We have been watching Sopranos every night for weeks and it is stupendous but it has also meant that I have haven’t read a book for ages. I buy most books second hand or borrow them from the library but I decided to treat myself. The Miranda July book is excellent and another reason why never to buy a Kindle, as its really well designed. She has a very humble and thoughtful style of writing as well as being very funny.
We have recently had quite a few requests for wallpaper sample books so we decided to letterpress the covers. We know a Brighton couple who print and make books for people. We designed the cover and screen printed our yellow/green circle logo and they got a plate made and printed the text.
It is all very handmade by local people..
Please visit their website/blog to see all their super duper work..
www.stanleyjamespress.com
Recently I’ve have helped out some friends with some printing projects. Today I worked with a tattoo artist- Adam Sage who is making some artwork for the Brighton Festival. Its really interesting to see the transition of tattoo work onto paper. There is a really graphic outcome to the work and the strong lines work really well as a print.
A fun day talking about car boots, zines, prison and quilting. Hooray to nice new people.
We went to the Natural History Museum looking for threadbare stuffed animals and found just one corridor. I remember as a child wandering up and down rows and rows of glass cabinets of every animal and creature imaginable. There were even drawers that you could pull out and see underwater creatures and reptiles. Now it is mainly rooms with interactive displays that are actually pretty boring. I think they defeat and undermine the wonder and amazement that children feel when faced with a specimen of a sea horse or spider monkey. We found a room which was probably installed in 1983.. The colours and graphics were quite good. But if I want to see animals and skeletons I will stick to our local Booth Museum.
I went to the Saatchi Galleries recent exhibition on New German Art and was pretty uninspired by most of it, but there were some large scale paintings by an artist Stefan Kurten which really stood out. They appear to be huge pencil drawings at first but its only when reading the description I knew they are oil paintings. They are incredibly detailed and very muted in colour-almost 1930s because of these hues. The subject matters are quite ordinary but with the extreme detail they become a really good documentation.
It was also good to visit the Saatchi Gallery as I hadn’t been before. Its a great space I was just a bit disappointed with what was in it.
We couldn’t get into David Hockney exhibition it was too busy..
However this was an excellent retrospective of Lucian Freuds work. It was almost a back to front in the sense that the artist normally starts with nude studies and then develops his or her work into a style. However Freud began with a more considered narrative approach and then seemed to become less conspicuous and the nude became his focus. I personally did prefer his earlier work.. There is no denying his abilities to paint flesh and human form but I preferred the range of colours and more stylised paintings from his early days. A true British great..
I watched the Bill Cunningham documentary at the weekend and was really moved by him. Its so refreshing to see someone dedicated to what they do and so humble. He lives a very modest life and has sacrificed money for his integrity. Until recently he has lived in a studio apartment in the Carnegie Hall with a few ageing eccentrics as neighbours, however due to the ever continuing homogenisation of New york the apartments which were originally for housing artists have now been turned into offices and the tenants have been rehoused. Through all this his optimism is unwavering and he continues to cycle the streets of New York photographing people whose clothes and appearance inspire him. He is very clear that he is passionate about clothes and individualism and not celebrities in ‘rented frocks’. He is a unique personality and photographs people who also embrace this ethos.
I have found a very good website to prevent me doing what I should be- www.obsessionistas.co.uk is dedicated to people and their collections.. Pencils and crazy kids food are two of my favourite. Also makes my own rummaging seem less of a problem. Although it has given me some more ideas.. Bouncy balls?
These are the books I’ve just finished reading. I’ve just realised both the surnames are the same..
Night Walks by Charles Dickens are short stories on his experience of wandering the streets of London. As its Dickens it deals a lot with the poverty he sees, there is also a brilliant story about when he gets lost as a boy in London and gets chased by ‘rough boys’.
The other book is by Monica Dickens about two teenage girls whose paths cross but who live very different lives. It is about how our life is made up of choices and opportunities but how we are also predestined to by our early life experiences and how they effect the choices we make.
Both these books deal with extreme poverty and are reminder of how lucky we are to live in a country with a free health service, free education and a benefit system. I just hope that we don’t lose them and end up leaving people to fend for themselves. Both a very good reminder of what can happen to people in need if they are not helped.
