19.9.11

Research

At the moment I am busybusy but I don't really have anything to show for it yet, other than a sore shoulder and strained eyes. I am super excited about the projects I am working on, especially the Pencil Agency commissions. As a taster I thought you might like to warm your eyes on these beauties I have been hoarding as research.





  

18.9.11

Hokusai and Berlin















Back in Berlin, no more summer holiday, no more cows outside the window and mushrooms in the forest, no more lazy warm evenings on the porch.. but enough of that! Here in Berlin we went to see the Hokusai exhibition that is now taking place at the Martin- Gropius Bau until the 24th of October and it is really an amazing exhibition! With japanese woodcuts and many of the books made by Hokusai with pages full of drawings explaining how to draw clouds, people dancing, funny faces, magic tricks such as evaporating or growing long arms or blowing out smoke in the shape of a horse, the books are incredible. And the prints still have such beautiful colors, pink and greens and blues. We stayed in the exhibition for three hours and I wish I could zap you Plats people over here to see it because I know you would love it too!! The buildings, the trees, mountains and sea, just perfect. So that was a lot of fun and I would love to be able to flick through one of the many comic books he illustrated, so detailed, oh wow. Exciting!
Apart from that I have been busy in the studio working on new images, I have discovered some beautiful rooms on one of the empty floors in the building and it's brilliant to be there and make photographs. I can't believe how lucky I have been to find this house to work in, it feels like a true treasure box to me..So that's what I will be doing next week too, and the next.
but the Hokusai exhibition..I really wish you could see it!

2.9.11

Walking sculptures



I've only just discovered Theo Jansen and his incredible strandbeests. (You can watch them move here.) They're designed to walk along the beaches of Holland and move the sand around. Watching them move is somehow quite overwhelming in the intricacies of the movement that make them seem so completely alive. He gave a Ted talk a while back, so if you're as amazed as I am you can see even more here: