STUNNING bike murals have been rediscovered during a revamp at the former Stroud Saddlery shop.
The artwork was originally painted for the Big Bike Company in Cainscross Road by pupils from Marling School next door.
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Bryan Billau with one of the murals painted by Marling School pupils in 1997.
The boys were invited to decorate the giant wall when Bryan Billau opened the business about 17 years ago.
"I remember looking at this big white space and thinking that just through the wall was Marling School," he said.
"Then I hit on the idea of asking pupils there to come up with some artwork. I believe it turned into an A-Level project at the time."
Now he is organised building work in preparation for a new tenant and has uncovered the striking murals.
"I'd be interested to know where the teenagers who painted them are now and if they've gone on to become artists," Mr Billau said.
He is liaising with the grammar school's staff to find the art class of 1995.
Source: www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk
Furniture store flying the flag - Nottingham Evening Post
IT'S not hard to get lost in Nottingham's largest independent furniture store, which boasts a vast 50,000 square feet of showrooms. Occupying a large, key site on Huntingdon Street, Hopewells is currently flying a number of Union Jack flags in honour of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.
The store, which sells a vast selection of modern, inspirational designs, normally flies the flags of some of the European companies represented in store, but has replaced them all with Union Jacks to mark the occasion.
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Key site: The store and some of the stunning furniture on sale.
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While the excitement of the last couple of weekends is now dying down for many, it is just starting for Hopewells.
The store's summer sale starts after the preview for existing customers on June 16 and 17.
The family-run store, which has traded since 1885, first developed its reputation for refreshing modern designs back in the 1950s, importing light and vibrant woods and styles from Scandinavia and other European countries.
But today it has not only asserted itself as an interior design beacon but also a company synonymous with quality and service too.
Managing director Adam Hopewell runs the store with his wife Janet, director, his father John Hopewell, chairman, and associate director Alan Ball, who said: "Together we endeavour to ensure standards are maintained and Hopewells remains a destination to inspire rather than mimic the more typical outlets found on the retail parks."
Some of the store's key brands include Stressless of Norway, Ligne Roset of France, Natuzzi of Italy, Hulsta of Germany, Skovby of Denmark. Duresta and Hypnos are just two of the many quality British brands that are showcased.
The building itself is one of Nottingham's more unusual. The side of the building which can be seen from road level was built in 1973 and links through a second floor level to a 19th century mill with another three floors – each one measuring 10,000 square feet.
Mr Ball says: "We aim to inspire and are able to completely furnish a home not only with exceptional products but with a wealth of experience within our company to help ensure our customers are thrilled with the result and return each time they require furnishings or accessories.
"Although we don't sell kitchens or bathrooms, in terms of furniture and furnishings we do pretty much everything else.
"We have our own interior designers but we also work closely with many designers and architects who are able to utilise our showrooms rather than selling to their customers from catalogues, taking advantage of the array of products that just won't be found anywhere else in the region.
"You might find some of our products in a high quality store like Harrods, but our selection is really quite unique."
So whether it's an inspirational accessory, bespoke soft furnishings, flooring expertly fitted or simply furniture you will cherish, all supplied with service honed over generations and with the guarantee of the best value, it really does have to be Hopewells.
The company aims to offer high quality at the best value and promises to match the prices of its products, if found elsewhere at a lower price.
The store is open from 9am to 5.30pm, Monday to Saturday, and on Sundays from 10am to 4pm.
The company plans to begin trading online in the near future, offering a selection from the vast ranges for those who prefer to shop from home. Visit www.hopewells.co.uk
For more details, phone 0115 953 6000 or e-mail info@hopewells.co.uk
Source: www.thisisnottingham.co.uk
Ikea sends gypsies flat packing: Store tells camper van driver that travellers are banned from the car park - Daily Mail
- Swedish furniture giant accused of racial profiling
- Store boss claims groups have been attempting to set up camp on
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Shock: Camper van owner Luke Massey, 27, was astonished when an Ikea security guard challenged him as he and his family arrived at a store
Swedish furniture giant Ikea has begun screening shoppers who arrive at stores in camper vans or mobile homes in a bid to prevent gypsies from setting up home in their car parks.
Luke Massey, 27, was astonished when a security guard challenged him on a family outing to their Valley Park store, in Croydon, south London.
The guard, who was caught on tape, told him: 'If you had said yes [to being a gypsy] I wouldn’t have let you into the premises.'
Mr Massey visited the store with his girlfriend and her mother on Monday, June 4.
On entry to the car park the group, who were travelling in a small camper van, were flagged down by an Ikea parking attendant who asked whether they were gypsies.
Mr Massey, from Streatham, south London, said: 'We were just aghast and my partner said ‘What? Are you serious?’
'We argued with him there for about a minute before he said ‘ok go on’, it was like he was convinced we weren’t gypsy so we could go on.
'I know this kind a camper van is slightly unusual, but it is not exclusively used by the travelling community.'
