Port Talbot Sketches Possible Exhibition

Okay, so the last time that I posted towards the end of September, I'd just made some sketches of Port Talbot, my local town, for my daughter's Oxfam Shop. Here's the sketches: -

A4: -

Dock Hotel Port Talbot c. 1985

Dyffryn Road and Steelworks

Aberavon Beach Funfair c. 1960

Station Road Level Crossing c. 1950

Margam Castle

Plaza Cinema c. 1990

Tata Steelworks

A5 pictures and smaller

Aberavon Beach with Dock Cranes

Tata Steelworks

Tata Steelworks

Station Road c. 1940

I have to say that I'm rather surprised that they've all sold, bar one of the smaller pictures. It's vulgar to talk money, but then I'm a pretty vulgar guy I guess, and so I don't mind saying that these sketches have raised a total of several hundred pounds for the Oxfam shop, and an outlay of just £5 for a new sketchpad.

Now, in my day job, I teach English in an 11-16 school. About the same time I was working on the sketches, the school asked if anyone would like to have a stall in our Christmas craft fair in the 3rd week of November. I had the brainwave to produce calendars based on these and other sketches of Port Talbot.

I've put feelers out with just a couple of these, and they've sold, which covers the cost of me printing more to sell in the Craft Fair. I also made some prints of the cinema, Margam Castle, Station Road Level Crossing and the Steelworks, bearing in mind how quickly the original sold. I had 100 postcards printed using the same images  as well. 10 of these postcards I've stuck some small calendar pages from a local art supplier. I've also taken my cinema sketch, and simplified it, and my daughter Jess has embroidered the design onto some bags from the Art supplier, and we're going to sell these too. The fair is on Thursday.

I would love to say that making a profit isn't that important to me, but that would be a bit of a lie. I was delighted to be able to make the contribution that I did for Oxfam,  but all that cost e was time. I'm just hoping to get some pay back for the time I've put into the stock for the far.

However, I won't lie, as much as the money, the proof that people like my stuff enough to be prepared to spend money on it would be an important validation for me.

None of which explains the Exhibition in the title of this post.

While the sketches were on display in the window of the Oxfam Shop, they were noticed by a couple of members of the Friends of Margam Park. Margam Park is Port Talbot's own stately home - owned now by the Borough of Neath and Port Talbot. The Chairman emailed me, and eventually we met. It's a little complicated, but basically, the second floor of the Castle is being opened to the public for the first time since it came into council ownership. The Friends of Margam Park have asked if they can display my sketches, and sell them, and prints of them, and calendars, on my behalf.

What can I say? Throw in a fat guy in a red suit, and it would've been Christmas there and then. However, there was a problem. Basically, there are bats living in the roof of the castle. Now, bats are very much a very protected species - or group of species - in the UK. There is currently a concern about whether the bats will be disturbed by opening the second floor. So, this whole issue needs to be sorted out. In principle, then, I do have a forthcoming exhibition in Margam Castle - in practice I just don't know when (or if) it will come off. Fingers Crossed.

I've produced a series of more sketches for the exhibition. All of the sketches which follow have been mounted and framed since these scans were taken.

Aberavon High Street

Aberavon Beach Hotel

Blancos Hotel

Aberavon Beach funfair c 1960

Bethany Square c. 1987

Dock Cranes

Aberavon Globe Hotel c. 1950

General Post Office 

Jersey Beach Hotel c. 1990

Margam Abbey Church

Margam Abbey Chapter House Ruins

Margam Park Orangery

Old Indoor market c. 1970

Royal Buildings c. 2000

Taibach Library

Vivian Park Hotel c. 2000

Old Aberavon c. 1960

Taibach Rugby Club

Oxfam Project

My daughter runs our local Oxfam shop. Oxfam, short for the Oxford Committee on Famine Relief, is a British based charity that works worldwide. People donate various items to be sold in the shops, and every penny of profit goes to fighting famine and poverty worldwide. A couple of weeks ago Phillippa, my daughter, was given a framed pen and ink sketch for the shop, and she was surprised how quickly and how much it sold for.
"Dad," she remarked on her return home, "yours are no worse than that was. How about doing some sketches of buildings in Port Talbot for us? We can frame them up and see if they sell."
Well, with that kind of flattery, how could I refuse.
The initial idea was to produce six different sketches of past and present iconic Port Talbot Buildings. Well, I'd completed the first two and started working on the next, when we sold the first before it even went in the shop.

This was before I'd even scanned it, and so all I have is a hastily taken photograph of it within its frame. This is the art deco Plaza Cinema in Port Talbot. Sadly it has been derelict for a long time now, and despite being listed the interior is in a desperate state. I sketched the cinema as it was for about a decade after I moved here until closure towards the end of the 1990s.

So, as I said, we sold this one while I was making the rest of the sketches. So in the end we decided that I would do another sketch of the Plaza to replace this one. I don't really like repeating sketches, and I was tempted to try from another angle. Still, the fact was that this image of the Plaza had sold, and my daughter really wanted
as close a copy of this as possible. So, putting my 'commission head' on, I resolved to give the 'customer' what she wanted, and produced this version of the same scene. It's obviously not a perfect copy, because I'm not that good - however there is an obvious difference. I changed the film advertised on the large board above the entrance, just so that both pictures have that little bit of individuality.

So altogether, the pictures which actually made it into Oxfam show, the Plaza, which is still standing, after a fashion, a blast furnace in Port Talbot steelworks, which is still standing, Margam Castle, which is still standing, the Miami Beach Funfair in Aberavon Beach, which was removed a good 40+ years ago, and the level crossing in Station Road, which was taken away when the town centre was extensively redeveloped in the late 70s. I've used the scans of the pictures below, rather than photographs of them in their frames:-

Urban Sketching this Summer

Yes, I've been a busy boy since my school broke up for the summer break. I haven't completed any acrylics, but made many sketches during the three weeks I was in Alicante and then Malta. Here is just a selection:- If you're interested to read the stories behind them and others, click on the link for my sister blog - An English Fool Abroad With His Sketchbook