clothing as art #1

as you may have noticed, my posting has been far less often than Anushka's -- for which i apologize. summer is finally beginning though, so i hope that i can spend more time updating this blog.

on to the post. if you have ever read my other blog, than you may have noticed than i have a deep fascination with clothing. i love making it, looking at it, but most of all wearing it. there is so much that can be expressed with one simple outfit. but finding inspiration for a different outfit every day can be frustrating. to help myself with this, i created a 'look book' of sorts. it is just a simple blank paged notebook in which i glue pictures, write out ideas, and sometimes make mini models of projects i would like to make. doing this has actually helped quite a bit.


each section is a certain look. they are all seperate pictures, but each page has a theme of sorts. depending on my mood, i pick a different page and then make an outfit from that pieces that most inspire me at the moment.


i only recently started the book, so it is a little bit sparse right now. as i make progress i will post pictures, as well as some of the outfits or inspirations that have come out of it.

here are some of my favorite places to find fashion inspiration pictures:
hel-looks (certainly my favorite)
CPH
Fashionist
wardrobe_remix (another favorite)
Face Hunter

more on this topic next post.

Vessel wednesday #2

You'll have noticed that we've not actually posted anything involving art yet. Photography is a cheap means of getting around that. I know that it is its own medium and all that, but to be honest, I take really bad pictures....and somehow render them a thousand times more pleasing when drawn. Drawing though takes time which I'm short of at the moment. This will be my last post, on this and all other of my blogs, for about one month.



Tomorrow morning I will draw one out of our numerous (eight - gasp!) entrants for the New Beginnings prize draw. I know I said there were to be two people last time, but I'm kind of busy taking my g.c.s.e.s right now.

Emily is MIA. I haven't had an e-mail for a little while now. She's either ill (hopefully not), taking a screenbreak (hurry up) or busy with life and school.

vessel wednesday #1

Perfection is folly.



Utter ridiculousness.



Photography both masks and unveils content.



Life can seem a bed of roses when it's merely a nesting-place for maggots.



The opposite applies too, of couse.



Aphid-eaten roses still brighten up my room.

without gravity

it rained, and she begged me to jump on the trampoline with her...

...jumping up and down that high with a laughing 5 year old, makes life seem to simple...

...life without gravity.

i prefer to use film when taking pictures.
it requires more time and effort, but the little mistakes and blurs are what make the picture unique.
in a world where everything is automatic and instant, using film requires one to focus on the work they are trying to create--on the scene they are trying to capture.

hide away

I can't remember the last time that I wrote a poem but it was some time back in March. I tried participating in Poetry Thursday for a few weeks running but like most things the excitement petered out. I'm surrounded by shelves and exercise books, exams that are approaching which call out for work to be done, lessons to be relearnt, when really I don't want to do any of it, none at all. I can't even find the will to paint any more, or draw in ink. Nothing. I have passages of prose swirling around in my head every day but it's getting to the point where being unable to write them down is unbearable. I just want to travel on a train to a far-away country where shadows fly and birds are green. I want to leave this place behind, I want to pull wool over my eyes. I want to be able to sit and spin a silken thread into a length of string which I can knit into a cape to wrap around my bare browned shoulders. I want it to be summer again and in wales again, eight years ago (or was it nearly nine) when I'm in the black mountains standing barefoot in a stream with the cool water trickling through my toes and the air currents blowing gently by. I want to find that total happiness where you can be completely in the moment, not worrying about when the day ends, just content to be. I don't want to catch myself every time I think of Brazil. I don't want that melancholy feeling to being sinking into me, starting at my crown and pulling me down down down. I don't want to exagerrate sadness like I am doing now, I want to be happy, free, lost in a Rothko painting where colour is the ruler of all. I want to escape.

Saturday morning

The view from my bed:










Art exam = excellent. Finished 30 seconds before it ended. Now, I am absolutely knackered despite getting up at 11.45 this morning, as I also had a concert last night which ended at 10pm.

Oh yes, and how could I forget:



Hosted by Christine at Paper and Cloth, this contest is in association with a sponsered walk that Christine is doing in aid of a breast cancer charity.

new beginnings

Distance.

How does one express it?

Distance is playing the prelude to Bach's first cello suite in a melancholic augmented way.

Distance is dipping a brush into water and spreading it over paper, only the hint of a pigment in view.

Distance is being totally indifferent to somebody linked to you.

Distance is writing a letter to somebody you've never met.

Tomorrow a project climaxes in my g.c.s.e. art exam, and I see what could be the end to a very lonely school-year beginning to approach. Looking over the three projects that we have done over Year Eleven I clearly see the turning point, the day or week or month on which I flipped my heart and my mind around and decided: I am an artist. As much as anyone else in my art group is. I am one and it's not being pretentious to label myself as such. I am a maker, quite simply. I look back over three projects and five work journals and think of those words I typed out, so very long ago now. Words rushing out straight of my mind: free verse. Then, as always follows with me, a poem, rhymes form with structure.

And you, you're as artist, I said

To him. A painter, yes, he

Replied, as if distinguishing those

Two things from one another were

Very important.

Distance.

How does one accept it?

Emily and I live very far apart. And yet we're also very good friends. Sometimes I wonder if writing e-mails is so different from writing letters. Why should the relationship that forms be seen as so very different than with paper-and-pen friends?

To celebrate the start of Idle Dreaming Emily & I are running a give-away. To be eligible for entry all you have to do is leave a comment about anything at all on this post by the 16th of May (which gives you a whole week!), making sure that you state your e-mail address very clearly. I will draw the name of a winner out of a hat on the 17th of May.

The prizes....

Each of two winners will receive a little bundle of goodies which may or may not include an ATC, a pincushion or a broach. It will be a surprise, probably depending on who wins!

Remember to leave a comment by the 16th with your e-mail address to be entered in to the draw. Good luck (and wish me success in my art exam).