Luke Jerram: Artist

In one of those funny little twists of fate my attention has been drawn to artist Luke Jerram's work from two directions recently.

Firstly - he is the artist whose ongoing touring work "Play Me, I'm Yours!" currently has 50 Golden Street Pianos  dotted around London.

How could I not love this live-art intervention? As a pianist the invitation is enough. Play me, I'm yours! How liberating. I don't have to be Lil Armstrong or Mitsuko Uchida to play one. They're ours and we can all play them whether we're not a piano player at all or we're a great concert pianist. It's heady just thinking about it.

I'm am spending some time seeking them out and playing them. I've played two so far. I love the way it subtly transforms the urban space. On one level, while you're playing, London churns by. People ignore you, slow to take a look, stop to listen & take a picture. I especially enjoyed playing the one in Reuters Plaza, Canary Wharf. This little gold painted piano, underneath a tree, dwarfed by the forbidding glass surfaces of the towers of mordor capitalism. Music being made by anybody who wants to make it. From the little kid just exploring the sounds the piano makes, through me (middling, returning to playing after taking a long break because I thought I wasn't good enough), to the virtuoso playing rippling 19th century music. In Canary Wharf, anyway, it's this little, free, transient, human thing that's been snuck in among the banking skyscrapers and the shopping malls. It whispers softly that there might be another way...

There is even a piano on Parliament Hill, Hampstead Heath. I very much want to play this piano as my friend Andy's ashes were scattered there. It's a place that means a lot to me. Even though he's been gone for 7 years I still miss him. I often wish I could share this new piano playing part of my creative life with him. I continue to be inspired by his example. He was in a bands, wrote songs and zines alongside having a day job, doing an MA and being a really good friend to a lot of people. You can find out more about Andy's by reading his zine RRR#1 in which he is very eloquent about why making your own art matters, and samosas.*

Then at work this image cropped up. A glass sculpture of an HIV virus. Part of a collection of Glass Microbiology Sculptures which I think are breathtaking. The Wellcome Collection apparrently have on of these sculptures so hopefully I can actually see one sometime soon. It's the kind of thing that makes me raise an eyebrow when people say that there's a science/art war going on.

Luke Jerram's Website http://www.lukejerram.com/

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*The zine has been scanned and published by Andy's amazing daughter!