah. Guaranteed. They probably know how to use them more than me as well. But the idea that okay, it's liberating, you've got the tool to do it. And same with filmmaking, you can make films on these now.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

When you take all the technicalities like aperture and shutter speed and all those things out of it, it just goes back to what's in front of you and taking the picture, doesn't it? Exactly. There's a purity in that, isn't there? Yeah, I'm guilty of it. I'm like, oh, I need to shoot the F 2.8, so I get beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

Yeah, I mean, we were talking about field and Yeah, I mean, we were talking about photography books now. The last thing I want to know really is unless it's such a strange set of photographs, the last thing I want to know is the camera they used. It's what's the subject matter? What's the subject matter where are they feel? Why did they take it? Yeah. If it's about something, what's it about? Like a lot of photographers, sometimes the best ones really don't really want to explain it. And I don't ever, in my books or exhibition catalogues, really want to tell people what to think about the work. Because I think that's up to them. You know, it's agreed. Because if you start saying this is what it's about.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

You're giving people too many, yeah, too many pointers, aren't you? You want them to interpret how they interpret it. And you don't often know yourself, what makes it interesting.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

Can you say a bit more about that? Yeah, I think sometimes you take a photograph. I'll take a load of photographs on a bike ride, and then I'll get back. And I don't fully understand why I've taken some of them. But then you look a little bit closer, and then you can crop a certain section, and you think, oh yeah, that's the thing that I was interested in that day. Because I don't all automatically look at them on the same day. Is it quite a fast-paced thing for you then? I mean, it can be, but you get hot spots. But you know, so I'll go to a place. There's an area of Cradley Heath that I've been back to a few times, and there's about five separate things in one street that are fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 31:17

And other places you go and I'm gonna hazard a guess as well. I know where that is. Is that like by the Corngreaves Road where all those beautiful coloured industrial

Book Two And Recurring Themes

SPEAKER_01 31:25

estate tops are?

SPEAKER_02 31:26

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

I thought it might be.

SPEAKER_02 31:28

They're great. They remind me of the 1980s and like maybe an optimistic period where they're clearing factories. There's a lovely nostalgia something about your images that but just near there's another section which it's in between two buildings, and there's a huge void, like a drop between these two factories, and it's a really odd space, and that's just around the corner, and then next to that there's like a 60s factory, which is really well thought out. But it's a quite busy road, so if you're driving to there, you wouldn't really you might notice the coloured buildings, but that'd be about it.

SPEAKER_01 32:02

So but there's like little areas you find yourself revisiting these places to see it in a different condition, a different light, a different yeah, over time as well, and things change really quickly as well. So I imagine that because yeah, I suppose you sat there thinking, oh, you can't change that quickly, but things do really change quickly.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

Yeah. There's a photograph of a snooker hall in the first book that you've got, and um that's one of my most well-known images, I think. But if you go past that now, it's been painted over. My photograph's really colourful. It's been painted black, and now it's a warehouse for a supermarket, so it's not what it was, you know. But I often don't also don't realise the amount of nostalgia around a building.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Do you feel like you're in some ways a little bit of a historian documenting the it's becoming like that, I think, because is that a consideration for you, or is it just nope, that's the beautiful image I'm gonna take?

SPEAKER_02 32:50

Yeah, it's normally I mean I like the shape or the design or there's something about the atmosphere of it. It's not really a history project, but I guess the longer I do it, the more it's likely to become that.

SPEAKER_01 33:01

How long have you been doing it now? Um 2017. Yeah, 2017. Nearly 10 years. Yeah. What do you think's been one of the biggest highlights for you during that time? Just exhibiting once was great.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

If you never do it again, it's a great thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

How many times have you exhibited now?

SPEAKER_02 33:16

Quite a lot. The launch of my first book I exhibited in Manchester, which is the first time out of the region. Was it received differently because it was out of the region? I think there's a lot of uh curiosity about first of all, what's the black country? So again, you know, that I've explained it now, or give me giving you a definition.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

But I think people have often heard of it but don't know where it is. With the synergy with the Midlands and Manchester in the big industrial phase, was there did you feel like that connection was there in some?

SPEAKER_02 33:46

I think so, yeah. Um the modernists who are the publisher, they're based in Manchester. So their whole remit is British design and architecture normally. So for them to take an interest in this kind of niche photo project in the black country was fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

How does that something like that come about?

SPEAKER_02 34:04

They've got a magazine, so the Modernist magazine uh comes out every month. I used to buy it, and it's so niche

Moving Image Film With Poetry And Sound

SPEAKER_02 34:12

that it appeals to so many different people, so it's architecture design, photography is part of it, but it's normally to document things rather than like photo projects, but they're increasingly interested in that. And I originally wrote to them to say I'm working on a project with Liz Berry, the poet. So Liz Berry writes poetry about the black country and about people of the black country, and she writes it in dialects as well. Not all of it though, which is the thing that I really like. It's just the odd word. Right. You get a lot of poetry that's written in black country dialect and they're they're humorous, yeah. Almost like limericks or but her work's beautiful and she's really well regarded in poetry circles. But we did this little initial collaboration to see if it would work.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

What, your images or moving images going on on your side of poetry?

SPEAKER_02 35:03

Yeah, Lise was on on Radio Six a few years ago, and like first of all, to hear a black country voice on even now is unusual on Radio Six. At the end of this interview about her first book, she said that she'd like to work with a different art form. And I'd been doing this project about it was becoming a project, I guess, about the black country. And I just emailed her and said, uh, would you consider having a look at what I'm doing? And maybe we could work together somehow. And I think my idea at that point was that the photographs would sit next to her existing work, but what she actually started to do was write poems based on some photographs that I sent her. Oh wow. And I'd never I just didn't expect that at all, and I don't think she did either.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

Did that then give you a different sense of how people view your images? Because someone writing a poem that's based on your image, we've said yes, the images are subjective, but yeah, it did completely, and what was interesting to me was that she'd pick out us maybe a detail in the photograph, and then that would be the launch point for the whole poem.

