1. Do it now2. Ask yourself - What do I aspire to be?3. Ask yourself - What do I want to create?2. Don't Self Sabotage (something I'm quite good at) it's what stops you from being the person you want to be (making the things that you want to make) Comes from being scared - "What do I gain from this?" and self sabotage usually leads to short term gain3. Don't waste time on guilt. Get on with it and resolve to do better. A few good little things (big things!) I've already picked up from reading a great book called 'The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life' by Twyla Tharp
Beauty Is Embarrassing is a documentary chronicling the life and work of the artist Wayne White. I haven't seen it, and I want to see it, but I don't know how I can!
Whether he’s parading a twenty foot tall puppet through the Tennessee hillside, romping around the Hollywood Hills dressed in his LBJ puppet suit, relaxing in his studio pickin’ his banjo, or watching his children grow up much too soon, Wayne White always seems to have a youthful grin and a desperate drive to create art and objects. It is an infectious quality that will inspire everyone to find their pleasure in life and pursue it at all costs.
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http://vimeo.com/43734566"art can be a 24/7 lifestyle, art can be fun""Do what you love. It's going to lead to where you want to go"Wayne White's artwork is fantastic too. Here are a couple of his word paintings:My favourite thing I have seen of his is the giant mask, seen in the movie poster above. I have in my pipeline, and I am constantly thinking about making excessive fancy dress costumes and too-big masks. More on this soon.The director and team are trying to get the film into theatres. Apparently it makes people want to stop procrastinating and get on with those projects they have had in the pipe line for 20 years. Maybe you are inspired by Wayne and you want to help make this happen. Here is the Kickstarter page. They are looking for crowdfunding.Images taken from Wayne's Website
The Mapping of Jerry Gretzinger. From 1963 to the Stopping PointStarted drawing a map, it started as a doodle. Hefinished a whole page and found himself moving onto other pages, joining them up.One piece a day. He goes to his studio as soon as he wakes up. Spending time re-mixing paints. He's made a deck of cards which he chooses one from, which instructs him on which of his half-finished maps he will firstly archive, and then work on. Other cards have different instructions.http://vimeo.com/6745866This was a great video, I love how much detail there is about Jerry's working process and the structures behind his making.Jerry is working on exhibiting the entire project:
The concept is that the installation will be about half complete when the show opens on October 5 and will continue until Saturday afternoon, the 6th. Visitors will be able to watch the process. I will be there helping and, when the installation is done, will be working in my on-stage studio and answering questions. The show will close on Sunday the 14th or the following day. We'll be more specific soon.
How I wish I likes in America and could see this!Screen shots taken from this video
http://vimeo.com/31262642Gary Schott's film about his work has inspired me. It shows a lot of the artist at work in his metal smithing studio. Very exciting to see someone making like this. He is Mechanism based, but a huge importance is on the mechanism being aesthetically pleasing and also that there is humour withiin the work - it's quite rediculous and also intimate. A contraption which caresses your nose. Ephemeral and physical. I like the goggles with his name on. "My goal is to create an object that is seamingly simple." Me too Gary, me too.Gary Schott's website / Wonder Object - his blogWalley Film's website
Pica is a medical disorder characterized by an appetite for substances largely non-nutritive. The name of the condition originates from the Latin word for magpie, a bird that is reputed to eat almost anything.Pica is seen in all ages, particularly in pregnant women, small children, and those with developmental disabilities.metal, clay, coal, sand, dirt, soil, feces, chalk, pens and pencils, paper, batteries, spoons, toothbrushes, soap, mucus, latex gloves, ash, gum, lip balm, contact lenses, tacks and other office supplies.Pica is more common in women and children.In addition to poisoning, there is also a risk of gastro-intestinal obstruction or tearing in the stomach. Another risk of dirt-eating is the possible ingestion of animal feces and accompanying parasites.Picture - 1,446 items swallowed by a patient and removed from her intestines and stomach. She died during surgery from bleeding caused by 453 nails, 42 screws, safety pins, spoon tops, and salt and pepper shaker tops.
