quiet like the golden pears ripening in a green and white bowl on my desk,
still like the winter buds on the bare tree
outside my window, and the magnolias in the front.

these slow and beautiful measures of time,
secretly as wrinkles form around eyes young
and the moment a freckle appears
– easy to miss.

friends feathered

drawing for dad

My Dad suggested that i keep a sketchbook with me and draw things as i go about my everyday. Well of course this is a very good idea, makes a lot of sense, and i do keep a little sketch book with me anyway, but have abandoned actually drawing in it for a while. Anyway, so this one's for you Dad!

drawing

This is something i am playing around with in flash, thought i would post the testers.

The garden is in bloom

mapping damage

Getting distracted, I am supposed to be writing an assignment about photography and mass media, how i get distracted, I have chosen a photo from the Sunday Times, from 18 May 2008 of rescue operations in China. On the same page is a story about the aid mission in Burma, directly comparing the way each government is dealing with each crises, and the freedom of press in the area. So I got googling, maps, trying to inform myself a bit about the area affected. It felt a bit like snooping or spying, I wanted to see how google earth covered each area. The satellite photos of Burma are quite clear, they even had extra images to show the cyclone path and some of the damage (screen-grabs), but not so clear for China, thought about the mapping and coverage. anyway as i said, i am getting sidetracked. i thought i would include my side tracks anyway.

views

Al in the kitchen
tulips

The Christmas stuffing sage always seems to have a new leaf.

Pot plants at the front door... I still need to figure out the best angle for photographing the garden.

from my window

I have moved into a new little room, I painted it white and this really pleases me because i hate the dingy magnolia colour all these walls are painted here, with their woodchippy wallpaper- it ends up resembling oats porridge - or worse sick. I moved all my pot plants from the old place so the garden in the front is much less of a wasteland. There is oregano, rosemary, lavender, star magnolia (which is white), varieties of heather, the clementis which seemed to be dead is getting new leaves and so is that other little shrub, although i'm not sure what its called. I've sown spring onion and wild flower seeds in some small pots, there is a fig 'tree' with two leaves and i'm just waiting for the lilies to pop out their shy little heads. As you my have gathered, gardening gives me the greatest pleasure. I love seeing things grow and helping them on the way.

I have finally come up with a rough idea for my research article- what a relief! funny how it was there all the time and makes so much sense - it has to be about contemporary South African art. I was doing all these searches and getting quite depressed about the whole thing, feeling so detached from South Africa, and making art, and all of that. It felt like these countries are all like separate worlds, the uk and London is like this world with so many different windows looking out and into it that you don't know which ones to choose. Anyway, i want to write about digital art, specifically internet art, and fortunately this is literally at my fingertips and on top of that it connects with my third year research article about the relationship between digital texts and history texts, embroidery and digital images. it fits. Need to speak to katty!

Art is a guaranty of Sanity

I went to the Tate Modern at the beginning of December, and the Louis Bourgeois Retrospective was showing. I have been putting off getting a membership, but suddenly it seemed all the more worthwhile, I wanted to see the show as many times as possible to really absorb it. I felt so privileged to have the opportunity to see so much of her work. It was a really emotional experience for me. She is one of my favourite artists and her work is really best seen in the flesh so to speak.

I identify with the way in which she uses art as a way of coming to terms with life. Her skill, the incredible layers of meaning in her metaphors, and frankly the tenacity with which she has continued to create for over half a century. There are further connections, the theme of thread and weaving that runs though her work, in her giant sculpture of spiders and fragments of tapestry and later soft sculptures. I went back again this weekend, thinking it would be th last time before the show ended, but fortunately I might just be able to go again before it closes net weekend.

I feel inspired to step forward and be brave and make and explore this little life of mine through my art, to really live it.

Apologies for the low quality of images, my scanner is not talking properly to my computer yet, negotiations are slow, but reconciliation is in sight.

Workbook

Meditation

This is a love meditation one of my friends passed on to me, and I really feel that it is quite beautiful. In the begining you are suposed to use I, then he, she or they for someone we love and then someone we like, someone neutral to us, and lastly someone who has made us suffer. The idea you need to nurture and be happy in yourself before passing this on to others.

Love Meditation
May I be peaceful, happy, and light in body and spirit.
May I be safe and free from injury.
May I be free from anger, fear and anxiety.

May I learn to look at myself with the eye of understanding and love.
May I be able to recognize and touch the seeds of joy and happiness in myself.
May I learn to identify and see the sources of anger, craving and delusion in myself.

May I know how to nourish the seeds of joy in myself every day.
May I be able to live fresh, solid, and free.
May I be free from attachment and aversion, but not indifferent.

back to blogging

§It has been a year now i think, that i have been writing this blog and prompted by a number of things that have been going on, i think i am ready to pick it up again and get going. My exams are over with and all i have to do now is wait for the results, which is giving me some restless sleep, but there is nothing much to be done now. I have started working through the artist's way again, and i see this as part of the course.