SPEAKER_02 36:11

So it could be like there's a great one where it's there's a shopping centre near me where the bricks are quite soft and people have written their names in over the years, and they're all boys' names basically. But one of them says Chloe, and she looked at this and she wrote a whole poem about Chloe. Oh wow, she imagined this girl amongst all this kind of chaos and set it on that, and then other ones were like the back of buildings that overlook the canal, all sorts of kind of imagery.

SPEAKER_01 36:42

But she was. Did you allow her to send her to a bunch of images and she just selected the ones that triggered something else? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:49

And what we'd started, we carried on, so I didn't give her any detail other than the place. So it'd be King Swimford, Dudley, Cradley Heath, but not the street or anything like that. So all she had to go on was a general sense of where it was, and I think that helped her process so she could just start from scratch, look at the imagery, and not everyone worked. If I said to 20, she might work on two. But then these poems are coming back and they're beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 37:17

How many did she do? And how did you present that in an exhibition?

SPEAKER_02 37:20

Or well, that's where the modernists came in. So I I said to them that I'm doing this collaboration with Liz, and would you consider featuring it in your magazine? And they they said no, what we'll do is do a small booklet. So they they do small books, they cost about 10 quid, and they'd publish a version of our collaboration. Oh the poems next to the imagery. How did that feel? Great, yeah. Um that was my first real publication, I guess. But Liz also took it to poetry magazines that I'd not really heard of. The Poetry Review is a really well-regarded magazine and it was accepted by them immediately. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

So again, we're in the poetry magazine. And like you say, a different circle coming to view both of your art forms, that cross-pollination.

SPEAKER_02 38:06

Yeah, and then that starts to expand your thinking about other art forms as well, I think.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

So the modernists did the booklet. Yeah, and then but then how does it come that they I'm holding this absolutely beautiful black country type hardback book? Yeah. How does that come about? Because I know that most creatives out there, artists and photographers, we all sort of dream of having our own hardback books. So, same here, yeah. Yeah. And for you, obviously, working in the library for so many years, yeah, you have your own book now, don't you? Is is this book in the library?

SPEAKER_02 38:35

It is, yeah. But I have to say, I didn't buy it for the library, just to be clear about that. One of the other librarians said, Why isn't your book in the library? And they bought it. But what happened was that after the collaboration with Liz was published by The Modernist, a few years later they approached me and said they do four books a year and they'd like to work with me on a book. I just said, Well, that's perfect. I'm in. Yeah. So what it documented the time from the early part of my work to 2023. Yeah. Yeah, again, it seems to roll. With that book, I had the opportunity to revisit what I've been doing. I decided to work with a local designer. Laura John's Ems is a designer from Stairbridge. And I thought it was important to work with somebody locally, although the modernists do their own design, just because it gave me the time to develop it. The design of the cover and the way it looks is my thinking, really. But I'm not a graphic designer.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

But it's perfect because it does. Well, we can share some of this in the show notes, but it simply is type and an empty square with useful colour. Yeah. And then you open it up into these wonderful, mostly, there is a few full-page bleed images in there, but mostly these square images across the whole book. It's that minimal thing across the cover to begin with.

SPEAKER_02 39:54

Yeah, and I think knowing books and going to bookshops as well, if you go to the photography section, normally you're overloaded with normally grey books or black books with a photograph on the cover. So have an interesting conversation with a modernist about not having a photograph on the cover. And I think one of the reasons behind

Future Plans And Cultural Exchange Ideas

SPEAKER_02 40:14

this is that people make their mind up quite quickly. If they look at a photo book and look at the photo on the cover, they just go, Oh, yeah, that's not for me. But you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. So this one, you actually have to open it to see what it's about.

SPEAKER_01 40:27

But again, that's what I was going to say. Because it is so minimal, and there's nothing really to explain what a black country type is also quite vague if you don't know your work. Yeah, you do have to go, what's this about? You don't know it's a photography book, you don't know and I think that's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 40:42

Yeah, yeah, and I've got some examples here as well, and I'll get you to photograph them maybe. But I've got quite a good collection of factory catalogues, so catalogues that advertise businesses in the back country from different time periods. And a lot of them are very no-nonsense, like this. So it's you might get the name of the factory, you'd probably get the address, but not really what they made until you open it up. And I really like it's functional. Again, your inputs, not many people would know that. The typography, obviously, if I'm going to call myself Black Country Type and I photograph letters, then I have to choose the lettering quite carefully.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

And did you um and R about your font quite a lot? Or were you quick? Because for me, I look at it and I go, Oh yeah, that's the font. Yeah, it used to be that fun.

SPEAKER_02 41:28

No, it didn't take long because I think that's the most common font that I'd was photographing at that point. I'd got lots of shop signs and factory signs that were using that same typography. A lot of it was developed for the Festival of Britain, so it was really developed in the 50s. It's known as Egyptian, but sometimes profile. But these signs were still knocking around from like the 50s and 60s on factories, so I was often drawn to that. And it's the same lettering as I've got a photograph of Halezo in swimming pool, and it just got giant letters that say pool. So you know what that building does. So that was the font for me, anyway. And a lot of the decisions around the book were just linking back to the subject matter. So the content of the work influences the thing that carries it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:15

Um the design, the the vessel, shall we say?

SPEAKER_02 42:19

Yeah, does that make sense? Yeah, so it has to link contextually.

SPEAKER_01 42:22

Does that lead us nicely on to book number two? Because we've just been showing me the new colours and the new stuff for the cover, yeah. But contextually they will sit together pretty well, right?

SPEAKER_02 42:32

Yeah, yeah, they should do because they're pretty much the same. Just added the numerals. So the cover is the same, the spine's the same, the whole look of it's the same, but it's just a different colour. The first one was chosen based on one of the images inside of a shop in West Bromwich. The second one is influenced by a couple of things, but there's one particular image of a factory in Tipton, which is a lavender colour, which we wouldn't expect as a factory. No, not at all. So, yeah, but the process I followed the same process.

SPEAKER_01 43:03

I I think um Is it hard for you to select the image? Because obviously there's only a finite number of images you can get in a book. Yeah, you must take a lot of pictures.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

Yeah, that's the thing. The first book was a challenge because I've got a lot of material. I I wanted to include popular images. If an image is popular, normally it develops into a print.