I just found a brilliant tutorial over at the Wicked & Weird blog (A good'n for a variety of creative inspiration) The blog post was a re-post, originally taken from A Beautiful Mess, and the blog post has detailed steps and lots of images to help you with this DIY project.This is what you'll make:And this is how you'll do it:
Find a crap old painting
Use sticky letter stickers to spell something out on-top of the painting
'Windstille' An installation by German artist Regine Ramseier.The following is taken fromRamseier's website. Thank you Google Translate! Although it doesn't make all that much sense."I have focused this work on the small room in the art laboratory. Around 2000 withered dandelion flowers alive and easily commute from the ceiling. A symbol of life and birth. A symbol of vanity. A moment to pause. Hold your breath and turn to the transient of a breath. Marvel at the miracle chamber. Hermann Hesse has expressed my feelings into words. In the poem, momentary flashes. The small white room contains a large window, which locks out the green of the park. The dandelion sky slopes from the door to the window and it seems as if the flowers worn out from the room, the light and the day to meet. But still they hang in the room and are permanent. Captured in my memory. They will not return. But the golden meadows, this I know, the dandelions, they will return next spring."
You'd like to give out exciting Christmas gifts, correct? I'd love to have the money and time to buy everyone something which will be special to them for Christmas. Something they'll use, or that will excite or inspire them, or simply make them laugh. It's tough at Christmas, gifts become thrown to the back of my mind and at the last minute I'm worrying. Or forgetting people. Or getting resentful that my family is so big.I usually make things, which I enjoy and keeps it cheap. BUT I know I'll be searching for those few special presents for those special people, so here's some things I've come across recently which I think would make brilliant gifts, and maybe you will too.Banter Banner believe we should celebrate the everyday. "no longer only for holidays, but for the everyday. As art. As design. As inspiration"'Good Times' banner. Loads more sayings available: Joie De Vivre // Sweet Dreams // Celebrate The Everyday$10Buy it here at BanterBanner.com.'Wild At Heart' Rosette. Hot pink ribbon with gold text: 'Wild At Heart' A quote from Lula, in Lynch's 1990 Wild at Heart: "This whole world's wild at heart and weird on top."$16Buy it here at BanterBanner.com.Fake PooMakes for a brilliant present. Nearly everyone ever finds this funny "This pile of brown doggie doo looks so realistic you can almost smell it."Cheap from Amazon/Ebay/Jokeshops.'Coast' by Marco Suarez: "These photos capture the beauty of Northern Ireland. Framing this photo in a circle creates an awesome composition that is sure to be a highlight in any room. The circle has a diameter of 13" and is printed on Somerset Velvet watercolor paper with archival inks. This photo is part of a limited run of 50 and each print is individually signed and numbered."$60Buy this print and others at Marco's Etsy shop.Hand painted geometric pendant. Painted on wood with a silver chain. By Vickygonart$24Buy this and other jewellery at Vicky's Etsy shop.'Crap' Text Artwork. Shamelsss plug here! I made this. Each piece is completely unique, with the fine lines drawn freehand and each letter individually hand-cut.£23No Etsy shop at present, but email me if you want to buy this- hello@lucybarfoot.co.ukMountain Δ Triangle Necklace by Adrienne Wroath. (made-to-order with love and care.) Adrienne makes handcrafted precious metal Jewellery. Her inspiration for is drawn from simple lines and shapes found within her environment, often focusing on geometric forms.$42You can buy this and other pieces from Adrienne's Etsy shop. And here is her blog
This shape, I can't stop drawing you. It's taken from a sketch of Christo & Jeanne Claude's 'Surrounded Islands' which looks like this:"6.5 million square feet of material was stretched over seven miles and used to surround a series of uninhabitated islands off the coast of Florida. The resulting work was visible from all around and visually augmented through the use of a shockingly bright pink." See more of this incredible installation here. Lots of sketches and photographs.
Just made this, a poster of Lomography's 10 Golden rules to use in the Light Box shop for the Appreciation of Beauty workshop, where participants get to use Lomo Cameras (Fish Eye, Mini Diana and Actionshop Flash) to take photographs. I aways knew of the 10 golden rules, but making this here poster just refreshed it all for me, feeling very inspired!
