The Paul Wall

A striking but unofficial 14th piece of our Heartlands exhibition is what I fondly refer to as 'The Paul Wall'. When I was considering the physical exhibition itself and realised there had to be some sort of space to learn more about Paul and see the art he had contributed to the world I devised a small wall to display his works and some information about his life and career. At the time I had very little to show - mostly just his sleeves, other art and a few pictures of him. But by the time of the exhibition - through research and talking with all of the lovely people who knew Paul during his career I had gathered more art, news articles, more pictures of him and a wealth of information about his art and character at that time. Stepping back after putting it all up on the wall and looking up at it was deeply cathartic and a little emotional. I was looking at the physical embodiment of all the work I had done to find out more about him. We had started with one photo and a screenshot of a home video. It was very strange in a good way. In the event of a second exhibition of this project - my plan is to create an immense collage encompassing absolutely everything I have regarding Paul.

Here's some pictures of The Paul Wall

Harri

hello again

Hello again!

I'm happy to say that after a long time of quietly fixing the website and doing all of the necessary paperwork - the first run of Damp Water Spot has come to a close and was an overwhelming success!

All of the work featured in our first exhibition has been loaded onto the new 'Gallery' page including information about each piece and the fantastic artists that created them. Other areas of the website have been tinkered with and you'll also notice I threw together a new little video for the front page until I can make something a little more expansive down the line. Please let me know if you see anything on the site that doesn't look right or even if you personally think it would look better another way - the whole thing had to be designed separately for web and mobile devices so errors may have slipped through the cracks.

With all of this said - I'd like to express my intentions of hopefully taking another stab at this project. I've learned so much and been exposed to so many talented people and am full of ideas of how to take this whole thing to the next level. I'm going to be doing a lot of paperwork and talking to The National Lottery about the potential of them helping fund a round two for the project. This may take a few months.

In the meanwhile - I'll be chatting to our lovely contributors and (hopefully with their help) trying to keep this blog and our social media pages active. I'll stay in touch and keep you updated on how the process is going and hopefully talk some more about all of the elements that make this project so interesting.

Until then.

Harri

Paul Cannell: end of an era

For one reason or another, it seemed that over time Paul became disillusioned with the task of creating sleeves. Andy Saunders (Head of Press at Creation Records around that time) said that he sensed some bitterness when Paul would mention he felt he hadn't been fairly rewarded for the work he did with certain bands. According to Des Penney (longtime friend of Paul and manager for Flowered Up), Paul wanted to be an artist, a painter, and soon sleeve work became a novelty to him and it's understandable as he could do what he saw as 'popart' with his eyes shut. He felt it prevented him being taken seriously as an artist. He seemingly fully retired from his sleeve work after doing a sleeve for Moe Tucker, one of his musical heroes. For him it couldn't get any better than that. Paul wanted to front a rock n roll band.

Crawl in 1996 © Martyn Goodacre (Paul with his iconic Super brand lager)

So became Crawl, originally under the working title 'Baby Crawling' - Andy Golding (lead guitar), Frank Stebbing (drums), both formerly of the Wolfhounds. Todd Berry (bass), long time musical collaborater of Paul and Andy. Paul was lead vocal, guitar and lyricist. Des signed them with Creation and after some time they produced a single entitled 'Sourface'

I'll leave it on a note from Simon Spence, member of Fabulous who knew Paul well.

'I saw him rehearse in King's Cross with Des there as well... they made a great twosome and I thought and hoped Crawl would go places. It was a hot day, that was the last time I saw him. I recall crying watching him play in that little rehearsal. He really moved me.