Pepper Stitches Mix Tape Cushion.

Pepper Stitches is the very clever person who did this embroidered cushion of a Mix Tape which I have been meaning to put up here ever since I saw it (ages ago now). I love this so much. Firstly because it is a really good design but also the great nostalgia for mix tapes it brings back. For anyone old enough to remember mix tapes were incredibly laborious and sometimes as you waited with your finger over pause for a song to end you wished there was an easier way of bringing together your choice songs. But as we realise now, that was the whole point - it was a labor of love. For the music or for the person we were making the tape for. That's what made them special and a really great way to say, as Pepper illustrates "I Like You". I guess that has been lost with the ipod - convenient and compact as they are. And the itunes store in their own kind of cleverness makes it hard to deliver your choice of songs to someone else in any kind of comparable way. A bit sad. I definitely miss the slow thoughtful process of the mix tape....

PS This clever design is available free to download from the Pepper Stitches blog along with several other great patterns here.

Couture, Kristen and Chandeliers.

The September 2010 issue of Italian Vogue (which my sister thoughtfully bought me for Christmas!) contained the Grand Couture supplement of which I'm still feasting my eyes on. Twenty pages of Kristen McMenamy, impractical couture and - you guessed it - chandeliers. A Perfect combination. Like a modern day Ms Havisham, Kristen Mcmenamy with her strong, hard features draped in glittery couture and languishing in a dilapidated mansion. And how about that giant chandelier? Like I said, a feast for the eyes..

Images via Fashion Gone Rogue.

Sarah Moon

You may have seen these pics floating around blog world a bit lately but I liked them so much I had to have them on mine. I just love Sarah Moon's fashion photography - being shot through what seems such a hazy dreamlike lens with distorted proportion and the muting of saturated colour. Lovely.

Regret.

Sharing here my efforts at the brief handed out at the beginning of last semester - a challenge involving 8 2D images constructed into a 3D form. Both the images and the form needed to reflect one of 5 states such as: Regret, Delirium, Malevolence, Zeal or Empathy. Each of the 2D images needed to use a different texture that also conveyed the chosen state. For me there wasn't much choice about it. I think about regret a lot. Not just my own personal regrets which can run deep, but also the nature of regret - what it means to live it: can it ever be resolved? And is there anything to be gained from it? I chose a diary as my 3D object, as a place where regrets can be tucked away, and created a book (out of a recycled, cloth bound one on meteorology!) which opened out in a visual timeline - a life time of collecting regrets. I hear people say they don't believe in having regrets and I think really? Is it ever that simple? There are always choices to be made and the wondering if you made the right one. And at some point we need to make peace with regret. These are the ideas I tried to convey. Love to hear others' thoughts on the subject...

Samantha Everton.

The first moment I saw samantha Everton's series of photographs from her Vintage Dolls show I had a feeling of stop the search, the perfect image has been found. It was everything about them - the saturated colour, the decaying vintage grandeur of the sets and props, the surreal quality and not least the subject matter. Everton portrays children at play but there is something slightly uncomfortable at work. Perhaps while at play her child subjects are processing their fears? Her 2007 show which proceeded Vintage Dolls was titled Childhood Fears and comes across darker in both the story telling and the medium. With individual titles such as "Fear of understanding" and "If I keep my eyes closed" (below) you get a picture of childhood as a place of not knowing but also knowing and the changing tension between those two states. With six exhibitions behind her I find Samantha Everton's work endlessly fascinating. If you are interested in seeing more go here.

Rejection.

My little boy has just turned Seven and is all into his Dad at the moment, not so much me. He just puts up with my hugs and cuddles at most. He only wants Dad to read him stories. Last night I went in to to say goodnight after Dad had finished reading and turned out the light. I crept in. "Goodnight Archie" I said softly and hopefully, giving the little bundle a quick cuddle. He growled and out from underneath the sheets came his cross little voice "Oh look! See this is why I can't get to sleep at night!". Which reminds me of a bit of a shameful incident a couple of weeks back. I'd counselled myself that I couldn't keep forcing hugs on him, would find a different way to love him until he was ready to appreciate me again as the parent of choice. As I walked up the hall I decided I would not feel rejected but instead sit at his bedside and explain that much to his relief I would not be forcing cuddles on him anymore but would still be loving him and when he was ready to cuddle again to just come and get one. "Ahhh" he shrieked when he saw me come into his room and hid under the sheets. I lost my patience. "You know Archie" I said crossly "There are some little boys in the world who don't even have a mother to cuddle them!"

"Oh dear" came my partner's reproach from his station at the computer. I know, I know.....

Blue chairs and Floods.

Source.

Source

How beautiful are these chairs? The top one is fast becoming my dream chair, possibly replacing this one.

Week four of the school holidays and a fair amount of it spent inside due to the rain. Aastonishingly enough I am coping. Australian Summers are funny things. You pray this one wont bring devastating fires like so many do and instead you get a flood. Shocking to see what is happening in Queensland. How unimaginable to lose everything in such a way. I hope the rain will stop soon , that the waters will recede and these Queenslanders can begin to rebuild their lives. If you would like to make a donation to the relief effort a good site is the official one of the Queensland Government HERE.

Hope you are having a nice and peaceful evening!

X.

More Sketchbook. Time running Out...