SPEAKER_01 43:23

So how do you gauge its popularity? Is that a social media thing? People asking for it, really. Like, do you do this as a print? Have you got a most popular print, a most popular image? That's a good point. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:33

There's two really one's the subway at Stourbridge railway station. It says, do not rush. And it's almost like a mantra slow down. That's that's a really popular image and has translated into a really popular print. The other one, which uh didn't take long to take in terms of shooting the image, is a sign that's uh pointing towards bumble hole in Hales Owen, but someone's put a sticker over it. And it says bummel.

SPEAKER_01 44:01

Should we sort of explain what bumblehole is as well? It's like it's a very weird sentence to say without some sort of explanation.

SPEAKER_02 44:07

Yeah, bumblehole's an area near the canal in Dudley. Yeah. Um, and it's a very like sleepy kind of area where there's a community of people live there, but there's a boatyard there, and it the landscape there is really uh it's like going back in time.

SPEAKER_01 44:21

Yeah,

Closing Quote, Guest Picks, And Outro

SPEAKER_01 44:22

some of the new Peaky Blinders stuff was shot there recently, wasn't it? And stuff. So but yeah, that again that humour element comes in. So that's been one of your most popular bumhole. Bumhole, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:32

It's interesting when you uh shops sell it and I have to invoice them for it and have to write bumhole on the invoice. That's kind of a one shop was saying they got their auditor in, they look at their stock and they have to explain what's quite a big gallery, wasn't it? It was the icon, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, and they were talking about referring to the bumhole, but you know it's all out there, isn't it? Um so those two quite popular. You never know, and it's just sometimes something really resonates with people. Other times I think I've taken a lot of care with something and maybe just slides past people to it, but it doesn't really matter.

SPEAKER_01 45:05

It's just how it isn't. And when you say stuff resonates with people, you've noticed that in your social media as well, haven't you? You've got quite the following now for your work as well. Gradually built up, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:16

Was it gradual? There wasn't one big epiphany moment where I don't know the modernists shared something, or some of the big accounts shared something and sort of Yeah, gradual, I'd say.

SPEAKER_02 45:25

I think some of the um publications that have covered my work, that does attract a lot of attention. So Puck magazine, mainly youth culture, really. That's sort of quite a big spike in interest, and it's really well written article. Yeah, that's where the journalists came on a walk with me, and we just explored like we do in Bible experience. Yeah, we took some photographs on that walk as well. But he really got to the heart of what I was about, I think. But it's a very popular magazine as well, so yeah. That can help. Word of mouth is great. A lot of people now as well, it's a nice byproduct, but people will send me photographs, so they'll send me a map often with a pin in it, saying you need to check this out. It's a Volkswagen Beetle upside down on top of a truck. Oh, brilliant. Yeah, so it's almost like having uh a scouting network now as well.

SPEAKER_01 46:12

But that's purely because you've built a community of people who are interested in what you're doing, right?

SPEAKER_02 46:16

Yeah, I think so, yeah. Yeah, but and people tag me in a lot as well now, which is really nice. Yeah, that's cool. It's a black country type kind of day, and then you'll see a shot of a blue sky with a factory and it yeah, if nothing else, if somebody associates you with a particular style, I think that's that's a great thing. Crossing over in that yeah, in some ways is difficult, isn't it? But it's just really nice. And I encourage people to tag me in when we do walks, so see their version of the of what they've seen.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

What's the most interesting thing you see on these photo walks when you are working with other people? So I imagine most of the time it's just you, you bike, and you're running around the place.

SPEAKER_02 46:51

Yeah, people are I've been asked into places, which is really interesting. So I was I took some photographs at there's like the Angle Ring factory in Tipter. So if you go past it, there's a giant globe on the on the outside of the wall, and they've got a huge span of metal there. They worked on Wembley. Wow. So the the arch at Wembley. But I rang the buzzer because I thought I can't just go into their forecourt and start taking photographs. And I eventually got a tour at the factory the same day. Really? They just came down and said, What are you up to then? And I showed them what I was doing. And I had a factory tour without no appointment. Um and that's common. People just want to show you what once they've got over the novelty of someone being on their land and interested, you'll you'll get like guided tours. So I've been around a brewery. I photographed the inside of Banks' brewery, which is a fascinating place. I got shown around a church, they'd got like this old part of the church, which was a playground, but it was disused, so it was quite, I guess, melancholic. Yeah. And there's an old mural that obviously like the youth group had painted. And I was taking a photograph of it, and the church warden came out, and in 10 minutes' time, I'm having a look around the entire church. So people are really welcoming and quite proud of what they do as well. Same with factories, they'll show you their methods of making stuff and all that because eventually I might end up going back there and getting something made there. Yeah. So, like, I did a sculpture in Hale Zone, and that that was all made locally. What was the sculpture of? It was based on one of my photographs.

SPEAKER_01 48:19

Had you ever thought about doing sculpture before?

SPEAKER_02 48:21

No.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

Again, these opportunities that you've just opened up.

SPEAKER_02 48:25

Yeah. And I think that's where the term artist is more open. So I think if you just describe yourself as a photographer, it can limit people's perception of what you actually do. And so I can definitely relate to that. Yeah, yeah. It was Transport for West Midlands, an icon gallery, and Transport for West Midlands wanted to create an artwork next to a new cycle hub initiative that they're doing. So at first I thought, well, this is probably because I cycle when I take my photographs. But they just said we've got some space to make an artwork. It could be one of your photographs. But I thought it might be more interesting to make something. So what did that look like?

SPEAKER_01 49:01

How do you what does the sculpture look like that you've based off one of your photographs? Yeah, so this might be tricky on a podcast.

SPEAKER_02 49:09

Yeah, yeah, but we can link to it. Yeah, we can definitely share. We can demonstrate it. So I think the easiest thing for me to have done was I could have had a photograph put on metal or reproduced in a poster frame, and that would have been my contribution, I guess. But what I thought I'd do is explore Hale Zoein, which is where it's based, look at the environment there, and I've started off by photographing some of the shop signs. There's some really old school shops there. One called Dancers, which has closed now, but that had been there for forever. Yeah. Suites suits, school uniforms, dance gear, pea kits, all that sort of stuff. There's a carpet shop, just called carpets. What more do you need? Yeah, it says exactly what it does. Well, the typography was fantastic, it was from the 60s. I went in there and spoke to the guy and he was baffled. But I explained that it's research for an art project. When you say that, people are either roll their eyes or look blank, or they're really interested. They're the kind of reactions you get, but they just go, Yeah, carry on.

