Sketchbook

My mind was blown last night

In my self-pitying state of having a tummy ache that won't go away, I went to bed last night about 8 and listened to WNYC's Radiolab. The programme I chose was 'Famous Tumors'. Now I know this sounds a bit inappropriate in making my mood better but I stuck with it and my brain was pinging with facts and ideas. AND you get to listen to Tasmanian Devils fighting! it sounds truly terrifying. Awesome night in!

Madame Cecily Possamaï is an Ethnobotanist

Skin

I meant to post this a while back... it's a sneaky picture from the SKIN show at the Wellcome Collection right now. It's two ladies in the 20's using rubber masks to preserve their beauty in a really terrifying and oddly serene way. But the skin show is completely inspiring and at times revolting. I consider myself to have quite strong nerves (as long as I'm allowed to be uncontrollably tearing) and was impressed by the exhibits managing to be simultaneously fascinating and uncomfortable. Watching a doctor's training video from the 60's showing them shaving the skin off of a leg for a graft actually damn near made me lose it. Anyway, go see it if you can.... or check out what's available online... I mentioned this to you Nadja, I think it's right up your alley... and potential collaboration fuel.

Sketchbook

Sexytime!

Emily-Ann Murray ('Intimate Apparel') has just graduated from De Montfort University up in Leicester. We just shot her final collection last week and it was pretty damn beautiful. I couldn't wait any longer so here's a sneaky peek.

back from vienna, leaving for sweden

hej there,
yes, I do try to travel most of the time, but it's so cheap, only buses and trains and staying over with friends, and so much fun. We have been back for a few days now and later today I will go to Sweden for another holiday, this one spent in the forest and with a bunch of books on a small little island in a small little lake.
Vienna was a lot of fun. Not so much fun was trying to study German on the ten hour train ride without air condition, melting away and simultaneously trying to answer stupid questions about facts and graphics and pretending to talk to someone in order to practice speech. Anyhow, when I came back here and finally did the test I was happy that I had practiced, although Im not sure how much it helped.
We did make it to the Narrenturm, it was a close call, the museum is well worth a visit but has very strange opening hours, something like three hours on certain days and we ran like idiots to make it there in time, getting lost and confused on the way and nearly missing the last guided tour. This kind man had mercy on us and took us around the museum in a high speed tempo, or he tried but it still did not go very quick, luckily. It is a very interesting place, a round tower build to house Vienna's mentally ill, now only standing as a museum containing more then 5000 specimens of strange stuff in jars and models showing a broad range of diseases and abnormalities, such as a janus head, a skellet with two heads and a lot of strange diseases that back in the days for the lack of medicines were allowed to bloom out fully. And everything in very small rooms and corridors full with bottles and jars in the old vitrines and no flashy designs or anything which just makes the place beautiful in it's bizarrness. so, go there! And I hope you get this guide we had, speaking in a quiet voice and gesticulating like a bird, very interesting and good.
Then we had a day of wandering around Wien, we also quickly looked in to the Sigmund Freud museum but they were just taking down a show and anyhow, the Narrenturm was enough for one day. Next day we got up early again and had to run, again, and sweating like idiots in our best clothes for the wedding. We managed to miss the train although we really tried. Still made it in time for the wedding, best wedding I have ever been to! Although I suppose that doesn't say so much because I've only been to one other so nevermind, but it was great, and Manuel and Sabine the most sweet ever. Hanging out on a castle terrace in the afternoon, drinking champagne and eating wedding cake, looking at everyone looking so great in their summer dresses and suits. It was a lot of fun, meeting people from the golden shimmering Glasgow days and sitting around talking, laughing, drinking good wine, eating excellent food and listening to a band play in the garden, ah, what a great few days. I think Manuel and Sabine are on honey moon but I need to get my act together and think of someway to say thank you, I enjoyed it a lot. Especially the crazy dancing in the gin and tonic disco, it was very fine. Waking up in a pile of sweat was not so much fun but I suppose that had nothing to do with the wedding and rather something to do with 38 degrees and more in the room, madness. But what a wedding..brilliant.
On the Sunday we traveled back to Vienna, said bye to everyone after some strange stories from Roddy containing a bird without money, a goat on a ladder and other confusing things he meet in Spain.
Monday was the last day in Wien and we went to the National History Museum, we thought it would only take us a few hours and that we would still manage to do more things but we got stuck in there for something like five hours and came outside with no energy left what so ever. But it is also a beautiful place, all the old vitrines and the whole museum display is so carefully made and preserved, really impressing. Im not really into stones but I must say even the stone section got me, the display is so well made and it just looks so great that I even felt intrigued by some old stone.. actually a meteorite so I suppose one can maybe understand that. Three rooms full of birds, a lot of frogs in strange poses, snakes and I don't know all, a dodo skeleton and a Tasmanian woolf in a black display case. So basically the journey to Austria can be summed up like this: a very beautiful wedding and two museums with strange things in jars. And then I came back to Leipzig and did a five hour long German test that I hope went well because otherwise my great master plan will not work out. Now I will pack my bag again and leave in one hour for Berlin and a 14 hour long bus ride to Sweden. Not very much will happen there, I expect to read, ride a bike and swim. happy days may they last.