After parking Mr Massey went to remonstrate with the attendant, who said they were not the only people he had stopped and questioned.
Not welcome: Mr Massey's small camper van. Ikea have begun employing security guards to prevent gypsies from entering their car parks
In a recording of the conversation, the attendant can be heard to say: 'A lot of them are coming in similar cars. If you had said yes [to being a gypsy] I wouldn’t have let you into the premises.
'We are stopping them because they are coming in and taking things of our loyal customers, that is why I’m here in the car park.'
Mr Massey said: 'We were honestly gob smacked. Even if they have had problems with travellers using their electricity supply or parking there at night it doesn’t justify the racial profiling of customers at the front door.
'It is not acceptable, I’m disgusted.'
Response: A spokesman for the store in Croydon, South London, said that in recent months travellers had been trying to set up camp in the car park
Garry Deakin, Ikea Croydon store manager said: 'Over recent months the travelling community in the Croydon area have been attempting to access the customer car park to set up their mobile homes, which not only has an impact on our customers’ shopping experience, but also poses a health and safety risk due to the build up of human and animal waste.
'After discussions with both the local traveller liaison officer and Croydon Council, Ikea Croydon implemented preventative procedures to secure the car park, including a security officer to patrol the entry to the car park to prevent the mobile homes entering the car park.'
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
A year later, the Vancouver riots reverberate in art - Globe and Mail
Driven by shock, revulsion and a deep sense of shame, Metro Vancouverites drifted downtown after last year’s Stanley Cup riot. They cleaned up after the louts, and they scrawled bathroom gra ffiti-sized bits of philosophy onto the plywood boards that had been installed over broken glass windows of businesses such as the Bay and Future Shop. “Humanity is an ocean,” read one of the countless messages. “If a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”
A year after the riot of June 15, 2011 – sparked by a Vancouver Canucks’ Game 7 loss to the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup final – 15 of these boards are installed at the Museum of Vancouver. The exhibition, Reading the Riot Boards, adds to the canon of cultural response to riots in Vancouver, works which include theatre pieces and one of the city’s most provocative works of public art.
“Great art happens where there’s a real sense of a large question and a large feeling of mystery and a large question of ‘Who are we?’ ” says playwright and director Amiel Gladstone. “And I think the riot happening in the middle of our city by our own citizens really raises all of those questions.”
The MOV immediately recognized the importance of the so-called riot boards, seeking to acquire them for its collection within a week of the incident.
“It was kind of a no brainer,” says Hanna Cho, MOV’s curator of engagement and dialogue. “It quickly became apparent that these would be really special, and part of Vancouver’s history.”
There are earnest messages from a Grade 6 class (“There is always next year. Why riot?”); notes in other languages; a drawing of the instantly-viral kissing couple inside a big red heart.
And one riot board declaration – “Creativity is the only solution to destruction!” – rings true for a number of Vancouver-based artists.
Writer and actor Kevin Loring ( Where the Blood Mixes) saw an opportunity to explore Vancouver’s riot mentality in his commission to contribute to Pi Theatre’s Visions of Vancouver project, part of the commemoration of the city’s 125th anniversary. Loring created a short audio play (recorded live before an audience and available online) that looked at the riot from a number of perspectives, including a teenage hockey fan, a police officer, an immigrant who takes her two young sons downtown to watch the game, and a woman who joins the frenzy and steals a bunch of designer handbags.
“It was a group event, it was a mob event and I really think the only way to really [express] that is to have those four characters speaking about their own experience separately as though they’re being interviewed, but finishing each other’s lines and at some places saying the same line in unison,” Loring said from Banff this week, where he’s attending the Banff World Media Festival. “To get that sense that it’s a communal thing. It was a group thing. And we were all a part of it.”
He titled his play The Thin Veneer, and as Loring wrote it, he kept coming back to the same image: “I liken it to the Leviathan; it’s like a million-pound monster with 10,000 eyes looking at itself doing this thing. It’s that group monster that when people get together as these masses, they behave as one large monster taking over the city.”
This is not the only theatre work to emerge in the year since the riot. Gladstone was involved in the creation of the play #ThisismyVancouver just weeks after the riot with a student group at Arts Umbrella, and a staged reading of Mark Leiren-Young’s Basically Good Kids, written after the Penticton riot, which occurred during the Okanagan town’s 1991 Peach Festival.
“What was really both scary and compelling was how apropos it was,” says Gladstone, of Basically Good Kids, in light of the Vancouver riot a decade later. “It was so right on.”
But probably the most iconic riot-related artwork in the city is Stan Douglas’s magnificent Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971. The large-scale photo mural is installed at the SFU Woodward’s building in the Downtown Eastside, steps from the intersection referenced in its title.
“The photograph has produced an image of something that could easily be forgotten,” Douglas says in an interview published in the book Stan Douglas: Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971. “It consolidates hearsay into a picture that will hopefully produce more hearsay and a conversation about history – as opposed to the way that, for instance, a sculpture of a general on horseback is supposed to do, but doesn’t.”