SPEAKER_01 50:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:13

Because if you've got a sign outside, then typically people want you to look at it. So but I'd also done some walks in the car park there, and they've got like arrows, arrow signals that are pointing towards different levels. So I I was just recording sort of the visual landscape, and I thought it'd be interesting to abstract one of my photographs. So there's a photograph taken in Albury, so it's nothing to do with Hell Zoeing, but it's in the book, actually. I think it's quite a minimal photograph of a bingo hall. So it's called Lollipop, if you buy it as a print. So it's got a street lamp in front of a factory, and the factory's pink and cream, which you don't expect really in Albury. And the sky's blue. When I took that photograph, it automatically looked like a print to me, or like a screen print almost. So I thought what I could do is abstract that photograph and turn it into something. Yeah, so I abstracted that, those are the colours, and then had some shapes cut into metal, and the shapes are based on things I'd seen in the region as well. So circles, grids. How was that as a process to make a sculpture?

SPEAKER_01 51:22

Interesting, yeah. I mean, I drew it in a sketchbook. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. And then what, you have to take that sketch to a fabricator, presume.

SPEAKER_02 51:29

Yeah, yeah. And then the fabricator said, Well, you can't work from your sketchbook, you need to have it turned into a CAD drawing first. I know a product designer via the uni, Chrissy, and she looked at my drawing and then we worked on it, first of all, in a basic CAD format. But before we did that, we drew it in full scale.

SPEAKER_03 51:48

Oh right.

SPEAKER_02 51:48

Because of circles on it, I used uh protractors, drew the whole thing in full scale just to see would it work, what's it gonna look like when it's ten foot tall, and then we went back to CAD, drew it, and had it laser cut. Wow. And all the colours were matched to the photograph. So pink's an unusual colour for a lot of powder coaters. Yeah. Cream and blue, and blue was the represented the sky. Oh yeah. Yeah, so going from a photograph to 3D was a new thing, and the other thing I wanted to do was represent those letters that I was talking about, so I had them engraved it on the metal. I found a factory in Cosley that could do it to a to the right standard. So I didn't know what I was doing really, but it all assembled into one thing.

SPEAKER_01 52:34

So what an experience. Yeah, yeah. You haven't really had a plan, it's just all sort of developed. Snowballed or evolved. Yeah, we're now on to book two, as we've said. What makes book two different to book one, do you think?

SPEAKER_02 52:49

I think you can see there's elements of the first, so there'll be similar similar approaches, I think, to the first, but there's also I think a move away from certain things, so there's not as many shop fronts. There's a lot about materials, smaller details. I think this idea of hotspots, I think sometimes you can focus on one doorway. That can be a series of three images. So there's that kind of thing where I like something so much, I'm gonna give three three photographs over to it. There's a few bits about misconception, so there's a sign that says black country, but actually the background is all green. Okay, yeah. It's like trees, woodland, and a church, and that's not really what the black country is, but that's in Neterton, which is in the heart of an industrial area. There's still the focus on words and double meanings, humour. So it's a mixture of there's bumhole in there. Bumholes in there, definitely. Glad bumhole made the second book. There, that that's got its own page with with nothing facing it as well. There's dog arse as well, which is Dog Arse. Dog arse, which is a new phrase on me, but now it's in the vernacular, I think. The modernists were using that to promote the book, so we'll see. Yeah, that goes. Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_01 54:06

Who could resist dog arse? Who could resist dog ass? Yeah. But not only a book, you've moved into a bit of moving image. Yeah. How does that work? Bearing in mind your stills are sound stupid, but still. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:21

So the there's a project called The Space, which is run ultimately by the BBC, and it was encouraging people to create digital art. Normally filmmaking, really. And I'd done some bits of experimenting where I'd photograph a building and then I'd also video it and just let it run. Just locked off and let the sound and the clouds move, yeah, whatever happened. The only way I could do that really was hold it by hand or put it on the seat of my bike. So this is again, this is my entry into film, low level, don't really know what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_01 54:55

Don't need a gimbal or any steadiness.

SPEAKER_02 54:56

No, no, no, no, that's gyroscopes or anything like that business. But this call came out from the space, and they said, if you're interested in making a short film, we're offering this scheme where we hook you up with a mentor who's made a film and you can have a chat to them. And so I just said, yeah, I'll I'll put in this expression of interest. And the idea really was to make a moving version of the book or of black country type. And it was originally going to be individual shots like a book. So as you go through a book, you look at one image, then you look at the next. It was going to be locked-off shots, so shots of places in the black country where the only movement really would be the clouds or a bird, or maybe water, yeah, if it's by the canal. But I didn't even have water as such, I'd maybe have the reflection of water.

SPEAKER_01 55:43

Would you incorporate the sounds of that region as well, or was it slightly different to that?

SPEAKER_02 55:48

Yeah, well, I kind of knew that the sound on these wouldn't be very good, and we haven't got these microphones even. I didn't have a microphone. But I'd got this idea of having the footage filmed across the black country, but also having a soundscape that it was of the black country, but not specific to those places, so it's like a collage. Yeah. But eventually I I approached Liz Berry as well. So the poet. Yeah, the poet, yeah. I'd filmed a load of sequences and I said, I'll send it to you. Do you think you could write a poem or just say a few words that could be interspersed with sound? But again, she went away and wrote a whole poem based on one particular scene in the film. There's a shot where it's uh a jet plane going between two blocks of flats, and she saw that as an angel falling, because the way you view it, it actually looks like it's falling rather than moving across the sky. And she wrote this entire poem about an angel moving across the black country. So that became the soundtrack, really. We still had a soundtrack, but it was it was with a guy called Rob Glover, who I've known for a while but never been able to work with him, or never had the opportunity to work with him. But he recorded some ambient sound across the region, dogs barking, factory noise, traffic. I mean, obviously traffic's always a background noise, birds. When he heard Liz's poem, he said, What I'll do is I'm gonna play this down a little bit so it's gonna be audible but not over bare the poem. Yeah, it's not drowning out Lizzy's words. And uh so yeah, it was assembled. Uh my friend is an editor, he's from Birmingham, Alex Croton. He teaches film and he's a filmmaker. He's produced films, and I just said, Could you help me with editing? Because I didn't know what I was doing. I'd done some like tutorials on how to edit using iPhone software, and I could have done that, I think. But I think because there was a budget, I was able to pay people to come in and develop. Oh, it was that actual commission? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I didn't realise, to be honest. It was about three months in until I realised there was a budget. I thought it was just like you chat with a mentor, Sarah, she was fantastic. But there's some great aspects of it. So early on, she said, like, the footage is great, I love what you're doing, but the camera isn't high resin off. So I had to upgrade my phone so it could do the the correct level of ultimately the idea was to show it at Cinemas or Oh wow. Yeah, and it has been. It's been shown at Flatpak Festival. Incredible. So it's a five it's like a five-minute film about it's basically a moving version of the of Black Country Type. Is that something you'd like to do more of?

