When we think of a place, what often first comes to mind is not a landscape or a physical space but instead a metaphysical entity; somewhere that exists thanks to the activities undertaken by humankind within that geographical area overtime. When we consider America for instance, we might envisage the bustling streets of New York or classic monuments such as the Statue of Liberty. And of course, as we will explore later within this issue, feelings of busyness and large buildings such as these do indeed help to transform a space into a ‘place’.
Yet what defines a place is often its history; its art; its culture; elements which blur across time zones. So when we imagine a place, we tend to think of it not so much in geographical or engineering terms but phenomenological ones. In this regard, when we picture America, we are likely to visualise not just the Empire State Building or the Grand Canyon, but the likes of 1950s Rock ‘n’ Roll, Jackson Pollock , The Vietnam War, Hollywood films, anti-communism, 9/11 and Kayne West. Interestingly, this story of modern America and its characteristics has a name - Americana.
Unfortunately, Britain has no such expression to describe its modern cultural evolution. Unlike America, there is no universal term to describe the United Kingdom’s changing social attitudes, art, and musical movements over the course of our twentieth and twenty- first centuries. Though that does not mean to say that it cannot be epitomised by something, or indeed, someone.
Enter Mick Wilson, an 80-year-old artist who not only continues to build huge sculptures in his garden, but whose incredible artistic journey spans across multiple decades, social movements, musical genres and art forms. For whether it was growing up in 1940s and 1950s post- war Britain; living a hippie lifestyle in the1960s; causing a moral scandal in the post office that made front page news in 1966; playing in numerous rock concerts in the 1970s and 80s; becoming an orchestral composer; gaining a PhD and lecturing in Salford University for 25 years; writing novels or having produced some800 paintings and sculptures since the early 2000s – it is fair to say that Mick’s life has both witnessed and encapsulated Britain’s very own version of Americana.
‘My father was a draughtsman by trade, and a craftsman by inclination, working in wood and metal. He taught me how to saw to a line, bang a nail in straight. My pal John Marsden and I, he lived a few doors down, we would build stuff in our basement, with dad’s tools, and all the wood bits under his bench. Those bits of wood, they got used over and over... We built all sorts of stuff, nailed together. The fuselage of a Lancaster Bomber I remember particularly. We took it in turns to sit in the cockpit. We built a spaceship too. The framework anyway, fence poles lashed together with binder twine,’ Mick tells me.
‘We also put on shows down there... So, as well as singing duets, strumming our ukuleles – songs like Home on the Range, Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling - we also did Musical Bottles, and a Shadow Show, The Operation, in which a patient got sawn open, and from whose belly were removed improbable objects. This was my introduction to show business,’ He adds. ‘Thereafter, performing in public never bothered me. Tulips and Heather, on mouth organ, Scarborough Spa kid’s’ Talent Competition. I was 7 years old. I came 6th. My prize was a Mobo Tortoise; stamped steel, bright enamel, wiggle a hand crank and it walked on the end of a cable. I was a show-off, I guess. This came in handy a dozen years later when I stood up with a guitar around my neck, strutting my own stuff, crowing songs of love and death, scurrilous and foul, but with a touching innocence all the same, I like to think. So, making stuff and playing stuff, from an early age. I didn’t think of it as art at the time, but seeds were there, germinating,’ Mick says, describing the origins of his artistic journey.
In contrast to these exciting developments however, Mick’s school was rather strict. Yet in a similar vein to his experience, it was also pretty whacky. ‘I went to a boys- only grammar school, in Sheffield. Old-style... The only woman in the entire building was an assistant secretary. I had not read Gormenghast then [Mervyn’s Peake’s series of fantasy books that focused on bizarre characters and events], but when I did, I was reminded of that school and its eccentric and wayward crew.’
‘One of the teachers in my school was a psychopath, whose joy was to whack boys randomly on the tops of their heads with a heavy bunch of keys as he patrolled the aisles between rows of desks. There was another teacher who was fun, a big fan of The Goon Show, but deeply and unhealthily religious. Any hint, however oblique, that touched upon sexual matters would drive him into a puritanical rage. His reign of terror however, ended spectacularly when he went mad in front of a thousand or so parents during Speech Day and had to be shepherded off the platform by the deputy,’
‘There were decent enough teachers as well, of course. P.D.C. Points taught English, and was a great inspiration, although I’d become an ardent consumer of literature - novels, short stories, poetry, plays - well before I joined his classes. He encouraged my writing, such as it was.
