Is this the first time you have embarked on such a piece of work?

My original graphic art tribute was to a Leeds lady called Florence Baldwin. It celebrated all the days of the longest living lady from Leeds. Each cross was individually coloured to represent one day of her 114 years which equated to 41,677 days. I was fortunate to get it shown at both a Woolgather Art Prize and a TestSpace pop up art exhibitions in Leeds.

The Jimmy tribute is in the same vein and the banner shown is a work in progress of the final piece which I’m currently looking in to how best to print in gold and flouro pink.

For those who like small print the digital cross process has come over a culmination of years mixing my love of graphics, art and mathmatical grid structures. Initially it started as a process that I coined ‘Concatenativism’ where I deconstructed images into block colours. The idea being the world is so fast now that people dismiss the amount of colour that enters there life. It gives the observer the chance to slow down and truly take in the pallette that creates the frame they are witnessing. One example of this which I’m up for one day is deconstructing visually the brickwork of a house and arrange the bricks in order of hues and in a sense build a house in a defragged state according to the blocks of red colours. Through talking to people I was amazed to find out that to create the visual median aesthetic of houses that bricks are put in to around six piles and then bricks are randomly taken from each pile to ensure no one hue takes predominance. I like stuff like that.

Moving on from this theory it evolved to www.stitch-up.com where I realised using a few graphic packages I use daily, and the addition of some simplistic mathmatics, that I can create largescale graphic based art pieces from small images. I’m hoping to focus on this venture more so in 2012.

What other stuff do you do when not making lots of crosses?

There’s a theme here already on dreaming… Many hours are spent in my ‘boxroom’ upstairs concocting new ideas, there’s a ‘few’ of them at my Facebook page I’ve learnt a lot over the past few years and I now have the chance to start a fresh which is invigorating and hopefully shows through my work. If you’re talking to me and I look vacant it’s true I’m probably not listening and somewhere far away shaping another idea.

I’m currently realising a few potential projects with Marrianne Del Garbutt (the best straight talking creative strategist and ’seller in’ner I’ve worked with) through a partnership called Two Damn Good and it’s a kind of ‘watch this space’ scenario where a lot of good, creative things will be coming to fruition. It ranges from a TV show, a card game, a fashion label, waterbombs to pottery. Anything goes…

I’ve been lucky to work with a lot of great creative influences in my life. My first and foremost been my teacher Mr Terry Jones who saw my potential at high school and pushed me to enter in to University directly from A level which is rare and I’ve never looked back since. My venture to Preston educated me in ’social skills’, on observance, typesetting – which is now an old school craftsmanship and how to introduce smile in the mind thinking to any given brief. Of late I hold Andy Edwards as a huge support and creative mentor/influence who introduced me to the beauty of European design and not to be afraid of colour, and most importantly not to be typecast (pardon the pun) as just a graphic designer. I’ve been able to work on many amazing projects and realise quite a few visions which I am very proud of.

Another blessing is my three little ladies (LL’s) and the time I have with them.. and witnessing there development creatively, and intellectually, and a constant source of smiles.

Oooo.. and I’m always up for any form of creative collaboration or social get together, I did have an idea about a Leeds Pub Scrawl…. and I doodle a lot too…

Did you ever write a letter to Jimmy and if you didn’t what would you like to ask Jimmy in the sky?

Haha… I never did. I’ve been brought up with the ideology of you make your own dreams come true and still in the process of doing so…

If you were able to make dreams come true who would you like to hear from?

The guy with the big finger who says it could be you… then I’d be in trouble.

I did come across this, which I love the concept of, http://ifwerantheworld.com/ and I’m still thinking of my response.

What was the first disc that you spun on your turntables?

Haha… this is a bad question for me. Those that know me, know I’m not very good at music and even worse at lyrics. Although a good bass beat never goes amiss… I did see someone play a cajón a while back and that would be my instrument of choice. It makes sense – you can sit and thump out a good tune in the process – I’m sure it’s more technical than it looks though.

My passion has always been visually inclined and wordplay, to the point of Stephen King novelesque proportions where you don’t stop seeing things. As a self professed paper pervert — print and bookshops are my vice.

To answer truthfully though and will get ridiculed for this my only purchase of vinyl from memory was ‘Spagna’ – ‘Call Me’ a long, long time ago. hahaha.

Congratulations to all those that managed to read to the end. I did ask are you sure you want to ask me questions. Never had the chance before and thank Culture Vulture for this opportunity to showcase some of my work and rant.