Surprise!

5 good things I like, that you might too

1. Rich Hall's BBC4 programme 'The Dirty South'
   
2. Tennessee William's 'Suddenly, Last Summer', dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz
3. Zola Jesus
4. Carson McCullers
5. Ecoline Ink - these I discovered from the Artstore in Glasgow. They are just really lovely to draw with AND they let you rub pencil out, even if you have used a light colour. Making my life a little bit easier.
   

Nesting

Route 73

In progress

Austrian Celebrations

Hello,
I barely got back here, had time to arrange some things and enjoy, or not so much, a few days of 38 degrees and some football and now in a few hours me and Joachim are taking the train to Wien, a ten hour journey where I will try and prepare for the German language test I have to make next week in order to do a Master/Meister here, so, fingers crossed..
Very much looking forward to this weekend in Austria, Wien and finally Jois and the celebration of the lovely Sabine and Manuel wedding, tjohoo. Whilst in Wien I think I might try and visit this place on the image, which has nothing to do with wedding at all and might feel like a bit of an absurd way to start this celebrational time but nevermind, I think I will go there anyway. It's a place called "the Narrenturm" and it used to be a hospital for the mentally ill, now it's turned into a museum hopefully full of strange stuff in jars and odd drawings, so that could be exciting and then I think I might have to go to the Prater also, such a great place, and fun to make photographs there, maybe this time I will manage to go on some of the rides too, last time I was there somehow I failed to do it, but ths time, no more excuses. Time to pack some things and get the train soon, nothing better then getting on a train and going somewhere.

Hello my name is Jack!

This week's guest blogger is Jack. He is 1 and likes the colour brown. Some of his favourite things are:

1. Helicopters
2. Squirrels and monkeys
   
3. Berries of all varieties
4. Baby Maya
5. And of course his Mummy

Jack drew a tiger. This is it.

Adventures on trains

On my travels, what started out as a little break, has now become work but in a different place.

Gud Fud

I have been featured on Central Station's blog, they sure are lovely.

Me legs!

Izzie just sent a wee snap from the new Tinderbox in Prince's Square in Glasgow where my little legs pattern adorns the tabletops... It looks quite sweet I think especially the two drunk coffees and the tissue. They've found a good home.

Animation Extraordinaire

I'm going a bit nuts with the posting now... But I was away for a bit, and have seen and talked of many things.

In Vienna, Manu and Sabine shared all of their brilliant music discoveries including this music video. It's for Ramona Falls' song I Say Fever. It's so beautifully done and works seamlessly with the music. And makes me want to animate and cut and light things....

Structures

Slightly in response to Nadja's tour in Romania... It reminded me of the absolutely incredible Jantar Mantar in Jaipur. These are all crazy astronomical architectural instruments intended to view the constellations. They are very precise and incredibly elegant. The structures themselves invite you to climb and touch and really explore as if you've stumbled upon a complete other reality. Like a blindingly bright Dr. Seuss world. The biggest sundial in the world is there with massive sweeping curves coming off the 27m tall gnomen tower. It is so big that the shadow is moving fast enough to be visibly counting the minutes. All our absolutely cracked out guide told us through his mouth full of paan and red saliva as his teeth rotted out before our very eyes was: "Madaaaaaaaam, this is a sundial." And then moved on. He was just in a completely other reality completely devoid of curiosity.

They found a SEAMONSTER!

That's pretty much as far as my mind can process. They found a kind of a seamonster! It's now named the Leviathan Melvillei.... after Herman Melville and his lovely vicious Moby Dick.

In the BBC article Dr Christian de Muizon speculates that the Leviathan might have fought the ancient 15m long shark. I feel like that image is every sci-fi kid and old map-maker's dream come true. Except Laurie's maybe.