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.

Fashion Advice From A Seven Year old.

Yesterday my seven year old son gave my twelve year old daughter some advice. Fashion type advice for her first day at high school next week. I can't be sure but I think she took it on board.

Like any twelve year old girl she can be very particular about what she wears and I try not to intervene. I did insist on our week down the coat however that she choose a hat and we found a really nice one she was happy to wear, even with a small nautical motif embroidered on the side. Driving home yesterday I suggested she might even wear it at school (we live near the only public school in the state that has no school uniform or dress code) to protect from the heat. No? Bad idea.

I offer to embroider some black felt skulls over the nautical motif for a more morbid take on summer. No again.

Then Archie, listening in, offers up his advice "You could get one with a monkey or dinosaur on it" he suggests. "They are very pop'lar wight now". which made my twelve year old smile. Which means, like I say, that she must be taking it on board.

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.....

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!