Crane Wife

The Crane Wife is a fabulous old chinese story I think, about a man who saves a crane that has been wounded. Shortly after this a beautiful woman turns up on his doorstep. They marry. She has the ability to weave the most fantastic silk which the man sells and they become very rich. She only stipulates that he must never try to watch her weaving, but his curiosity gets the better of him and one nights he creeps up on her and sees that she is really a crane. She flies away and never returns.

And the reason for this story is that I have recently been listening to the Decemberists and I love their new album The Crane Wife.

Vampire trouble

My nephew Kai has bee in trouble for biting people in school, due to his current vampire obsession. He drew me a Dracula card for my birthday too. But this has inspired me to make him a vampire rabbit zombie for Christmas, and I made him his own birth certificate.

This week I am mostly...

...listening to this music:

Sun Kil Moon
Tori Amos
Califone
Josh Rouse
Josh Ritter
The be good tanyas
The Weepies
Papas Fritas
Gillian Welch

A NEW BOX!

The little red room has been a place of much busy-ness and cutting and gluing involved in the making of a box. I am very pleased with this new one, although this picture is in it's unfinished state and doesn't do it justice. It started off completely different and it had been incubating for a very long time, but I lost the thread of where I was going with it so ended up destroying it all. There were some nice bits to it, but I am pleased with the new version. Will try and get better photo when it is finished off.

Islands Show

The show at Canfas Gallery was great. All the work looked really good, and the opening was a chance to catch up with lots of people I hadn't seen in ages. Adrian has done an excellent job of hanging the show and there were also some beautiful glass cases with all sorts of ephemera related to Islands. A. and P. and I went and A. had a lovely time, though clung to me like a limpit and then we took her to Chapter for tea and cake.

Saw a great show in Chapter.. nothing in it!!

THIS WAS THE BLURB:
Chapter Arts
Exhibition Sat 7 Oct – Sun 5 Nov

Simon Pope invites you to recall, from memory, a walk through a gallery space, and explore the spatial, social and professional relations contained within it. you are asked to summon-up these remote spaces - through memory, body, speech and movement – so that they exist at two locations simultaneously, both here and there.

All are welcome to ‘walk and talk’, recalling a description of a familiar gallery space, as if you were walking through it. Simon Pope questions the consequences of this for the gallery as a ‘site’ of artwork? Can the gallery be ‘empty’ space waiting for work to fill it? What does it mean to think of this ‘place’, not as unique and differentiated, but rather deeply related and connected to other ‘places’? What is produced when professional ranks, such as curators, administrators and trustees other than the artist, are invited to be itinerant in the production of an artwork?

This exhibition has received generous financial support from the arts council of Wales.

Simon teaches on the Design for Interactive Media BA/BSc (Hons) programme at CSAD and is a research associate at Goldsmith’s College, London and Transmedia, Hogeschool Sint Lukas, Brussels."
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I am sorry but this was well and truly taking the piss, and as an artist who actually makes things I get so grumpy with this kind of crap. A. (10) thought it was shtoopid!! And P. was just completely baffled and thought I was pulling his leg and the show had not actually been hung yet.

Diane Arbus

There is a new film about the life of Dianne Arbus coming up, with Nicole Kidman. Looks quite interesting, and worth a peek when it comes out.

The Spiders and the Acorn

N. told us that Spiders are frightened of Acorns. I can't remember if the acorn is supposed to be poisonous to the spider, or if there was originally another reason. It has all become so entangled with various theories and silly stories that we cannot now unravel fact from fiction. Me an A. made up some great stories about how the spiders became enemies of the acorn..little knowing that they grow into Oak trees. Also myths of the Spider women..

Kept us amused on a rainy blustery walk on the beach at Penarth.

Summer Holiday pics

More inspiration

Someone else likes red crosses..a recurring theme in my own work.


The amazing and wonderful Joseph Cornell.


John Soanes House, Lincolns Inn Fields - one of my favourite places in London. Go there if you are ever nearby.


Groups of pictures in lovely colours and a studio I would love to have. Sadly not mine.

Islands

I have been working on the canvases for Adrians Island exhibition at Canfas gallery. I want to expand on this and have lots of ideas. Years ago I seen a really fantastic exhibition in New Zealand, and there was a wall of little cavasses in black, terracotta and brownish dhades with white. Little detailed paintings, massed together but they were all totally gorgeous and I have wanted to do something similar for myself. As a collector and closet archivist the idea of multiples really appeals to me.

Surfer boy...

P has been surfing like mad recently to take advantage of the last few summer evenings before the dark of winter sets in. Hence we have had some lovely evening at Southerndown, with beautiful sunsets.

Inspiration

Issue 12

Time has come around for Issue 12, deadline for the pages is this weekend. I have been multifariously inspired this time, as many new and gorgeous things have been percolating through my creative juices. Paul and I went to the British Art show in Bristol, and though I hated the show mainly, there were some lovely things in the bookshop, mostly Japanese graphics books that I loved. Anyway this sent me thinking down a whole new path on the creative front which I feel full of enthusiasm for. I have been busy sewing and making now for weeks.
I also have Adrian's Islands show coming up and have completed a tryptich for this, which also needs to be dropped off this weekend. Busy busy bee!!

Going on holiday

we will be off on holiday to Cyprus, land of many childhood memories. I have long put off going there as I thought it would have changed too much and I would be sad. But paul wants to go there and I really want to see the places I remember as a child. All the places that inspired me and taste the food I loved, and and and...

Bliss!!

Treated myself to World of Interiors Magazine this week.

This magazine has been one fo my favourit things for years and I have stacks of them at home. They are great for all the pictures of Chairs if nothing else, but also for the excellent articles. To wit:

BACK TO THE WALLS
Art critics balk at anything but white walls for modern art, but Howard Hodgkin uses colour as an atmosphere framing device for his powerful paintings. Text: Richard Calvocoressi

Howard Hodgkin is also one of my favourite painters...







His paintings are so beautiful and lush and full of feeling. I like the way they have such specific titles and obviously for him convey a particular day, memory or event.

1ssue 11

1ssue 11 has had a good response so far with everyone seeming to be pleased with it all. I really enjoyed the editorship of this one, the work seemed to go together really well. It had quite a wacky feel this time.

Some fabulous women, I admire and wish I could be like...

All my adult life I have loved Bette Davis, I think it goes back to watching all those black and white films with my Nana, eating Turkish delight curled up on the sofa on a wet Saturday. I love the smoking and the tart wit, she is always so fantastically sarcastic and wicked. I do have a sharp tongue myself, and maybe I identify with her for that. One of my favourit actresses of all time is Louise Brooks, who could not love her - so beautiful, and the others are just gorgeous, grown-up women with opinions and attitude that goes beyoond their looks, and they are inspirational for me. I want to grow old like them, still sexy, still funny and not afraid to express myself.