London street artist Dan Kitchener’s (web | ig) piece “Hope” features a Tokyo landscapes behind a geisha. “The wall is dedicated to Sandra – サンドラ. Sandra McCurry worked and owned Mikala’s Kitchen on The Shankill Road, Sandra worked tirelessly for the local community and sadly passed away” (Belfast Walking Tours Fb).
The geisha has (bizarrely) been situated above “Conor’s Corner”, where William Conor has been rendered in bronze by sculptor Holger Lönze and placed among a number of Conor’s paintings. (For images of the sculpture in progress, see Lönze’s site and the project’s Facebook page.) Connor (later Conor) was born in the Old Lodge area of Belfast (in 1881) close to the location of the new bronze statue shown in these images, which is at the corner of Northumberland Street and Shankill Road, replacing the UVF/Shankill Protestant Boys mural (see M02457).
The info board describes his methods in capturing the Belfast street scenes for which he is most famous: “Conor was developing a spontaneous drawing technique by recording quick impressions, and it soon became a habit for him to go out into the streets with a newspaper, which contained loose leaves from his sketchbook. When he saw anything of interest he leant against a lap post or wall, took out his newspaper as though he were simply reading the sports results and sketched away.”
For more info, see the project’s web site. For images of many of Conor’s paintings, see ArtNet.
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