This is going to be a big one... I have bought a new sketchbook and wanted to start this new burst of creation with taking a look at my inspirations. I'm forever saving images to the 'Nice found images' folder on my desktop, but never really take the time to look at them, so I'm putting them up here, reminding myself and sharing them with you.
I've tried to reference the images, but mostly I don't tend to make note.
If you own anything and want a link to you on here, no problemo, just email me or comment.
Balloon lady on the beach. My dreams sometimes look like this
So I'm now back to work! The family I nanny for a bit are home from their month long holiday, and Light Box is back after it's month off too. I had a lovely week back home in Bournemouth, seeing my brothers and parents.I'm really happy that I took my camera and focussed on taking lots of pictures last week. I had a lovely time on my dad's boat, snapping away and making us super-noodles whilst he fixed something, and I took some shots of a very old greenhouse at my brother's next-door-neighbours in Wimbourne.
A very old green house
Love this plant - the one which attracts all the butterflies. Budlia?
Space-age mushrooms. Love the color of them
Hello greenhouse again
What is it?
Tallest mast in Keyhaven, Lymington
Pretty patterned rope
The trampoline part on the catamaran
Big light
Speckled mouldy mastic
Keep off the sea
Lovely colored buoys
Old boat in need of love
amazing colors
Just Lucy, just me
20 eggs
20 egg shells ann squished together (vary satisfying and sensual)
Party in the bath
Smoke in the eye
House on the hill at Branksome Beach, Bournemouth
Sea cam
Majestic Molly (who swam for the first time that day)
Rafaël Rozendaal is an artist who works with the internet. The majority of his work is not physical, it can all be attached to an email. And it's funny too. Here are my favorites:
'Tiny' is sung in my head all day sometimes.I'm So TinyI'm so tinyit would take a million steps to reach youi'm so shinyi feel crappyi'm so tinyi'm so tinyi'm so tinymy crap is the size of a grain of ricenot so shinyi feel crappyi'm so tinyi'm so tinyi'm so tinyI keep falling into a cigarette hole?i 'm so shinyi feel crappy
I am always inspired by process. This combined with an 'absence of artist' is what compels me to make art. One of my favorite artists is Tim Knowles. I wrote a chapter about him in my dissertation (titled 'Absent Artists and Performing Materials')"Tim Knowles is plotting the winds. His artwork relies on the force of nature to create his artwork. In his Tree Drawings, different species of trees are creating marks on paper from the pens tied to them due to the movement of the wind. ‘Weeping Willow on Circular Panel’ (2005) uses one hundred pens and draws on a five-meter circular MDF disk, which is separated into ten segments after the completion of the drawing. ‘Four Panel Weeping Willow’ is also separated: four segments drawn from fifty pens attached to the weeping willow tree."Throughout all my years of admiring what Tim does, I have never tried a tree drawing myself. A couple of weeks ago Lucy, Orlagh and I had a go at it. We tried two methods - one is making a big pen out of a massive tree branch, and the second was to hold the paper up against a pen-holding branch and let the tree draw.I realise that tree drawings take a lot of patience - especially if you're holding the paper up for the tree. once i get myself a big box or an easel, I'll get some proper drawings doneThere's more information specifically on his Tree Drawings here. As well as Tree Drawings, Tim also created Vehicle Motion Drawings, Postal Works and Balloon Drawings, amongst other projects.
Lucy Duggan found this article in The Times Magazine, written by Jonathan Richards. You can view the full article by clicking here, it's about the popularity of different baby names, but I was just amazes by the beauty of these graphs. I wrote to Mr. Richards and he told me about the graphs:"The Baby Name graphs were of a type known as a Stacked Area graph.It's actually a relatively rudimentary graph type. You use it whenyou're trying to how the share of a given set of fields changes overtime. You'll find it as one of the charting options in Excel, amongother programs."
I love the film Amélie, It's so heart-warming and romantic. It's about time I watched it again I think. When I was about fourteen I made a zine, and this was a page in it - all the notes I made whilst watching Amélie; everyone's likes and dislikes and other little lists. Click on it to see it bigger.
"This is the true joy in life: Being used for a purpose recognised by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."