SPEAKER_01 58:28

Yeah, more moving image stuff. Definitely and you find you look at things differently when it's moving image rather than still image.

SPEAKER_02 58:36

Yeah, it's a different experience, but ultimately the the photographs that move, it's that's not film, isn't it, really? But I heard somebody say that because I'd I'd got an exhibition at BCU in Birmingham. So it's Birmingham City University, and they said you can show prints, objects, so I'd got early versions of the sculpture in that exhibition. But also there's a screen, so I showed raw footage with no sound, and a lot of people really drawn to the moving image. The common comment was, yeah, I can't work it out, it's like your photographs, but things are moving in there. Yeah, that's video, but so it was a great sign that it was going in the right direction. It became quite uh an optimistic and cheery kind of film, really. The poetry is beautiful as usual. She's just got such a great way of and uh the speaking voice as well is lovely. It's it's in Black Country, but it's quite mesmeric as well. It became quite an uplifting film, but I think there's also you could go to another set of locations and it could be quite a dystopian, kind of a dark kind of film. I'm also thinking of filming at night, so I've got a lot of photos photographs that are taken at night, and I've never really done anything with them, so could be an offshoot. Yeah. But I think depending on say if I collaborate with Rob Glover on the sound on this one, and say, look, the sound's all yours on this, I think that would be a different kind of film. So I think there's a lot of scope for it. It's just fitting in between everything else I'm working on, I guess. Yeah, you've really got no problem with this whole idea of being an artist, do you? I think it's just something you've got to um something to embrace really, and just say, look, it's ways of expressing things, and if people want to see it, why not show them?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:21

But there's no sort of imposterism, oh I shouldn't be doing this, or nah. I mean, uh it's that's a rarity, Tom. I mean that, and that's from even people that have exhibited at Royal Academy summer shows and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:34

Um I think it goes back to that thing that if you're working on something, you can either keep it to yourself or you can show others. And think once you say, I'll show others, what why hold it back, I guess. Um I freely admit, like when I'm working on say a sculpture, I will say to the people who commissioned it, I've never done this before, so we're gonna have to see how this goes. But I think, say, with my early kind of experiments with photography, I didn't really know how to edit. I didn't know how to crop. I didn't know you could have a square set in iPhone, which is why I was going into Microsoft Paint and cropping off the page. You know, this is the level I was at.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:13

Do you think that almost naivety was a godsend in some ways?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:16

It's like I think there's something good about not knowing exactly how to do things. So I sequenced that book eventually, the first book, after a long conversation with John Myers, who's a really well-established photographer, but I didn't really realise that he'd laid out books for other people. Oh, okay. So he sat with me for an afternoon and we looked at my photographs, photographs in books, the layouts of books, because I'd got an early draft. So at the moment every page is a square, and it would be quite tiring to go through every page, they're all squares. You need to pace it, what's the story? Is there a reason why this one's here? Why not have some white space in it? If an image is strong enough, it doesn't have to have a an image opposite. So I was learning on the on the job, and that's all I do with all everything, really, is just think about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:13

Openness with you to just learn more and almost, in a sense, be a bit vulnerable in that and go, it's fine, I don't know it, because I'm just gonna be honest and say I don't know it.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:21

Yeah, I think sculpture was a challenging one, I think, because there is that thing that it's out there in the public. It's not like a book where people don't like it. You're not walking around showing it to people, but I was reading, I forget who it was, but another sculptor who he said once it's out there, it belongs to everybody anyway. So you've got to go for it, show it. If people don't like it, they can look at something else, which they can't.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:47

That's a great philosophy, isn't it? And I think one that a lot of artists and creatives should try and adopt a bit more because I think there is imposterism, vulnerability, fear of putting ourselves out there.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:59

I think the imposter thing is my friend Dean Kellen exhibited at Icon and his show is called imposter syndrome. Really? Yeah, because he he said that he's almost waiting for someone to say, Yeah, you're not very good at this.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:12

It's interesting as well, isn't it? And I do this a lot, and funnily enough, I've said this on the last podcast. Someone said it to me once, and I've realized it's not a syndrome, yeah. It's just humans being humans, doing something new, confidence, doing something they've never done before, yeah, but feeling like an imposter. Yeah, I guess it's something to do with you call it a syndrome, and everyone thinks you've got some condition, but it's just the human condition, unfortunately. Yeah, I mean it can be cultural. I think going back to what we said about Midlanders, yeah, confidence country, confidence, being self-deprecated.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:44

Yeah, what people are confident in are the things they make. The industrial heritage of this area, people are proud of what they've made. They're working to such a high level.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:54

And is that an attitude you you wish more creatives would take on? The industrial industry be proud of what you've made.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:00

Yeah. But even people who are craftsmen, they they often don't really talk about their work. It's there, it's self-evident, you know. Just do. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:09

The art's in the doing.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:10

Yeah. But who's to say that your work's no good? There's only you, really. Yeah. If another person doesn't like it or has got opinions on it, they can express it, but it's really down to you.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:25

Doesn't affect the worth of the art or the artist. It's just a great thing you've done it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:29

Isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:30

Which is probably what people do. Oh, if that person doesn't like it, that means my self-worth is nothing. Yeah. Which is dangerous.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:38

