Motherboards and motherhood

I'm typing this on a Dell keyboard on a machine running Windows 2000 and I'm not especially pleased about it!

Yesterday, my Mac went pop and it won't reboot. I'm taking it to the hospital this week but strongly suspect that the motherboard is kaput. Without funds to purchase a shiny new one, I'm resigning myself to having 2 shit machines to do the job of one average one; an ancient G4 mac to make artwork and this for the internet.

I've also been having a bit of a crisis in my work lately, trying to get back to some artistic habitat I lived in before children. And hey, the G4 just took me straight back there! I replaced it whilst pregnant first time round so its free of bookmarks for mumsnet or excel spreadsheets referencing school stuff, etc. If I were overly optimistic (I'm not) I'd say its serendipitous!

The novelty will surely run out in about 15 minutes creating an incentive to sell some pictures and  get a new one. Until then I'll be mostly using a pen and pencil...

Gil Gerard, nice!

To donate to the cause of bringing me - Buck Rogers style - back into the 21st Century, look out for my Etsy shop opening soon!

For the musings of a desperate house husband neighbour with a keen interest in forest gardens and raising kids in the country check out Diary of A Country House Husband.

See, I'm not the only blogger in the village!

(I really hope this looks okay on a 'modern' browser. The whole thing could be in comic sans for all I know.)

Béatrice Coron

I found Béatrice Coron last year whilst researching paper cutting. Her website is a hub for links to other artists. Prolific and poetic, but what looks at first whimsical, reveals a harder edge with a bit more scrutiny.

This is how she begins her TED lecture...

"I cut stories. So my process is very straightforward. I take a piece of paper, I visualize my story, sometimes I sketch, sometimes I don't. And as my image is already inside the paper, I just have to remove what's not from that story." 

You experience a sheet of paper as a surface on which to put a drawing or painting. Its the place that the work of art inhabits, a surface which must be added to to become more than itself.

By removing material piece by piece to reveal the work of art, the paper becomes a 3 dimensional thing. More than a surface, it is the artwork.

I describe my pictures as "things", not work or pieces.

She too, uses Tyvek paper, but she paints it black. Unlike many silhouettes, hers are "a wash of black", varying in density and depth.

Splendid isolation

I'm back on Jan 2 after a break from the blog.  Since last time, we bought a house and moved to the countryside from the city. Big change for me, I'm too used to having cafes and shops on the doorstep. The main issue has been that I failed my driving test

...... twice.

So I'm here in splendid isolation until I can drive. Thank God the view is good.
There's an orchard across the road. Its owned by the community so we ate a lot of apples in the autumn - mostly in crumble! You can see Blagdon Lake beyond.

Its a gorgeous old house but its very cold! It needs some work, by which I mean new bathroom (haven't had a shower since August), insulation and the removal of carpets/curtains/wallpaper - oh and a dishwasher too!  It's going to take a long time, but after renting, and only hanging pictures where the hooks in the wall happen to be, it will be a pleasure! No fear of this turning into a "house blog" though!

I have found the blog a bit intimidating at the risk of just sharing the humdrum. And having not done any artwork since we moved in, I'm a bit stuck for what to say. So until I get my finger out, and make some new things, it'll be a bit random.

I've got a space to work now, so watch this space...



July - missing in action

. of paper and things .: paper fix | chrono shredder

July didn't really happen here on my blog and August nearly got away too. I've watched the tattered remains of the past 2 months pile up around me.  

Poetic, yes but a load of old bollocks. We are living in the chaos of the Summer holiday whilst trying to buy a house, oh and at long last, I'm learning to drive. So I've not made anything, excluding lots of mess, some cake or art stuff with the smallies.

There have been moments of near bloggage.
Amongst them:

The death of Lucian Freud
most recently - Danny MacAskill trial bike genius

Its not the done thing to admit it, but I am looking forward to the end of the holiday. Mostly because our house move, just a few days before the start of school will mark the end of a long period of change, but also because I'm bloody knackered.

Land of the rising obesity levels

I'm Scottish. So there. Mallow courses through my veins along with Irn Bru. Perhaps not, but I grew up there and its brilliant. Lochs, mountains, castles...

I grew up miles away from that stuff in a new town made of concrete and weird green landscaped hillocks by the side of a dual carriageway.  We did have this. Chocolate, mallow, jam and biscuit. Eaten in that precise order. And of course, most amazing packaging in the world.

After Sunday school my sister and I would, after carefully removing the teacake,  flatten out the wrapper and painstakingly remove every wrinkle (working from the outside to the middle) until left with a super shiny sheet of foil,  curving slightly at the edges. Sometimes we would then mould it or fold it into a shape. Very fiddly.  Not having access to google in 1983 it would mostly be a very limited origami fortune teller. 



Japan meets Scotland -  land of the rising obesity levels.


I'm still obsessed with super fiddly detail and painstaking, high risk creations. Also all things Japanese.

This may be where it all started, so along with the other stuff I haven't finished yet,  I'm going to be making some stuff about it...

Now what?

 
If you're the nice person that bought my picture then a great big THANK YOU!!!! 

Now for the difficult bit... what to do next? I know what I'm doing artwork wise but I've somehow got to get stuff into galleries or maybe apply for an MA?

Dunno. Feel a bit inert. A slight down after last weekends up, maybe. Its the end of something so my energy is tailing off, yet actually, in the broader sense this should be the beginning of something else.   

Its half term this week so I'll be dedicating time to the littlies. I am grateful for this bank holiday making it a 4 day week though. Bill is tinkering with bike things and Nos 1 and 2 are painting each others faces whilst number 3 has a nap. I've got no food or laundry liquid so I'm off to get provisions.

Check in soon for the next thrilling installment... 

The First Big Weekend

I refer to this post.

Not the track by Arab Strap, but what is for me, the 1st big weekend of the year - putting my work out there in public.
It went well, lots of really positive comments and I met some really lovely people.
Special thanks to all the people I know who made the effort to come along, especially Lou from Littlegreenshed for agreeing to take some decent pictures of my work.
Special thanks again to Vicx at Paper Village for letting me use the space, and for creating such a hub of creativity in South Bristol.

Tomorrow I'm off exploring the Arts Trail with friends and family. I'll report back later...

Drum roll

Its up. I'm excited. Had a nice evening hanging with Vicky Harrison in her shop and putting my things on the walls.

I'm looking forward to a fun day in the shop.....

Nightie night x

Southbank Arts Trail

Southbank Arts Trail

A fine chance to have a nose around other peoples houses and also look at some art.

ALSO COME AND SEE MY WORK AT PAPER VILLAGE, NEXT DOOR TO THE TASTY BITE CAFE AND UPFEST GALLERY.

If that wasn't enough, come see the Origami garden, altered books by Sally Darby, continuous poetry on paper, and the amazing gorilla yarn garden growing across the road on Bemmy Green.
More shameless plugging to follow...