My neighbour Gary Sollars moved into our street around 2004, the year Liverpool became European Capital of Culture. Gillian found out this about him from her contacts in the street, that he was an artist but also that he was well thought of at the other end of the street for his cheery and friendly neighbourliness. There were quite a few elderly women that end of the street and she heard that he was knocking on in bad weather and offered to run errands for them.
In the last five years I have gotten more familiar with him too, benefiting from his relaxed friendliness to tell him about some of the struggles I was having-some people are easy to talk to about difficult stuff-Gary was one of these people I found. I also found out a bit more about his day job; while an artist/painter he supplemented this work with more commercial stuff, theatre sets, hanging exhibitions at galleries. I got to see some of his work as his terraced house doubles as his studio so when invited in I was very curious. I had studied art as a mature student for several years and always had a yearning to make things-Gary work is very accomplished, on canvases 6 to7 foot high he paints in a realistic style, mainly portraits but with a surreal subversive twist to what on first impression might appear quite conventional. His work is well renowned and he has pieces in the National portrait gallery.
Another creative outlet he has is an alternative disco night that he has been hosting for ten years or so which he calls Dollman Disco. Here he combines a dance event with upbeat dance songs with quirky entertainers and larger than life party games. He makes most of the props himself which is a massive undertaking cos about 150 regularly come along to them. I have been to three now and both that he has put on this year. there was one just this weekend gone which i invited some friends to attend. I was a bit naughty in that I had a heads up that one of the games involving a custard pie fight and prodded my friend Mo to volunteer- even though he wasn’t quite sure what he was volunteering for. Here’s the game- a plastic sheet was laid out on the floor the size of a boxing ring, a “wall” of plastic was created around the outside with canes for support and the ten or so protective clad volunteers were led into the ring. Plates with quirky cream were slid under the wall and they were left to pie each other with abandon-see picture above!
Another creative outlet we have shared is comedy. I was getting used to Gary’s interest in my projects to do with Mental health and when I said I was going to see a friend perform stand up comedy in order to improve his mental health. I discovered that Gary had attended a similar course some years earlier run by The Comedy Trust so would be eligible to attend the "closed to outsiders" event. What I discovered was he had loved the course and performing his own work but was struggling to take his act to a wider audience(for some reason the Dollman Disco stuff didn’t count cos he was bladdered when he did that) and wanted to reconnect with the trainers to give him a bit of a push. This has happened and he performed on the Liverpool Mental health Festival bill at Comedy Central last October. I was on the bill too and it was another good night, Gary’s performance was a stand out, his character a love lorn eccentric with stories of extreme lengths gone to prove that love exists, quite surreal-or so i thought. When we were coming home together after the event I asked him how he managed to inhabit his comedy character so completely, he just said....but that is me, its all true!
In the last five years I have gotten more familiar with him too, benefiting from his relaxed friendliness to tell him about some of the struggles I was having-some people are easy to talk to about difficult stuff-Gary was one of these people I found. I also found out a bit more about his day job; while an artist/painter he supplemented this work with more commercial stuff, theatre sets, hanging exhibitions at galleries. I got to see some of his work as his terraced house doubles as his studio so when invited in I was very curious. I had studied art as a mature student for several years and always had a yearning to make things-Gary work is very accomplished, on canvases 6 to7 foot high he paints in a realistic style, mainly portraits but with a surreal subversive twist to what on first impression might appear quite conventional. His work is well renowned and he has pieces in the National portrait gallery.
Another creative outlet he has is an alternative disco night that he has been hosting for ten years or so which he calls Dollman Disco. Here he combines a dance event with upbeat dance songs with quirky entertainers and larger than life party games. He makes most of the props himself which is a massive undertaking cos about 150 regularly come along to them. I have been to three now and both that he has put on this year. there was one just this weekend gone which i invited some friends to attend. I was a bit naughty in that I had a heads up that one of the games involving a custard pie fight and prodded my friend Mo to volunteer- even though he wasn’t quite sure what he was volunteering for. Here’s the game- a plastic sheet was laid out on the floor the size of a boxing ring, a “wall” of plastic was created around the outside with canes for support and the ten or so protective clad volunteers were led into the ring. Plates with quirky cream were slid under the wall and they were left to pie each other with abandon-see picture above!
Another creative outlet we have shared is comedy. I was getting used to Gary’s interest in my projects to do with Mental health and when I said I was going to see a friend perform stand up comedy in order to improve his mental health. I discovered that Gary had attended a similar course some years earlier run by The Comedy Trust so would be eligible to attend the "closed to outsiders" event. What I discovered was he had loved the course and performing his own work but was struggling to take his act to a wider audience(for some reason the Dollman Disco stuff didn’t count cos he was bladdered when he did that) and wanted to reconnect with the trainers to give him a bit of a push. This has happened and he performed on the Liverpool Mental health Festival bill at Comedy Central last October. I was on the bill too and it was another good night, Gary’s performance was a stand out, his character a love lorn eccentric with stories of extreme lengths gone to prove that love exists, quite surreal-or so i thought. When we were coming home together after the event I asked him how he managed to inhabit his comedy character so completely, he just said....but that is me, its all true!