Little Birds

Apologies for my tardiness in updating regularly, I can offer no excuse aside from Life and the various positive and negative merits it holds. 

The Art- man ( http://aesthetesfoot.blogspot.co.uk/) and I seem to have developed a bit of routine all of a sudden, and a creative one at that. We have started working together in companionable silence in our little studio, making use of every bit of daylight. The quiet is wonderful after a busy question filled day and I long for our moments like this. We are, for the first time, working on a ‘wedding project’ at the same time and the same project and it’s so special that we are. Although a bit clichéd these days, we’re making 1000 origami cranes to hang around our wedding space when we marry in October. It seems to be quite a popular trend these days but being the ‘half-house or Origami’ it seems all the more fitting. The different papers that we fold all mean something or were chosen on colour alone. Some are our letters to each other, some album covers- even photographs we’ve printed etc. I’ve been given paper as a gift from Japan and some sheets have been rescued from the bargain shelves of art shops. They all mean something; they all have a memory, 1000 memories in fact. It’s our intention to hang the cranes behind our headboard once we’re married; not to remind us of patience, care and love in a marriage but mark a moment in time when we sat together ankles linked folding. 

Special mention to Helen (http://helensarahvaughan.blogspot.co.uk/) for such lovely words and post about a little piece I made recently for the said, H. x

Style Inspiration

Do you ever have that craving to have a succinct style icon that you can look to occasionally to inspire? I’d say I search for this inspiration in every magazine I receive (always second hand and months out of date) but nobody cuts it really. You see real ‘icons’ are never quite me too perfect and never really retro enough, certainly vintage but that ‘retro’ edge is as rare as the cockerel’s wife’s dentures.

Inspiration comes from the weirdest of areas my favourite and most enduring being: Tin Tin from ‘Thunderbirds.’  I kid you not, I really can’t find any ‘celebrity I’d rather look like, accept Lady Penelope maybe….but I’ll forever be a brunette. Now I realise that there is an issue with strings and everything but surely most icons come with a certain number of strings attached. The sixties cool combo of hair/make up / Buddhist-super hero cool makes her the woman for me.

The ‘Art-man’ and I aspire to the ‘Modernist’ ideal and if viewed intently enough Tracy Island house is a positive show home, so really he needs a modernist wife to suit. But can I really go into my uber-posh hairdressers with a pic of a puppet?  I doubt it…oh well.  

Plaits

Confession: I’m not growing my hair for our impending wedding, I’m growing it for the sheer love of plaits…no really I am. On a practical side, it’ll be really helpful to plait and pin them to the top of my head aka ‘Heidi’ and Florence (of the Machine fame) in the day, for everyone needs an aerodynamic Librarian in their life. But I like the idea of plaiting an array of different textures into the said plaits, tweed, tartan, rolled paper beads etc.  a day-time hat if you like…

Pessimism…discuss

Confession, I used to hate those types of questions in the English Lit classroom. ‘Discuss’ suggests that in the first place the lecturer was on the hop following a ‘Guardian spouting’ Merlot slurping evening before with a group of friends so afraid of having opinions of their own they become empty abandoned billboards in a derelict town. A vehicle for another wo/man’s opinions to be projected upon. Anyway…’Discuss’ always feels as if one is doing the legwork for another article, a more critical one, that our work will just act as a series of gobbets.

I’m reminded of the Jim Kirkwood work: ‘There must be a pony!” where two sons are tested by their Father about their differing reactions; one an optimist and the other the aforementioned pessimist. I think its experience that dictates our life rhetoric and in what camp we fall. There are those confused souls who believe that they are one only to be, in actual fact, another. The closet optimist is a very dangerous specimen.  All Jack Dee in the day only to delight in wild and obscure collections behind closed doors at night. I’m the reverse.

My public propaganda is ‘little miss sunshine’ whereas my head is your archetypal tragedian, some things just seem too good to be true and I ruin it by worrying things will change. My optimism is for others, I can get extremely excited for another’s goal/quest and even my own but this is undone when the doubt creeps in. How easy would it be to undo this self-conditioning? Is it possible, in the first instance? People do change, they have that potential, I truly believe that- I wouldn’t be able to do the job I do if I didn’t think people could but it’s a lot more difficult for self-change isn’t it?

I worked in a busy public Library for a number of years, a job I really enjoyed for three main elements: variety, books and pace. Quite often members of the public would come in with a referral from the Doctor’s surgery for a ‘self-help’ book. These enquiries were treated with the strictest privacy. This medicating through literature is key; a pile of books cures feelings of cynicism more than the weightiest of drugs, well for me it does. There is hope between those pages.  There is hope in a ‘crafting project’ those moments when you get an idea or are inspired by another’s work gives more of a lift than any sip of champagne or quick fix. I think the key is this act has the potential to exist longer than us, this act of legacy is simple and yet dynamic. The creative gene, if possessed and more to the point, flexed is capable of allowing us to free our heads of pessimism.  One step after another result in something more than we’d expect ourselves to achieve; therein obliterating the pessimistic self….momentarily at least.  