Not a lot of time left and this is all I've done in the past two weeks. Am beginning to think I will hold off till the 2012 tour - can you do that I wonder? I still think of the book as in it's beginning stage, hardly complete at all....

This double page is just my playing around with line drawing, doodling and then trying to piece it together in collage. Again, I've used black cardboard because the quality of the original paper just doesn't inspire at all. I like the wait this gives each page too. Maybe I'll try and sqeeze one more effort in before the 15th.....

Letter To The Future me.

Popping over to Shades of Whim the other day I discovered this great idea you can use in lieu of a new year's resolution list. Just write a letter to yourself at Future Me as if the year is over and you've achieved what you wanted and they will email it back to you in a years time or any other date you choose - however long you think is needed to make the ideas in the letter a reality. I enjoyed Shade of Whim's letter so much I was moved to write my own. After much thought and deep soul searching this is what I came up with: 

Dear Future Me,

W.O.W! I've got to hand it to you. While everyone warned against that controversial drug therapy, overseen by that disgraced former football star-cum-immunologist, you just forged ahead with confidence. And look at you now! The health you've always dreamt of having! It's funny though isn't it? I imagined you  increasing your study load - or at least finishing all those creative projects sitting around the house - not ditching art school altogether. Still, what an inspired move - spending that small mid year lotto windfall on boxed sets of all your favourite TV shows and then parking yourself on the lounge. Sure some people think you're wasting your life but what, with the side effects of that drug therapy being weight loss and collagen production you're suddenly looking ten years younger instead...

Love to see what you come up with!

More Sketchbook Project 2011.

The latest double page to reach completion. No real meaning here which is the fun of a sketchbook and is probably why I seem to be falling back on fashion illustration a bit. Astute fashionistas will notice the dodgy Prada knockoff! A big thanks to everyone for their encouragement on my last post - a busy time of year and the clock ticking away at that deadline!  I am having fun with it though - like the cut out bit on the right hand page and also I've stuck pages together and pasted in my sketching (which has been done on a much nicer quality paper) so that the result is a cardboard like thickness to each page. Which is nice.

Giving Thanks, Ex- Voto And Detatchable Frida Kahlo.

I know I complained to anyone who'd listen (Hi Karen!) about having to write an essay AND give a PowerPoint presentation on Frida Kahlo a couple of months ago but the fact is the process was enriching (learning hey, who knew?). I've always been fascinated by Frida Kahlo's circumstances but not so enamoured with her actual work - I just didn't like her style. Researching Frida however and her paintings turned that around somewhat. Now I get it. Still, I wouldn't want to have Frida's My Birth hanging in my living area (Madonna owns the original and decides who'll make it as a friend depending on their reaction) but I do love the kitsch that has grown up around her iconic image and has it's roots in Mexican folk art - the very thing I disliked about her style in the first place. The best part though for me was discovering ex-voto and retablo which were popular in 19th century Mexico and which Frida drew inspiration from. They are small religious paintings on tin which give thanks to a saint for intervening in a tragic event or illness. Sometimes the retablo will depict the tragic event, inscribe a sentence or paragraph abut it and in the corner have the intervening saint. In ex-voto it's just a painting of the saint. Searches on google images or etsy will turn up ex-votos or retablos of Frida Kahlo herself. Like she's the saint now. The saint of suffering or rather triumph of the spirit over suffering I like to think. Which is why when I had lots of tin left over from my chandelier project it seemed obvious that I should make my own Frida ex - voto with a little polymer clay. Then it seemed obvious that with a bit of  blu- tac it could be a detachable element of the chandelier - especially if I wanted to push the chandelier over the line into kitsch! As for Affluenza maybe it's just a reminder to give thanks for what we already have. Hope you are enjoying the festive season! 

Completed Affluenza Chandelier.

Phew! The Affluenza Chandelier is complete and has been put past the panel for assessment. Pretty much the most involved project I've ever completed I can finally breath a sigh of relief. It brought it's fair share of stress along the way but I learnt a lot. I now have metal wrangling skills and look at mundane objects and (non vegetable) refuse in a whole new way. I also learnt that if you are sick stay away from permanent super glue based decisions: in these instances blu tac can be your friend. I am also really lucky that we had our assessment in two parts and that I learnt in a forgiving environment that I am NOT, even about a project I know inside out, capable of speaking off the cuff. Fortunately I had a week until the graded panel assessment to get over the virus and learn my presentation off by heart - also rewrite it so it made sense  (that helped, who knew?)  and sell the concept behind my chandelier the best I could. In the end it seemed too much for some flan tins and plastic cutlery to embody  the fullness of Hamilton's arguments in Affluenza so I narrowed it down to a metaphor: the Family Meal. That is taking the time to cook fresh ingredients in enduring materials and nurturing your connections with family and friends around the meal table in contrast with the takeaway meal eaten alone after a twelve hour day at work. The flowers are of course my depiction of the "Down Shifting" Hamilton cites as the cure for Affluenza. They start at the bottom tier, multiply in the middle and by the top tier form a thriving garden. Using yellow also helped me portray the sense of energy and new life and abundance (as opposed to material abundance) that comes from individuals downshifting (shame on anyone who thinks I used yellow because I've got a BIG crush on it and it's SO hot in design right now.....).

As a final note I should probably start calling it the Down Shifting chandelier because, like the book, it ends (and I'm hoping this comes across visually) with the feeling of optimism and new possibility. And plus no body wants a depressing chandelier do they?????