Last Day - Love Tokens and Bad Pennies

Thank you to everyone who has supported our Love Tokens and Bad Pennies exhibition. From artists to writers, and not forgetting all of you who have been out looking for artworks and getting involved online. After placing artworks out on the streets for 30 days we reach the end of the exhibition. Today we are posting the final artworks, some have written pieces to accompany them and some exist on their own. We will try and write an update in the next few weeks, visiting some of the locations and see if the artworks still rest in the #unsettledgallery spaces.

The next exhibition is the Art of Caring at St George's Hospital in May (and then onto St Pancras Hospital in July). The deadline is 7th April 2019 so please send in your artwork (It's free to enter) and support the nurses, carers and the NHS. http://collectconnect.blogspot.com/p/submit.html

Tracy Boness - #unsettledgallery No.8, London Bridge

Art - Tracy Boness / Words -  Francesca Albini

Precious and frayed,

Tangled and free,

Caught in a net,

Sparkling diamonds,

Our love

Eternal

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Melanie Honebone

Art - Melanie Honebone / Words - Ed Arantus 

That knot in the pine brow

A cut near the front eye

The moon is high; from sides of the world where nightmares grow

You made all my fears and,

You held them in raptures

But there's no magic without death you said

You are a belief, short rotting

A prophecy dying on a dull mind

You can save your second coming,

I'm not the kind you need to pray for

Now I know where we went wrong

Growing green branches from dead wood

And I still swear that you can’t save me

Even when push, came to push, came to shove

Well you can swallow that sweet breath baby,

Until your death is the magic of love.

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Stella Tripp

Art - Stella Tripp / Words - Kevin Acott

One World

People have asked me what Nelson would think about Trump and all the hate swirling across the earth. Sometimes I tell them they should listen to The Three Great Alabama Icons by Drive-By Truckers. Sometimes I tell them Nina accused Nelson once of being 'no better than the rest of your people'. Sometimes I ask them why they really want to know.

The first and last interview I did with Nelson, he was drunk, drunker even than other people had led me to expect. We were in his room in some crappy hotel in Mile End and at one point he started talking about desire and Muddy Waters and - of all people - Bertrand Russell. He said Russell was convinced desire dictated everything we did, good and bad. To Nelson, Russell’s ‘desire’ wasn't about sex. He meant, instead, that even when we try to do good, it's because of desire: our desire to possess, to compete and overcome other people, to look good in the eyes of the world, to have power over ourselves, others, the whole world. To become, ultimately, God.

He told me all this and I listened and tried to follow and tried to make notes and then I watched him tip gently back onto the bed and start snoring.

So. We want the best for others because we want to become God. Nelson's 'Kissinger Blues' was, I'd always thought, simply about how there's something evil in each of us, a Kissinger, a Hitler, a Trump. But in that East End hotel, I suddenly realised it wasn't that straightforward: have a look at/listen to the YouTube video of Nelson playing it at Glastonbury in '75 and the extra, rambling verses and see what he does with the song he'd once vowed never to play again: he's saying (I think) that by pretending to have good motives for being good, rather than accepting the universality of desire, of egocentricity, we not only miss the point, we find ourselves unable to truly fight racism, hate, division. I could tell you I'm writing this purely because I want to convince you of the genius of Chopsticks Nelson and help preserve his memory. But I also want to accrue, to possess, I also want you to respect me and give me power and a way of being, however temporary, that makes me feel good. And - if we can both accept that – we can eventually find peace and love and the joy of singing a single, shared song. 

From the epilogue to 'Chopsticks Nelson: A Southern Life' by Kevin Acott (2019).

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Dean Reddick

Art - Dean Reddick /  Placement - Walthamstow

To see all the posts from this exhibition in one thread then click here - http://collectconnect.blogspot.com/search/label/Love%20Tokens%20and%20Bad%20Pennies

Stella Tripp - Love Tokens and Bad Pennies

Stella Tripp - Choose Love

Does love endure forever? Does a bad penny always turn up? During this Valentine month the artists and writers from CollectConnect explore this flip-sided theme with an exhibition of 32 miniature sculptures. These objects are placed in public places (#unsettledgallery), helping us to remember those who we hold dear - or cast off those who we would rather forget. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these tokens/pennies on this website. A writer will also use the art as inspiration to create something new and fresh.

