Show at Stoke Newington Church Street extended to 17 July

I'm the latest N16 Pop-up artist, along with Deborah Sandersley, to show at the Fat Cat cafe on Stoke Newington Church Street. There's new signage going up on the cafe as I write, which makes it a bit anonymous at present: the cafe is at the junction with Marton Road.

My work is on show there until 10 July 17 July, and it's all for sale. Seen my work and like it? Give me a call on 07891 611919 or email me at info at james-hobbs.co.uk.

There's more about the N16 Pop-up artists here.

The Fat Cat cafe is at 119 Stoke Newington Church Street, London N16 0UD. It's worth a visit. Most of Stoke Newington is worth a visit, frankly. A 73 bus will bring you here.

A day in New York City

Broadway at 35th Street, New York City

I had a week of (journalistic) work at the first Frieze New York art fair recently. At the end of my visit, in order to get a cheaper ticket home, I stayed an extra day in the city before an early flight the next morning. A day in New York could turn out expensive for people good at the retailing thing, what with the shopping opportunities people lead me to believe the city has, making the whole exercise pointless.

But it is free to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, and along the High Line, the raised park along a disused industrial railway line, and around the 9/11 Memorial. Later, I walked 30 blocks from the Guggenheim Museum to meet New York Urban Sketcher Melanie Reim for tea.

The High Line, New York City

I had an idea of going to the cinema in the evening, but I was a bit aimless, and there was plenty going on in the streets, so I drew and drew around Times Square as the sun went down. It's the way New York rears straight up at you, so the sky becomes a very different element of the composition, compared with, for instance, the way it often is in London. There's one hell of a lot of drawing to be done in New York City.

Times Square, New York City

London sketchcrawl: Saturday 26 May

Defoe Road, Stoke Newington

Urban Sketcher Pete Scully is coming to London this weekend, and he has arranged a sketchcrawl around Fleet Street on Saturday 26 May from 10.30am to 4.30pm.

The starting point is at Temple tube station, but there is more information on the Urban Sketchers London website.

All you need is something to draw on, something to draw with, and a few hours. No charge.

The Art of Urban Sketching: London launch on Saturday

The Art of Urban Sketching by Urban Sketchers founder Gabriel Campanario is having its London launch this Saturday 19 May at Cass Art, Islington, from 12.30pm to 5.30pm. Six of the artists with work in the book will be there during the afternoon (including me - I'll be there from 3pm onwards). We'll be taking some sketchbooks, and things to draw with and the book will be on sale.

Everyone welcome! It's free! Who could ask for more? It's close to Angel tube and a host of bus services.

How to find Cass Art, with a printable map. See you there.

Coming soon at Grand Designs Live

I'm showing work at Grand Designs Live at Excel, London, with Skylark Galleries from 5 to 13 May. I'll have framed work on show from Wednesday 9 May until the show closes. Find out more about the fair, and book tickets at a discounted rate, here. I'll be on the Skylark stand (L141 in the Grand Interiors Hall) on Tuesday 8, Wednesday 9 and Sunday 12 May, if you're around. Come and introduce yourself...

Marine Parade, Shaldon, Devon

Early summer, Clissold Park

With the short-lived arrival of summer last week, Clissold Park was soon well filled. I had time while the daughters were off with their friends to sit with the bike and a cup of tea. There were no real shady spots to keep out of the sun: the summer temperatures had arrived before the leaves had come out to offer shade.

Just down Stoke Newington Church Street at the Fat Cat cafe, the first round of the N16 Pop-up work, by Annie Morris and Stewy, is now on display. My turn comes up around 12 June until 10 July. More information here soon. And in an evolving N16 Pop-up website here.

From a Turkish cafe, north London

Stoke Newington has Church Street, with numerous cafes, organic stores, independent shops and all the trendy stuff, and the traffic-laden High Street, part of the old Roman Ermine Street running due north from London Bridge, which morphs culturally through Shoreditch, Dalston, Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill, but with an essentially edgier feel. Church Street and High Street: one would be pretty much unbearable without the other.
The High Street has a good line of Turkish restaurants and cafes, too, one of which I drew this from. Dear old Gilbert and George can occasionally be spotted eating in one of the restaurants down the road. That's definitely one for the I-Spy book of Contemporary Artists.

New: Urban Sketchers London blog

The London Urban Sketchers blog has gone live: Katherine Tyrrell is first up, followed by me, with more London-based artists blogging over the coming days and weeks.
Visit www.urbansketchers-london.blogspot.com.
The blog is the latest regional offshoot of the international Urban Sketchers - you can find the main website here.

James Hobbs images on sale at IKEA

News! I'm very happy to say that five of my images have just gone on sale at IKEA. Wherever you are in the world, there's a chance they're in stock at your nearest branch. But check here before you make a special journey: www.ikea.com.

My original digital prints are still on sale at Skylark 2, The Art Agency and Printroom, London.

If you've never visited my blog before, hello. You can, if you like, follow me on Twitter or even Facebook.

And you can find out more about my work on my main website: www.james-hobbs.co.uk.

Grayson Perry, fashion victor

I wasn't so sure about Grayson Perry when I went to see his show at the British Museum last week, but it was impossible not to warm to him. He communicates very directly. "Don't look too hard for meaning here," he greets us. I wrote it down, and then found more comments by him that resonated for me that I also noted, until I realised I couldn't possibly copy everything he said that I liked and be out of the museum by closing time. I was still resisting the urge to copy quotations by him from books in the gift shop on my way out.