Indeed, when it was installed in 2009, the work – one of four in Douglas’s Crowds & Riots series – re-ignited discussion of the 1971 Gastown Riots, sparked when police moved in on what by all accounts was a peaceful hippie “smoke-in” organized by the local alternative weekly, the Georgia Straight.
In a way, it’s a billboard advertising history. Abbott & Cordova was carefully constructed on a purpose-built set by an artist far-removed from the event it depicts: Douglas wasn’t there and says he doesn’t remember the riot, which occurred almost four decades before the work’s 2009 installation.
The riot boards, on the other hand – granted: artifacts, not art – were created in the immediate aftermath by a generation that thrives on – demands, really – immediacy and the ability to chime in on a conversation.
Cho sees the boards – the museum has 76 of them – as a physical manifestation for the social media generation. “This became a very literal translation of that behavioural urge to express something,” she says. “This was Vancouver’s Facebook wall, in some sense.”
Reading the Riot Boards is at the Museum of Vancouver until Sept. 23. A panel discussion ,“Is this Vancouver? Reflections on the 2011 Hockey Riot Boards” – in which Kevin Loring will participate – will take place Friday at 6:30 p.m.
Source: www.theglobeandmail.com
Premiere Adirondack Chairs Announces a Bigger and Better Polywood Furniture Collection - PRWeb
Polywood dining furniture
Natick, Mass. (PRWEB) June 13, 2012
Premiere Adirondack Chairs, a top-selling online patio furniture store, is promoting a larger collection of Polywood furniture for the summer 2012, in response to customer demand for the durable resin Adirondack furniture.
Owner Doug Hopeman decided to increase the Polywood inventory as part of a site-wide expansion and redesign unveiled in time for the spring 2012 season. Customers now have at their fingertips more Polywood Adirondack furniture, in more color combinations and configurations, than ever before.
In addition to classic Adirondack chairs and furniture lines, the Polywood brand offers 15 collections of resin patio furniture that include charming traditional and modern pieces alike. While styles vary, all sets are made of a resin composite. They are 100-percent recyclable, UV protected to prevent fading, and moisture-proof for lasting durability.
“Polywood has long been a favorite of our customers, and for good reason,” Hopeman said. “They love the styles, color selection and durability--the quality is second-to-none.”
Polywood Adirondack furniture mimics the traditional wood furniture, with the obvious difference in construction. The finish is similar to a wood grain, however.
Other collections include patio furniture sets for lounging, with deep seating and cushioned patio chair cushions designed for comfort widely available. Patio dining sets include patio tables and chairs large and small, with bistro- and bar-style options complementing traditional sets. Some of the most popular Polywood pieces are those meant for peaceful relaxation, including chaise lounges, gliders, and rockers.
One of the biggest draws of resin Adirondack furniture is the wide range of bold and pastel colors, and neutral tones, to choose from. Customers also have the option of adding patio cushions to nearly every piece. Cushions are available in assorted Sunbrella fabrics, designed especially for outdoor use.
Premiere Adirondack Chairs is a leading patio furniture retailer online. The company, founded in 2008, is based in Natick, Mass., about 15 miles west of Boston.
Source: www.prweb.com
Ikea employs security guards to stop gypsies entering car parks - Daily Telegraph
"We argued with him there for about a minute before he said 'OK go on', it was like he was convinced we weren't gipsy so we could go on.
"I know this kind a camper van is slightly unusual, but it is not exclusively used by the travelling community."
After parking the van, he went to remonstrate with the guard who said they were not the only people he had stopped and questioned.
The guard, who was caught on tape, told him: "A lot of them are coming in similar cars. If you had said yes [to being a gipsy] I wouldn't have let you into the premises."
In the recording of the conversation, the attendant can be heard to say: "We are stopping them because they are coming in and taking things off our loyal customers, that is why I'm here in the car park."
Mr Massey added: "We were honestly gob smacked. Even if they have had problems with travellers using their electricity supply or parking there at night it doesn't justify the racial profiling of customers at the front door. "It is not acceptable, I'm disgusted."
The Gypsy Council said Ikea "should be ashamed of itself". A spokesman added: "God help anyone who they think looks like a Gypsy – lots of Gypsies don't walk around with big earrings."
But Garry Deakin, the Ikea store manager at Croydon, defended the practice.
He said: "Over recent months the travelling community in the Croydon area have been attempting to access the customer car park to set up their mobile homes.
"(It) not only has an impact on our customers' shopping experience, but also poses a health and safety risk due to the build up of human and animal waste.
"After discussions with both the local traveller liaison officer and Croydon Council, Ikea Croydon implemented preventative procedures to secure the car park, including a security officer to patrol the entry to the car park to prevent the mobile homes entering the car park."
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
SEND THEM PACKING!!!...
- paevo, USA, 13/6/2012 15:23
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