Art - Stella Tripp / Words - Chopsticks Nelson
Choose Love?

One of the first songs I ever recorded was called 'Choose Love'. Twenty-three people bought a copy. I wrote it in a rickety, cold, optimistic shack up in a forest outside Asheboro, NC, back in the days when the hippies sometimes seemed to have the answer, back before the rips and anguishes of 'Nam and the insanities of Altamont and the 'we fucking knew its' of Watergate. I had nothing up there, nothing except a guitar I could never keep in tune, memories of Carla and San Francisco and what might have been, a couple of bottles of Eagle Rare, and a few cans of tuna. I lasted three days - three days! - but I got the song out of it and (as you probably know) I got Nina out of it. Win some, lose some.

‘Choose Love’ is a four-chorder: Gmaj7 - Bb13 - Ebmaj9 - Ab13. It didn't start that way, but that guitar had a mind of its own and those chords keep the thing pretty much mine, keeps it well away from anyone else.

Choose Love

I watch the long-hairs dance

Watch them prance, baby,

I watch them play at opposing

And supposing

And proposing

We should choose love.

I watch the rich kids play

Watch them lay, baby

Watch them trying to fuck

And trying to suck

And trying their luck and telling us all

We should choose love

Chorus

Ain't going to choose love, darling,

Not when there's fights to fight

Ain't going to choose love, honey,

Not when there's still wrong and right

I watch the flowing skirts spin

Watch them try to win, baby

Watch them twirl and laugh

Trying to change our path

And trying to make us all

Choose a new kind of love

I watch the kids shout at cops, baby,

Watch them wonder why

The Man can't listen

The Man won't listen

To flowers and pot and dreams and hope

Or choose a new kind of love.

Chorus

Ain't going to choose love, darling,

Not when there's fights to fight

Ain't going to choose love, honey,

Not when there's still wrong and right

Introduction: Chopsticks Nelson, in a letter to the author (1978).

Lyrics and music reproduced by kind permission of Sandra Nelson.

Stella Tripp

You can find Stella Trip's artwork outside Colvins in Walthamstow. Colvins is a DIY, ironmonger, wood cutting, paint mixing shop with some of the most knowledgeable staff in the business. In 1949 Colvins Ltd in Wood Street, Walthamstow was set up by an eponymously named businessman but now the popular hardware store is shutting its doors for a final time as numerous high street pressures becomes to much. Here at CollectConnect have always enjoyed exhibiting in urban public places, the high street and the shopping centres. They are evolving and fluid sites that benefitfrom the vibrancy of art and people to make them come alive.

Born in Somerset, Stella Tripp trained locally before attending Camberwell school of Arts and Crafts where she went on to lecture part-time. At the beginning of the eighties Stella travelled to America, Illinois where she developed much of her over arching themes and work practices, such as the decision to stop using rectangular stretched canvases and instead building makeshift constructions to paint on. These better reflected her situation and state of mind. She wrote a thesis exploring the nature of art by comparing art from different cultures and was excited by the possibilities that surface when exploring the nature of art in the light of cultural and societal conditioning: "things don’t have to be as they are; anything goes; anything is possible". Stella is a regular contributor to Collect Connect projects and first exhibited with us at the Lite Bite exhibition in 2011.

www.stellatripp.co.uk/

John 'Chopsticks' Nelson 

John 'Chopsticks' Nelson (February 14th, 1926 – July 13th, 1979) was an American blues singer, guitarist, actor and composer. Notoriously reclusive and hostile to both media and fans alike, Nelson remained a little-known but passionately-followed figure in the Carolinas, Virginia and Georgia for much of his life, before becoming more widely known with the release of 'They Call Me Chopsticks' in 1976. 

Originally a backing singer and session guitarist, he contributed to many albums by other musicians, including Sonny Boy Williamson, The Rolling Stones, ZZ Top, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters.

Over the course of his career, Nelson's music took on an increasingly spiritual dimension, culminating in the controversial 1974 triple album, 'God, Allah and Yahweh' and live shows that became a focus for attacks by the Ku Klux Klan. 