Last week i was in Italy again, which was a welcome break from London, and a beautiful and inspiring time for me. I feel like i have a fresh view on things. We went to Ville d'Este on Saturday and i took many short clips of the fountains and moving water to add to my image base. I am keen to get working on them. I still have the work that i started previously that i want to finish. I will view all these things as seeds, that i need to plant and water, nurture so that they can grow. For now though, a sneak preview... I edited the clips in iMovie but did not apply the transitions properly, now i've figured it out... so its a bit jumpy but its a start and i already feel as though i have learned something.

layers

The process of lining up and layering images...

patience

Well, I am working on the animation with the sandwoman, and as many people have told me before, animation requires patience... and heaps extra if you don't use a tripod when taking photos for stop motion. I will carry a tripod with me.... I will carry a tripod with me....I will carry a tripod with me....I will carry a tripod with me....I will carry a tripod with me....I will carry a tripod with me.... I have lined up an odd three hundred images with about 400 to go... but getting there! I am determined to finish this thing, get it moving. Some thoughts about the whole idea...

Well its about washing away or dissolving perceptions. I made the sand woman on a day when i was feeling rather sad, back in South Africa, thinking about who I have become in these years away from home and the way people see me and how I see myself. It was Good Friday and we were on the road, I thought about all the Good Fridays before, quite days of contemplation as I was growing up, with the sense of transformation and healing awaiting. I felt this weight of judgment on me (internal and external), the weight of disapproval - and frustration with it. As I sat in the beach sand, I was trying to separate myself from these perceptions... this is what they see, its not who I am, it is their perception and I wanted to be free of the piercing sadness it made me feel. I wanted to let go of it. I made her to be washed away, with the tide coming in, forgiven and released.

Well, I'll be getting back to it now.

positive thoughts

A minor or major distraction from what I am doing, I am working on my assignment but the dangers of looking for info on the web is that I keep on getting distracted when I'm searching and I end up going off on a complete tangent. So I came across a blog and then I realised I had not written mine for the week.

I went to oxford last monday to look at the murals in the Oxford Union library by William Morris and other Pre-Raphaelite painters. Unfortunately I could not get a very good photo of his mural, but of some of the others. They depict scenes from Mort d'Arthur. The ceiling is also painted by Morris, although the initial design was lost because the plaster was not adequately prepared and Morris returned in 1875 to paint the design which is currently decorates the vaulted ceiling.





SO... back to work! My inspirational quotes for the moment...

I am succesful at fininshing what I start - Julia Fraser

Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it! Action has magic, power and grace. - Goethe

New model for paper doll

I have been trying to think of ways of making the paperdoll more flexible and have made a new model. Its a bit time consuming putting her bits all together in the right place, but i am definitely happier. So this weekend is probably going to involve making more characters or objects, with my story in mind... which you'll have to wait and see... For now, a sneak preview of the new look paper dolly...

climate change and sustainable power

I think this is important. If you want to find out more information about ways that you can make a difference, click on this link - http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/

Paper Doll

It is amazing how when you start doing something that is absorbing, time seems to fold up like a fan. I was sitting here, trying to figure out how to use iMovie and suddenly three hours have past. I have something to show for the time at least. I made a little paper doll, I suppose she is sort of a representation of me. Anyway the aim was to animate her, a little easier i thought than jumping in and building a 3d character and set. I am still figuring out how to get the walking properly and i have some ideas for refining her design so that she can move better. I also need to work out how to make this software do what i want it to do and refine me story a bit, plan it better.... and all that stuff. But the rewarding part i think is these tiny bits that you get right when you're trying things out, that is the fun part too and i did not want to bog down the process with all that stuff.



What is it about then? well it started with the idea of animating her posting a letter, and i have some footage of that...to be included later. Fran gave me this diary with all sorts of pictures of the sea and boats... which Al posted all the way here, although i had not expected him to, it was supposed to be stashed with all the other boxes and stuff that Mum and Dad are storing for me. Anyway, so this diary travelled by surface mail (ship) all the way here. I have being sorting through all of my stuff, trying to get myself organised and I saved a number of the images before getting rid of the diary. So I have all these images of boats and the sea and, they linked in with what I wanted to do, I thought they could be a vessels to transport my messages. They also connect with my other water images in a way. The idea I suppose is to represent the connection, or the desired connection with home and my roots.

Fridays

I am well on my way to sorting out my filing issues, and have transferred and archived most of them! Ready to rock and roll with my new computer! Well, that is just a start but a good one because now I'll be able to get going properly with these animations/movies I keep promising.

Last week I went on a course about curating, found it really useful in that it has given me a much better idea of how to go about doing things. I enjoyed meeting new people and having conversations with them. Many of them were also artists.

I have also decided to change the way i do this blog a bit, that is, I will be updating it every Thursday to be ready for Friday, this is much more manageable than trying to do it everyday...don't laugh! I know that I only seem to get to it twice a month! Its just a way of dealing with the guilt and being a bit more reasonable with my expectations. I want to start building a website (have started) so I need to fit that in somewhere too!

Anyway... watch this space and I'll try not to dupe you.

indian ocean

Things seem to be getting back to some kind of normality, that is, I seem to have both the time and the focus to post something. I'm adding to the previous water footage with this video of the Indian ocean taken at the heads at Knysna in April this year. As i mentioned before about wanting to catalogue my images and video, well, its a kind of start. I have heaps of water, so i thought it was an easy enough one to start with, until i figure out exactly what i want to do with it all. I waas browsing around on Youtube and came across some really inspiring animations, some of them really short... I'll add the links at the below.

what a great day
sand on glass animation