Thinking of friends

The other week I received an amazing package full of strange things from my friend Clunk and her family, who are living in a caravan in the Scottish Highlands while they renovate a barn and turn it into their lovely new home.

I was too impatient to find my real camera so I took photos with my new phone, which replaced my old phone that died on my birthday- 4 years after I got it.

Clunk said that this chicken is perfect for me to turn golden- but I have to say I kind of like it the way it is, even if no-one else does!

What can it be?

Home made play dough with glitter in!

Clunk has just written a really lovely post about friends over on her blog and as i'd finally managed to work out how to get the photos off my camera and onto my computer I thought it was time I shared them with you. I recieved some amazing gifts for my birthday this year which I still haven't shared with you, there's still so much catching up I need to do with this blog!

Decorating time

On Sunday morning the chimney breast wall in my living room looked like this

With the help of a tall boy a few hours later it looked like this

By the end of the day there were a lot of holes needing filling

What started off as a simple plan to re-hang some of my art collection has turned into a full blown decorating project. Pieces of work that had been held on the wall for two or three years using industrial velcro pulled off the paper underneath when I started to take them down. The paper on the chimney breast doesn't match the rest of the room and seemed to have been painted multiple times which meant layers of it came off pretty easily once we started. Of course it wasn't that simple because once the big pieces were off there were millions of bits of 40 year old paper to try and remove, but by the end of a couple of hours we got it all off. Underneath the paper the wall was in ok condition- just a lot of holes to fill in from where pictures had been hung.

You can kind of make out the shape of the original Edwardian fireplace in this photo-it's a shame it got taken out sometime in the past (in the 40s perhaps). After discovering the ghost of the fireplace I started to look for images of Edwardian homes and got excited imagining what my house might've looked like when it was built.

The sea I swam in

A while back Lisa mentioned something on her blog that made me think about cellular memories. She was talking about how perhaps deep in her cells there was a memory of Japan, I think sometimes that deep in my cells there is a memory of living in the sea. I am never happier than when I am in the sea (which means in this cold country i'm not happy very often) on many occasions i've been likened to a mermaid (or perhaps more precisely a sea cow)- I am clumsy on dry land, my feet hurt when I walk- but when i'm in the sea I always feel happy. On Monday I swam in the cold water and twisted and turned and played around in the waves spinning round in circles. I'm not very good at swimming these days- i'm out of practice and my right leg and arm aren't very strong, but I think I need to work out a way to get into the sea more often.

Bats, Rats and rambling

Edith Abeyta has some great new projects on the go at the moment: Bats and Rats is asking for line drawings of bats, or rats to be combined into one design and then turned into a silkscreen that will be available to print with on October 2nd if you bring your own surface.


Deconstructing materialism Number 1- Trails to Treasure, invites you to take a page and make something with it- there's a list of 58 titles over on the website and the deadline is November 6th, with an exhibition in December.

Edith also invites you to order a freshly baked apple pie from her which, for a donation, she promises to deliver to your door with all funds being raised going towards future installation work.

I find Edith so inspirational- the way she uses collaboration and participation as an integral part of her work is really exciting to me. Until I was introduced to Edith and the way she worked I thought that I was a bit alone in the way the finished product is less important to me than the links we make between each other and the ways other people's input can shape our process.

When I learnt more about Edith and the way she works I felt that i'd found someone who was working along the same lines as me, and I look at her working practice now and feel like I have someone to look up to. Of course there's lots of other talented artists who I look up to- but I think I know I will never be purely a painter or textile artist and so, no matter how much I might like their (your) work it doesn't resonate in quite the same way.

(sorry I realise that's a really clunky way of explaining myself but I hope you understand me- one of my goals for this academic year is to become more articulate when talking about my work!)

Be nice

Originally uploaded by somethings hiding in here



Originally uploaded by somethings hiding in here

I was very excited today to see that my suggestion for Something's Hiding in here's 'your message here' had been used! I admit I wasn't the only person to suggest 'be nice' as a message, but it's made me very happy to see the words up on the board. Lots more images here.

Magical Mystery Tour part 4

Hello Autumn

I spent the first day of Autumn swimming in the sea at Lyme Regis. This is a photo from one of my trips there last year as I left my camera at home today. It was amazing to be in the sea at this time of year- the sun was shining and I was the only one in the water for a lot of the time I spent bobbing around. I think that maybe I am part mermaid because I am never happier than when in the sea, and the water temperature didn't seem to bother me much (although it has to be said I do come with a coating of blubber that helps). I'm sleepy, salty and sandy now, so i'll catch up tomorrow with some of the things i've been gathering lately.

nearly the last birthday of the month

Today was my nephew's 5th birthday, this makes the 3rd weekend in a row that someone in our family has had a birthday. Luckily it can't go on much longer, we're running out of capacity in our tummies for cake.