Nelson remains one of the most influential - if least understood - bluesmen in music history. He died in a hunting accident in West Virginia the day after his fourth album entered the Billboard charts at Number Two in July, 1979.
https://twitter.com/ChopsticksNels1

Don't forget to submit to our next exhibition. The Art of Caring is accepting submission until the 7th April 2019. More at http://collectconnect.blogspot.com/p/submit.html

Dean Reddick - Love Tokens and Bad Pennies

Dean Reddick-Bad penny

Does love endure forever? Does a bad penny always turn up? During this Valentine month the artists and writers from CollectConnect explore this flip-sided theme with an exhibition of 32 miniature sculptures. These objects are placed in public places (#unsettledgallery), helping us to remember those who we hold dear - or cast off those who we would rather forget. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these tokens/pennies on this website. A writer will also use the art as inspiration to create something new and fresh.

Art - Dean Reddick / Words -  Chopsticks Nelson

No Point

I remember Nina telling me a joke in Paris one night about sticking a finger in a dyke. She was shocked at how shocked I was. I was shocked at how shocked she was at how shocked I was, and we realised how little we knew each other. I know now that was the moment we chose to try to find each other and that was the moment that condemned us forever to looking at each other from afar.

Nina left Paris before me and I met Dalida soon after and Dalida was beautiful and doomed and sad and hated Americans and hated the blues and every time she beckoned me to her in that Italian, Egyptian, Martian way of hers, I thought about Nina. One broke Spring day I wrote a song for Dalida based on an old Django thing I half-remembered from Vancouver and every time she drank too much wine, she'd demand I sing it, wherever we were. I remember jumping on stage and pushing an old jazz man out of the way once at Le Bar Blomet and playing it, just to make her smile. By the time I'd finished, she'd already left the place and I wouldn't see her for a week.

I can't remember the words of D's song at all. It's funny: I could play you every note, every chord, I could tell you what I was thinking every time I sang it, what she was wearing. But the words have all gone, even the title has disappeared. I suspect Nina removed it from my mind, some time between Paris and Greensboro.

From 'Chopsticks Nelson: In His Own Words', published by Faber (1984)

Dean Reddick's Bad Penny on a tree limb 

at the #unsettledgallery Epping Forest

Epping Forest is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, bordering London and Essex and is an Ancient Woodland, one of the few left in London. The sculptor Jacob Epstein lived on the edge of the Forest. Nowadays the Forest is used by dog walkers, mountain bikers, horse and pony riders and picnicking friends and families as well as footballers, bird watchers and runners. I like to imagine all the lovers who might have left their own love tokens in the forest over the centuries. The Forest has also had its share of Bad Pennies reaching up to the present day.
Take a walk through the Forest and see if you can find a Love Token or a Bad Penny.

John 'Chopsticks' Nelson 

John 'Chopsticks' Nelson (February 14th, 1926 – July 13th, 1979) was an American blues singer, guitarist, actor and composer. Notoriously reclusive and hostile to both media and fans alike, Nelson remained a little-known but passionately-followed figure in the Carolinas, Virginia and Georgia for much of his life, before becoming more widely known with the release of 'They Call Me Chopsticks' in 1976. 

Originally a backing singer and session guitarist, he contributed to many albums by other musicians, including Sonny Boy Williamson, The Rolling Stones, ZZ Top, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters.

Over the course of his career, Nelson's music took on an increasingly spiritual dimension, culminating in the controversial 1974 triple album, 'God, Allah and Yahweh' and live shows that became a focus for attacks by the Ku Klux Klan. 

Nelson remains one of the most influential - if least understood - bluesmen in music history. He died in a hunting accident in West Virginia the day after his fourth album entered the Billboard charts at Number Two in July, 1979.

https://twitter.com/ChopsticksNels1

Dean Reddick is an artist, an art therapist, occasional lecturer and editor on the Art Therapy Journal ATOL. He has a small studio space at his home in Walthamstow where he works on sculptures and drawings often based on his fascination with birds and trees. 

Don't forget to submit to our next exhibition. The Art of Caring is accepting submission until the 7th April 2019. More HERE.