Part of the reason for this is being from the same pre-Goldsmiths art school generation as him. Perry gave the title "Unpopular Culture" to an exhibition of postwar British works he selected from the Arts Council collection in 2008, which rings true. The first show I really went to at the Tate Gallery was "The Hard-Won Image" in 1984, which I remember as consisting of works by Kitaj and Auerbach and others that suggested slow grind in a variety of shades of brown. Art was much less fashionable then.

In fact, Perry's British Museum show ("The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman", extended to 26 February 2012) suggests his works come from much further back. They are interspersed with works from the museum's collection, as a tribute to the craftsmen and women who have made them, and often it is difficult to know which are his and which are 400 years old and from Ethiopia, or wherever. By the end I'd lost all faith in my judgement in knowing which were which. If that isn't a sign of his work being unfashionable I don't know what is. But to make works that chime so well with those from the British Museum? How much better could it get than that?

The Art of Urban Sketching: a quick flick through

Have a quick look at "The Art of Urban Sketching", out any minute now. My work flies through at about 47 seconds, and again later on...

The Art of Urban Sketching

I've been blogging occasionally on the Urban Sketchers website for a few years now, and I'm one of 85 artists profiled in a new book about the international non-profit organisation. The Art of Urban Sketching, by its founder Gabriel Campanario, is published in February by Quarry at £17.99.

Urban Sketchers is a great thing. Invited artists around the world post their drawings and paintings with a few words about how they came about. Whether the drawing is on the back of an envelope or in one of those swish Moleskine sketchbooks that some artists seem to like, it can have an international audience - and international critical response - within minutes. This can be kind of odd, and strangely exciting, when you consider what usually happens to many such drawings. Urban Sketchers is fantastically international, holds an annual symposium, which I haven't been able to attend yet, has nearly 16,000 Facebook fans and 7,000 people subscribing to its blog feed. It's worth visiting, if you haven't already.

As its motto says: "See the world one drawing at a time."

N16 Pop-up: open now

It was a betting shop, and now it's a pop-up gallery, handily placed just around the corner from where we live in Stoke Newington. It's currently showing the work of 11 local artists, including mine, and open right up until Christmas, and late on Thursdays.

In the spirit of keeping it local, I have some unframed prints of our much-loved local pub The Shakespeare in Allen Road on sale inside.

Pay it a visit if you're around. It's next to Mother Earth health food shop at Albion Parade.

And follow their tweets at @n16popup.

Built in Miami

I'm back from another week working at Art Basel Miami Beach. It's the tenth fair and the years have gradually bestowed a cultural and architectural legacy on the city. At one end of the pedestrianised shopping street Lincoln Road is Herzog & de Meuron's carpark at number 1111 (right). I drew it last year, and didn't think it was finished. I drew it again last week, and still wasn't sure if it was. (It is.) Apart from the shops and the distinctive, irregular carpark, there is, apparently, a residential element, a floor for installations and a restaurant. But is there a way in?

Just off the other end of Lincoln Road, towards the beach, is Frank Gehry's New World Center for the New World Symphony Orchestra (below). Again, I haven't been in (Art Basel Miami Beach's video programme was screened on the hall's exterior during the warm evenings during fair) but it's unmistakeably finished.



Over its entrance and on its roof there are rolling forms that recall Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, but otherwise its exterior has clinical straight lines. The paved footpaths across the palm tree-lined park before it are straight too - in time, the public will carve more direct and natural lines across its lawns.

On sale this Christmas...

How about a limited edition print for a Christmas present? I have works on sale, framed and unframed, at Skylark Gallery 2 at the Oxo Tower Wharf, right next to the gorgeous River Thames (above), at the Art Agency, Esher, and at Printroom, Hampstead. More details of another venue for my work will be posted here as soon as it is confirmed.

Or you can contact me directly for more information. See more examples of my work here:
www.james-hobbs.co.uk

Still showing at the Art Agency, Esher

I still have work showing in the inaugural exhibition at the Art Agency's new gallery in Esher, Surrey, which continues until 10 November.

The Art Agency
93 High Street
Esher
Surrey
KT10 9QA

Right, Regent Street, digital print, £120 unframed

My stolen bike

My black Marin Kentfield, stolen, padlocked, from the bike shed in our garden in Stoke Newington today. I'd say it was a much loved bike, but I haven't had it long since the last one was stolen.

This one I have security tagged, photographed, insured and burdened with padlocks. Will I ever see it again?* Let me know if you see it.

Frame number JB11640GJD037

* Let's face it, no.

At the Affordable Art Fair, Battersea Park, 20-23 October

My work is showing on the Skylark Gallery stand (F4) at the Affordable Art Fair in Battersea Park, London, from Thursday 20-Sunday 23 October, along with the work of nine other gallery artists. I'll be at the stand over the weekend if you're passing by. There are two Affordable Art Fairs in London this month: I'm showing at Battersea, not in Hampstead.

Need more information? Visit www.affordableartfair.com.

And a reminder: the Art Agency's launch show at its new Esher gallery also continues until 10 November. More details here.

St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, London

The new St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, George Gilbert Scott's mesmerising structure in north London. It's amazing what you can do with bricks.