I think uh like social media is not good for that. People often assume that if there's no likes on it, that people don't like it. A lot of people look at stuff but don't take that step. Yeah. A lot of people don't like stuff because they don't they feel oh I might have to interact with that person now, and I don't want to do that. I just want to look at their work. I like it. It's a strange old world social media, isn't it? It is, and it I see it as one one outlet. So I've got a website which seems a bit antiquated, but that's viewed by people who galleries and places like that will look at look at that because it and they've got a genuine interest, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:14

People go in and research the people, they've got a genuine you know, social media. You can see an image go, oh that's really cool, colourful, scroll past.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:20

Yeah, but I think it's there are different ways to overcome the confidence, I think. One is to just say, Look, I've I'm making this, I like it, and I'm gonna put it out there. If I like it, other people will like it. They're guaranteed there's gonna be someone in the big world who who likes what you're doing. You can use a pseudonym, which I didn't do that for that reason, but I just thought it was a good catch-all. It was in the black country. Uh lettering was the thing, which is type, so I just gave it the account that name. But it And it does take the pressure off you, doesn't it? Yeah. But it really works, and I think I work with schools and colleges. Even like university level students often don't really want to share their work, but you can do it, but you just don't have to put your name on it. And that's where social media is good. Just have a random account named. Yeah, yeah. If it's memorable, it's good. I mean, there wasn't many with a black country in it, I I guess. And if you Google it, it it's helpful, I think. Yeah. Artist black country. But I think the pseudonym then takes that pressure off you if you feel vulnerable about saying this is my work. You don't have to say it's great. You know, I never say, look at this picture I took, it's fantastic. But the hashtags were the thing that sometimes gave a clue to what I was thinking, but I wouldn't have a description saying I took this in Cradley Heath. I like this because I like this bit in the corner that's pink. There's no need to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:48

I think as artists and creators, maybe we try and justify our work or explain it because again, yeah, we're worried about what people think about it or how they're going to interpret it.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:59

I think it some things can help you once you're moving along and it's not being too random. Like I mentioned, night shots. If I had a night shot, then a picture of a person, then a an object, and you know, if I was shooting from one theme to another, I think that's where I find it I struggle with profiles where you're trying to work out what's this person about. So for me, like a consistency, I only post once a week, yeah. Unless there's something going on, like an exhibition or a one-off event that I want to promote or whatever. But I normally post on a Saturday morning.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:34

And how often are you out? I mean, does it depend on weather conditions? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:38

Blue skies, what sort of yeah, when I can really. I mean, you know, I work still, I'm working on projects. Interestingly, I I thought there'd be a lot of time leading up to the new book where I'll be out in the because you get great cold winter's days with the sun out and it's just been awful. It's been raining non-stop. So it's sporadic, really. Yeah, but there's no set schedule of when I'm gonna go out or still doing it for the joy and when you feel it, you feel it, and when you don't, you know. And if you've got two days of sun coming up, I'll keep an eye on it and I will go out. But how many weather apps have you got? Yeah, weirdly, that the BBC app always seems to have a nicer slant on it than the iPhone one. So I look at that one, but fair enough. I mean, the best thing to do is look out the window, isn't it? Really?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:19

Yeah, true. Yeah, yeah. And what's coming up next for you, Tom? What's future sort of plans? I know there's more talk of future exhibitions and collaborations and things, right? Yeah, yeah. Obviously, book two is coming up. Hopefully, that should be out or nearly out by the time we release this podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:35

Yeah, the book's at the printers at the moment, so that's out in early May. Um, that's gonna be launched at Icon Gallery. They're really supportive of my work, so they're gonna host the launch of that. I've been commissioned to work on an artwork for the new Dudley Interchange, which is a bus station and tram station. What another sort of sculptural piece. Yeah. Oh, wicked. So they've floored the old bus station and they're building a like a brand new structure and it they're bringing the tram in from Briley Hill into Dudley, and then it goes from there to Wednesbury into into you can then connect to Birmingham and Worthampton. So it's quite a big thing, I think, to for transport. But yeah, they've commissioned.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:15

Is that gonna be something similar to the piece you did before? Or is it something different? Different, different.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:19

Yeah, yeah. Type's gonna be involved, I think, like letter forms maybe, but uh yeah, so that's in development. Yeah, so that's gonna be developed and then launched in October. Very cool. Yeah, I'll be working on that steadily, going into the archives probably in Dudley and having a look at some. I'm thinking about looking at some of the big institutions in Dudley and old buildings that have gone, current scenes, and maybe amalgamating it into something like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:46

What about any other future goals? Have you got any goals for yourself? Or are you just riding the wave and the opportunities arising, or are you actively seeking out I want to do this?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:57

I think there's some things long term I'd love to do, and I think one would be to maybe apply the approach of black country type to other cities, maybe go to even like to Europe, Amsterdam, places like that, like Belgium, where the typography was treated seriously. Yeah, and there's still lots of like remnants of that. People would say to me a lot, you should go to Berlin. I get a lot of that. Oh, you should go there, you'd love it there. My friend's from King Clinford, but he eventually moved to New York and he he said New York would just be right up the street, there's a lot of streets. But yeah. So I think maybe doing some kind of offshoot where it's globalizing, yeah, or European cities or something like that. But you've got to you know, you've got to think about it. The other long-term project I've been thinking about is there's actually a black country in Belgium.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:46

Really?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:46

Yeah, it's a whole region, and it's known as the black country for the same reason as our black country. Oh wow. Yeah, so it's centres on places like Charleroi, and they have the coal mining industry, glass, they've got their own glass museum. Oh wow, so still I don't think anyone's really done some kind of cultural exchange where we like introduced like museums and galleries, for example, in those two regions and brought them together. I know there's photographers who work in the the Belgian black country, the pays no article, and some of the scenery it could be over here.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:23

Really?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:23

Yeah, yeah. And there's a museum of photography there, so it's a very like esteemed institution there. So that could be interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:32

So would you consider that to be like your first one simply because of the black country nature?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:38