Questions

I well an truly had to scratch my head, Stan style this afternoon. I’m pretty new to blogging. This site was formed as a bit of an experiment in connection with other sites I have (Etsy/Facebook/Flickr) etc but friends, without blogs are reading and I’m receiving the most delightful emails. I was forwarded information regarding the Leibster blog award from the delightful Helen (http://helensarahvaughan.blogspot.co.uk) and accordingly here are my 11 random facts:

I always turn to page 44 of a book I’m about to buy and read it. This is a relative thing but if a novel is of a generic size the plot has started by then.

If you add together the letters (quals) after my name, it sounds like a fart in a bath.

I really dislike walnuts (it’s the squeak business) but adore all other nuts.

I brew Earl Grey tea far too long until it’s the colour of black coffee.

I really like the Terry Thomas gap between my front 2 teeth and sometimes I wish it was wider.

I have far too many Nightmares

Tomatoes are divinity in my book

I always forget about toast, I get distracted so now I’ve become accustomed to eating cold toast and prefer it.

If I squint my chap looks like Humphrey Boggart

I dislike tartan but love tweed

It’s my year’s ambition to learn a ‘Charleston’ routine in full, it reminds me of my Nanna.

The answers to Helen’s posed questions are:

1. Have you tasted snow? Yes, the recent snow didn’t taste of anything much. The snow in Venice tastes extremely salty.
2. What was the last thing you ate that you had cooked? “Fishfinger pie” A University staple that I cook for my fella and I occasionally, it’s pure nursery food and an exercise in food strata. A week before I went to University as an undergraduate, my Mum cut out a recipe from the newspaper written by the actress Frances Barber-that is the pie.
3. Would you rather work on a farm or in a factory? A factory -but in the 1940s. A favourite artist of mine is Ethel Gabain, and I would have loved to have met a few of her portrait women  and listened to their conversations.
4. What memory do you have about one of your  teeth falling out? I remember laying the table in my doll’s house out in full for the tooth fairies to have a meal when they came to collect my tooth. Each plate had a rather colourful ‘dolly mixture’ and the teacups were filled with cordial. In the morning I found little teeth marks in the half eaten dolly mixtures.
5. What couldn't you live without? Multiple contact/conversations with my chap and my parents through-out the day- all three are the most delightful company and have the quickest wits.  
6. Three songs you like? All of me: Billie Holiday, Allez Viens: Bart and Baker and You are my sunshine:  Johnny Cash
7. Film you think everyone should watch? Brief Encounter
8. Food staple? Sushi:
9. Favourite smoothie combination? I’m a green smoothie girl, so anything with apples/spinach/kale/lime.
10. trousers or dresses? This is a hard question to answer because my staple look is a dress over jeans.
11. flowers or plants? Fruit plants. I love the look of fruit more than flowers.

I will use the weekend to come up with some questions for you…… x

What could you have named better?

This started as a Blog about ‘pet hates’ a question a few people have asked me recently, I must look particularly ‘scowl-ridden’ at the moment. When you ask people what ticks them off, they list a number of things that make you feel self-absorbed for your one selfish pet hate. The masses list: mean people, lost money, crime, hatred, injustice etc.

Mine is, when the tea bag label falls into your tea on a 10 min break. Ok I know this is ridiculous but that’s it I like a dry label to dunk the bag whilst it’s brewing. If it falls in I curse for Britain (grated 1940s swear words but still)

 But, today when brewing a calming camomile tea, the little blurb was quite enlightening, apparently the Greeks inspired by the camomile’s distinct apple-like smell, called it ‘kamia-melon’ (ground apple).  I like this…it’s obvious, it makes sense and you can count on the Greek culture, so much nobler than the Romans. I’m Welsh and as such have never forgiven the Romans. As the Monty boys ask: “What have the Romans ever done for us?” Hmmmmm

But it got me thinking, what would you have named differently if you’d been there at the beginning with the Greeks: Bee-jam for honey? Monkey enigma tree? Empty cake (Doughnut)? 

I love the birth of a word, and if anything that’s the ‘QI’ of being a Librarian in a Land based college, Natural history/Horticulture loves a good root word. Our students are so familiar with Latin terms they throw them about with the confidence of text speak. I’m proud of them for this, it is in my book (excuse the pun) the ultimate street-wise. 

(Coloured) Box(es) Beats

I’m a child of the Eighties, I’m not proud of it but there we are. The ‘Art-man’ assures me it was a very good decade for music but I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s an amniotic thing, maybe the birth pangs of electric pop were keenly felt whilst I was still in the womb for me to think, enough now. No, I begin and end with Billie Holiday and I follow in my Dad’s size nines in the belief that you can only really get to know an artist by remaining loyal. His poison is one, Robert Dylan (the early years).

However, I do seem to be experiencing a bit of an eighties revival, well 1988-89 to be precise.  On a trip to London I saw and was smitten with a ‘Moon collection’ bag from that great fashion concept that was ‘Benetton.’ I loved it on sight, its bold primary colours were/are framed by black piping and I was treated to it by my parents as a holiday treat. 

This Mondrian inspired beauty has lasted in its appeal and look and is now my everyday bag for work. The sapphire blue, apple green and scarlet are glorious first thing in the morning and I do feel like an art thief nonchalantly walking with a painting under my arm. However, anything that makes me think of Peter O’Toole at ten to eight is ok in my book….what a cool cat.

Weekend days will be studio spent and a conspiratorial ‘wedding/Chanel’ lunch with my beloved Mum on Sunday x