By then I was filling my science jotters with song lyrics, cartoons, and satirical sketches, for the amusement of my chums. I’d do commissions... I also played violin in the school orchestra. And, aged 13, I acquired my first guitar, and started practising Chuck Berry licks.’ Whilst it may seem as if Mick was heading down the musical and artistic path however, it may come as a shock to readers that he in fact decided to study Physics. ‘I went to Durham University in 1961 until 1964, reading Physics. I enjoyed student life immensely but failed to graduate. It was in Durham that I played in my first rock band, ‘The Diamonds’ (not the famous ones).
After that, ‘R & B’ with The Jukes (not the famous ones) when I returned to Sheffield,’ he tells me. Though, upon returning to Sheffield Mick soon found himself to be living the hippy lifestyle. ‘In 1966 I became friends with a number of final year Art College students, who inhabited the now legendary campus on Psalter Lane. I admired, and envied, the lives of these feral students, with their freedom to create, to cavort in the universe, and I resolved to do the same.I gave up my job, and took up painting: gouache on hardboard, nailed to battens,’ Mick says. From this he was asked by the Sheffield Central Post Office to fill some of their wall space with his art. Though it appears that they did not quite realise what they were signing up for particularly when Mick arrived with nude portraits of himself and his girlfriend.
‘The paintings were hung, and, within a week, protests from the Post Office’s customers flew around, like chickens spooked by a fox... In those days, vans had not yet been invented, so Trish and I, now exposed as depraved purveyors of filth, had to trudge back into town, to unscrew these obscenities from off the Post Office walls, and walk them back home,’ he tells me.
‘The Daily Express picked up the story, and sent a photographer around, who invaded our space, and took a photograph that was front-paged the next day... Then Yorkshire TV sent a cab around, and I got ferried to Leeds, where I was interviewed by a young Austin Mitchell. I wore my hippy drag and insisted upon wearing my black floppy hat with the silver buttons. They had to rig an extra floor lamp to light my face, which otherwise would have been in deep shadow under the brim. All in all, a marvellous start to a career as a visual artist.’
‘Thus encouraged, the following year I entered anew painting in the John Moores Painting Prize, at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. I gave it a title: Time Section through a Hendrix Blue Note. It had biomorphic references, though was otherwise abstract, with some rather rich painterly effects, mainly glazes. 122 x 122 cm., acrylic on panel. I wrapped it up nicely, strapped it to the roof rack of my blue mini-van, and drove it to Liverpool,’ Mick expresses.
‘Two weeks later, I drove it back, having been rejected. On the A57 through Warrington - the M62 did not yet exist - I got done for speeding. David Hockney won the competition, with Peter Getting out of Nick’s Pool, his celebration of Los Angeles, and of a summer of love in paradise. Shortly after this, I became seriously involved in music, and abandoned painting. Maybe a bad move, but I did enjoy my rock’n’roll.’
At various points between the late 1960s and early 2000s, Mick played in numerous bands, played at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, ‘composed over one hundred works, including 4 pieces for orchestra, 2 concertos, 2 saxophone quartets, a full-length musical, other music theatre pieces, works for dance, and a lot of chamber and piano music.’ At the same time he also returned to university, to graduate with a First Class Degree in 1979 and a PhD in 1983, before then becoming a lecturer in Composition at the University of Salford from 1990 until 2014.
Since 2004 Mick has returned to his passion for painting and sculpture and so far, he has undertaken 15 solo exhibitions and has completed some 800 works. Recently however, his focus has been upon the works you can see here, which are his garden towers – but how did they emerge and what do they represent?