I think that would make sense, wouldn't it? Be like a no-brainer. So these two places called the black country for the same reason. I think they were in competition at at some points for steel as well, but they've got a really interesting approach to landscape there. So they've got these giant mounds, which were they're basically slag heaps, so you know the byproducts of industry. And they're like mountains, some of them. I think there's talk in the 90s about raiding these slag heaps for coal again. And the local people said, no, these are these are nature reserves now, but there are industry as well, so there are industrial landscapes, they're protected. It's just mad that there's a black country in another part of the world. That's so interesting. Yeah. But my overall idea was to the overall idea was to maybe look at a few links between the two regions, and maybe if there's painters over there, we could link up with painters here, photographers, collaboration, yeah, poets, a cultural exchange.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:33

It's a shame we've left Europe because I think there would have been some funding for that. But yeah, I'm thinking of other ways to do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:38

So that long. But that's now also become again with these opportunities that are rising, you've been doing more curation, haven't you?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:45

Yeah, yeah. I have curated, but it was uh an exhibition about psychedelic art.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:51

Oh, so okay. I should do it. Uh in my research, it it said curator as well. So that was it. Yeah, psychedelic art.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:59

Yeah, so there's an exhibition at Wolhampton art gallery about psychedelic art. It was the influence of psychedelia. It was like something that came out Victorian period, really, but obviously exploded in the 60s. Uh yeah, I curated an exhibition with one of the academics at the university, Jane Webb, and we looked at sort of cultural influences, literature. Aubrey Beardsley, you know, the illustrator, his kind of early work then influenced people in the 60s, typography. We managed to get a full set of the Beatles portraits by Avadon. I don't think you've seen those. They're they're they're psychedelic in in themselves. But a guy lent to stuff from Yellow Submarine.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:41

Really?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:41

Yeah. But that was like complete, almost like a complete offshoot.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:44

But was that as a result of you doing what you're doing? They asked you to get involved with that, or was that because of your links with the library? Yeah. But then but another amazing experience and skill to have, which must have then probably helped you a little bit in curating some of your own stuff, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:01

Yeah. In terms of future exhibitions, I'm currently working on a collaboration with Claire Bookerfield. What does Claire do? Well, share a studio with Claire, but Claire draws similar scenery to the areas that I photograph, I guess. So it overlooked buildings, doorways, industrial units.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:23

It's all quite minimal, and she does it with more it's not drawing as such, isn't it? She's using sort of industrial tape and collage and well, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:31

I mean, I I always understood for years that drawing was really with a pencil. But obviously, paint can be drawing. Yeah. So you can use paint, but she uses her drawing method is to draw using tape. So it's industrial safety tape. It's often like used by electricians, but also if you see a band play, the cables on the stage are taped down with this really brightly coloured tape so people don't trip over the wires. So it's got an industrial feel to it, but she draws using that, and she looks at buildings and then abstracts them, and she's got a fantastic understanding of colour. So there is that beautiful crossover between the two of your work. And I think there's a there's also a crossover in terms of influence. So I think I see I look for structures that she would draw, but also the her understanding of colour is is really advanced, I think. So I often look for colour combos in buildings. Um the idea is that we're gonna collaborate, produce a joint exhibition. Some of it will be our own works separately, then there'll be some joint works, and that's gonna be on Warsaw Art Gallery.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:38

Amazing, yeah. So that's very cool because the two of you combined will be it's not gonna be a dull exhibition, is it? So much colour.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:46

Yeah, and I think what partly what we're both doing is focusing on the area, but also I guess elevating it. So a lot of my images people think it's Cuba or Spain. Because of the colour, yeah, yeah. But you know, people often do say that thing, is it always sunny where you are? I think, well, not really, but the colour is a real thread through what I do, and of course, obviously with Claire's work as well. So us coming together and creating some works about the atmosphere of that country is really interesting, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:13

Amazing, yeah. Well, I mean, we've spoken about a lot of stuff, Tom. Yeah, we do have a closing tradition on the Creative Noah Land podcast where we ask you to give us some sort of quote that resonates with you, but also sounds like you might have a few people in your network, but also a future guest in your world that you think might be an interesting guest to come on the Creative Noel Land podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:35

In any order you like.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:36

Well, I've always liked the phrase it's not where you're from, it's where you're at. Which is I always heard that on Eric B and Rakeem, they wrote a song. I've always thought that's a a great thing. Ian Brown from the Stone Roses used to say it quite a lot as well. It's not where you're from, it's where you're at. So I like that. It's that thing about the environment you grow up in doesn't have to kind of influence define you. Yeah, it doesn't have to define you or hold your back even. Would you say more mindset takes over? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's also about how you greet others and how you relate to others and don't judge them based on what you perceive their background as.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:11

Having some empathy around other people. We're all living this life and no one really knows what the other person or human has gone through.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:18

Yeah, exactly. And the idea of confidence, I think you know, you might get people from quite an affluent background who seem confident but underneath they're not. Or you might meet people who've had a really rough background in terms of conditions, but they've got a lot, a lot going for them, uh, a lot of talent.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:36

Do you have any advice for artists and creatives to build their confidence?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:41

I think looking at others, uh, looking at the backgrounds to successful artists, I'm not saying that I'm in that bracket, but reading people's life stories and backgrounds, there's a lot of luck involved. The term artwork, I think, is important because it is work. If you want to actually move on with stuff, you do have to work at it unless I don't I think even someone like Leonardo da Vinci, who's who is probably an absolute genius. It wasn't luck, really. I think he was born with something that other people don't have, but he also worked.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:13

So you have to work at it. We say on that the magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding. Yeah, definitely. Which has been said on the podcast before, so I think that sort of sits with that as well, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:18:23

And that's why I guess my work at the university in terms of research, I think it's key because it the inputs. Going back to the original comments, it's the amount of inputs that you've had, seeing how other people work and appreciating how they got there is really important. David Bowie's always talked about as somebody who's very inspirational to others, but he went through so many phases before he actually got anywhere, but he kept going. He tried one style, he'd be maybe too far advanced for people to get, or some of it just didn't come across. I mean, he had a mind period which didn't quite work for him, but yeah, but he worked at it.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:01

Yeah, got some Barry links to the podcast as well. So one of the previous guests, Tim Brett Day, he's photographed David Barry. So there's but that commitment to what what you're doing, I think, is important. Yeah. I think people need that little bit of reassurance from people what the podcast is, hearing the stories of others from going, wow, take a bit of confidence in that.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:20