I've been volunteering at SNAP this week, which is why there's been radio silence from me. Hopefully after a long sleep tonight I will be back on track tomorrow and able to catch up with all the last months news.

Magical Mystery Tour part 3

Magical Mystery Tour part 2

Lady Lucy

Many years ago (hmmm let's say it was about 5 or 6) I helped put on Ladyfest Bristol. Lady Lucy and I were responsible for the visual arts side of things, and these photos are from when we sat in the garden of a cafe after visiting the gallery space we were going to use. I treated LL to lunch and she popped out to get money and came back with Karisma colour pencils for me. We drew each other in her sketch book using each others materials- I used her brush pen and she used my pencils. My picture of her says 'Live to skate, Sk8 to live' and ' I've forgotten how to draw'. Her picture of me says 'crunchcandy' and 'I have four diaries'. On the journey to the cafe, from the gallery Lady Lucy's skateboard had gone in the docks, never to be seen again, and I had told her about how I had multiple on-line diaries.

I found these photos the other day and scanned them in- just in time for me to let you know that Lady Lucy has just completed her MA at Chelsea and her show opens on the 18th September, running til the 21st.

Magical Mystery Tour part 1

Remembering

Memory is precious- some of mine is slowly coming back after I thought I had lost it for ever.

* once upon a time I owned a house in Bristol that I loved very much
* once upon a time I built a kitchen that was perfect
* once upon a time I had a garden full of plants
* once upon a time I painted my bedroom shocking pink

It's taken me four years to be able to look back at that little house and remember that I once loved it. Finding old photos has made me remember how much I like film and how every photo I take with film comes out a million times nicer than the ones I take digitally.

Hello again

As you may have noticed it seems like I am back on board the blog-mobile. I hope that the next few days don't overwhelm you with posts showing what i've been up to over the last few weeks, but i've done so many really nice things that I think you'll like to take a look at!

I've really enjoyed my mini-blog-break and I think i'm going to make it a regular thing. I know no-one is forcing me to keep a blog, but as soon as I took the pressure off myself I was able to read other people's blogs, share things on Tumblr, and generally enjoy spending time away from the computer.

Back here I said that I wanted to concentrate on some of these things:

* My nephew's first birthday
* My other nephew's first day at school
* Wrapping up Summer School for the term
* Getting reading to head back to Uni
* Making sure I tackle some health related stuff that i'm trying to ignore

I've managed to cover the first two things on the list, failed to wrap up summer school (sorry students!) and I think just taking a bit of time out has helped with the last two things on the list.

Here I mentioned my birthday and it's significance for me this year and the last couple of posts have been full of photos showing how it was spent. So all in all mission accomplished!

Finally, I wanted to thank you all for the birthday wishes and instructions to take some time out for myself. Fingers crossed it's worked!

Tea Party number 1

Happy Birthday Miss_Jen wherever you are.

We ate lots of cake on your behalf.

Tea Party number 2

Today was the second tea party in a week. I spent most of the day feeling near to tears- overcome by how amazing all my friends are. I'll post a photo soon of some of the fantastic things that I received, some delivered by hand, some came in the mail. I felt honoured to know such amazing and talented people. Some of them I've known for years, some of them i've only met relatively recently, some of them had come all the way from America and were super jet lagged, but everyone was amazing and I was glad to have them here.

I knew I wouldn't be able to stay away for long...

I just wanted to let you know that although i'm not going to be posting anything here for a while I am updating my Tumblr several times a day it seems. Tumblr is perfect for how my brain is feeling at the moment- I am able to collect together images and ideas without having to do any writing to go with them- just a handy 'share on Tumblr' button on my toolbar and away I go.

One of the reasons for my little blog break is the fact that my birthday is coming up next week. I share my birthday with some horrible things ( I was born the same day a coup as that bought Pinochet to power and of course 9/11), but I also share my birthday with some pretty amazing people (my roller derby friend Ellie to name just one). One of my birthday twins died nearly 2 years ago and i've decided to spend 'our' birthday this year in her home town- hopefully seeing as many of her friends and family as I can. I think this is what I need to do this year and now i've booked my train tickets I feel much better about things.

Regular blogging will resume after my birthday (unless the Large Hadron Collider being switched on next week leads to the end of the world)

Catching up again

I have a lot of catching up to do- both reading and writing this time. I think i'm going to have to take a bit of a break from the blog for a week or so, just until I can get myself all caught up with all sorts of other things that are going on at the moment. Things like:

* My nephew's first birthday
* My other nephew's first day at school
* Wrapping up Summer School for the term
* Getting reading to head back to Uni
* Making sure I tackle some health related stuff that i'm trying to ignore

It's my birthday on the 11th so I aim to be back by then- in the meantime I will probably post some of the photos i've been taking recently from all my little adventures.