'NOBODY GETS OUT ALIVE'
‘Sometimes things just happen. Seeing transformation masks in Vancouver, in 2015, and meeting the prime contemporary maker of such, the artist Simon Daniel James, prompted an immediate urge to make one myself. Which turned out to be the first of seven kinetic sculptures’ [sculptures that involve movement] Mick says. ‘Kinetic sculptures have to work. I saw an exhibition at Tate Modern of Alexander Calder’s kinetic sculptures and mobiles. He is better known for the latter, but his early work features a lot of machinery. And, the sad thing was, not one of them was in working order. We got to see glass cases full of dead metal. There is a reason for this, a grim and terrible truth: Machines always break down. Modern cars are so good. They are built to last. The new engines are lighter, they use less fuel, they are more powerful. But, sooner or later, one part, then another, will wear out, or just break. Remind you of anything? If you are past seventy, you’ll know what I mean. Bits keep falling off the soft machine. Nobody gets out alive,’ Mick humorously, though rather profoundly, states.
In that sense, Mick appears to see himself within his kinetic sculptures, not only in terms of physicality but also how he views himself as an artist. ‘So, instead of considering form, composition, colour, texture, tone, content, social relevance, acceptability by hostile artists with their own agendas to grind... my own status as a white man, old and eccentric, a mad f**ker, some would say, and my compatibility, or otherwise, with contemporary arts mags, I’m now having to consider cams, pulleys, levers, gears, ratchets, drive-belts and counterweights. Plus of course aesthetic considerations. The puppets, whether half or double life-size, must command a presence.’
‘And with the Towers, another brain-shift: stability and safety, durability, strength. These Towers shall remain, for future survivors of Armageddon to view with wonder. We’re talking concrete foundations, with reinforcement, steel scaffolding poles, and weatherproof materials,’
Mick tells me. Though, whilst these may seem complex, intriguingly, the inspiration for such designs come from a surrealistic realm – the land of dreams.
‘I dream, as do we all. But, now and then, a change from the usual anxiety dreams, like over-salting the cassoulet when twelve guests are imminent, I dream of beautiful cities... Once I dreamed of a series of steps, balustrades topped with channels within which streams of water gushed upwards, defying gravity. And faced with creamy mottled tiles, like those which clad the Sydney Opera House.’‘The house where I actually live has a garden - a rocky
cliff, with brambles and weeds. A bleak terra incognita, a no-go area. During the 35 years I have lived here, until the pandemic, and the first lockdown, I had ventured into this space no more than a dozen times. The garden is to the rear of the house, which faces east, and lies above a stone wall, separated from the house by a narrow alley, a metre wide. The alley is paved, and the wall, two metres high on the south side, rises steadily to reach twice this height on the north side. There is a central back door to the house, opposite which are steep steps, virtually a stone ladder. This is tricky to climb, and so the first job was to add auxiliary steps of concrete, to make the climb easier.’
‘This was the first act in the creation, over the next 40-odd months, of The White Tower, The Jade MoonBell Tower, The Tower of Mermaids and Roses, TheHard Rain Wall, Crow’s Roost, and The Bee Tower, along with their accompanying staircases, terraces, railings and lanterns. All have internal steel armatures, and are thereafter built from a combination of concrete, bricks and breeze-blocks. They are ornamented with carved sculptures, and often mosaiced with ceramic and vitreous tiles.’
As for the themes that are imbued within his tower works, I wonder to myself what they could be, ‘Aztec? Incan? Perhaps they are meant to replicateNative American totem poles’ I thought as I drew up my questions and, in some respects, it seems as if I had guessed right. ‘I’ve seen a lotta stuff, oh yes. I’ve seen totem poles, in British Columbia, with multiple sculptured faces adorning tall structures. I’ve seen Aztec art, and Byzantine friezes, to inform my relief carvings. I’ve seen, with wonder, the stained-glass windows of Chartres and Carcassonne. I’ve seen new-born babies, wild wolves, and a young girl who gave me a rainbow. All of these can be found in these Towers,’ Mick expresses.
Indeed, much like the Native Americans expressed their sense of place through the symbolism represented within their totem poles, it appears that Mick also conveys such feelings within his garden towers. After all, Mick’s towers are embedded with his dreams and his life experiences – and what better way to express a sense of place; of home; than to communicate a sense of self?
‘Today, shortly before writing this, March 2024, I saw an immense bumblebee, the first of the year, drifting across grass below, hunting nectar, as I took a break from angle-grinding a horse-head out of a concrete block. Spring is coming, and the work awaits. For the bees, and for me too’. Mick concludes.
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