Yeah, like when I talked about the sculpture, I didn't really know what I was doing, but I eventually started reading about other people. Eduardo Paolozzi moved his family to Ipswich to be near a foundry that made stuff out of metal, and he'd work with the welders there and the fabricators to understand how it worked. And he didn't see it as him being the artist, he saw their work as equal to his work because until he saw what they were doing, he didn't know that you could make something in that style, so it was a collaboration, yeah. So it's that thing like the people who say that they're behind everything, that you know they're a genius and they're just landed from space with no help. Yeah, yeah. It's nonsense, isn't it? It definitely is. We've all got people behind us. This idea of cropping using Microsoft Paint and originally trying to put stuff up with Blue Tac on a wall. I would have done that until somebody said, Tom, why don't you think about this? Getting advice from people and being open to it, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean sending images to people, I didn't know how to do that until somebody said, Have you heard of weed transfer? And they showed me how to do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:30

Yeah, it's mad, isn't it? Yeah, and do you think that is important? External voices coming in.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:34

Yeah, yeah, because I think a lot of people like to work solo, and if they've got like a very strong training, they probably don't really need much help from others. But even down to like my prints, they would develop with the printer. We went through about five different types of paper. We had conversations about how I like it to be finished. What reproduces the best colour, yeah, which printer to use, and yeah, he's got printers that he uses for takeaway menus. He doesn't really work with fine artists, but he knows his business well enough to yeah, and he he got the stock of paper in for me, he works with you know going in and not knowing and listening and and learning, I think is it's all part of it. Great advice.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:14

Yeah, yeah. So come on then, Tom. I think we might have a few, but any future guests in your network that you can think of. And we're open to name a few if you have, because it sounds like your network is quite vast.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:24

Yeah. There's a few people, I think uh there's Baglord, who's a painter based in Wolverhampton. He's a fantastic painter. I really like his take on um everyday life, street scenes. He's got a great sense of humour. He set up his own university, his own art school. He was handing out PhDs. Yeah, I've got a PhD from his art school. Have you? Yeah. Amazing. I'll have to look into that. He's very talented, really talented guy. Whether he'll come on, I don't know. We can ask.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:57

But that's someone in your network that we could contact.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:59

Yeah, yeah. Um Adep Campbell. Okay. She's working in Bargello, which is I don't want to do her a disservice, but it's for me, it's a form of embroidery, but it she's using it in a fine art context. She looks at pattern buildings again and then translates them into bargello, which is embroidered works. Tapestry, yeah. Okay. They're used in tapestries. I mean, I think she's just about to work in a stately home. Oh wow. And respond to the tapestries and the atmosphere of a stately home, but she's also done stuff on railway bridges in Digbus. So interesting. Yeah, so her work's great. She's really talented, so she might be worth speaking. Great. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:40

Well, there's a couple weeks in photography-wise, there's let's go for it.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:45

So there's Jim Parks, who is known as Jimmy Jimmy WLV.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:50

Jimmy Jimmy W L V, I don't remember.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:52

Wolverhampton, yeah. He photographs different regions of Wolverhampton, but also the Black Country. His approaches he does almost like studies of streets, so he'll have one view and then he'll the next image will be a slightly different take on it. But he's very methodical. Okay. Really beautiful work. So he might he might be operating.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:12

Well, there's a few there that we can definitely try and tap into and see if we can get on for future episodes. Is there anything else, Tom, that we should have spoken about that we haven't?

SPEAKER_02 1:23:22

I guess the only other thing that we probably didn't pick up on was influences, but that varies for me. It could be graphic designers. I mean, a lot of my kind of sensibility was looked at was developed, yeah, I guess, looking at record covers. So graphic designers are kind of one area. And then what I found interesting is people have suggested photographers to me as I've gone along. So such as uh so there's Lewis Pauls, a student, said you should have a look at his work. It reminds me of yours, which should be the other way around, shouldn't it? Your work reminds me of his. He was operating in the 70s in America, black and white as well. But his work is uh strangely, some of it it could be like a wall in in Warsaw, but it's all black and white, and the studies have quite that's quite banal stuff, I guess. Uh but in a good way. But he was part of the new topographics movement. But other things that come to the fore George Shaw, the painter, I don't know if you've seen his work. So George Shaw painted Tile Hill in Coventry, which is like a housing estate, but that's where he was from. And the way he looked at the landscape he's from, he's really liberating it. Sort of when I first saw his paintings, I thought this makes my environment fair game for photography, I think. So he'd photographed places like dischues, pumps, right, garages, yeah, yeah. Those strange kind of edgelands between housing estates where it's a bit of greenery with a well-worn path, but he'd paint them in oil paint. I really like his work. Photography-wise, like I say, people recommended things, or I'd stumble across something like why don't I know about this? So Peter Mitchell is a great photographer from Leeds, and he has been photographing Leeds and the streets and factories around Leeds forever, really. So there's a book called Early Sunday Morning, which I came across. And John Myers, you know, John Myers taught at Wolverhampton Uni.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:24

I think we'd probably need another podcast if we were going to go into all of your e-books, Tom, bearing in mind your history as an art librarian as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:29

Yeah, so there's so many, but I think it's uh what what photography has let me do is synthesize all these things, I guess, bring it all together.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:38

Seems like a perfect place for us to bring all of this together, then, mate. Yeah, no worries. Thank you so much for doing the Creative Nobelland podcast. Um pleasure. We will direct everyone to the new book, the old book, the social media, any future stuff that you're doing. Thank you very much. You've been super inspired by it. Yeah. Cheers. Thanks for listening to the Creative Nobeland podcast. If you found anything in this episode useful or inspiring, please consider subscribing or sharing it with a friend. You can also help the podcast by clicking the support the show link in the show notes or by grabbing yourself something from the Creative Nobeland shop. And here's the bonus. When you join the community through our website, you'll get a special discount code that gives you free shipping on all orders. So, before you buy anything, be sure to join the community. Every bit of support helps us keep sharing these inspiring stories. So, thanks again for listening, and until next time, explore, inspire, and create.