not that i'm having any...

Logh - Saturday Nightmares from Bad Taste Records on Vimeo.

pet portraits...

spot the odd one out...



trick question? well maybe, but i reckon you guessed right anyway. yes, 3 are long sticks made of wood used for various artistic endeavours. they are also all most happy to be placed in the talented hands of Richard Phoenix. if it isn't enough that Richard is in involved in about a gazillion musical projects (and good ones too), and works hard at his job, he has also proved himself to be a more than proficient Artist (note the capital A). Richard is also good at apologising. he likes to say sorry for always being busy and not getting things done. but here's the truth... this guy can't stop. nothing can stop him. he's one of the most amazing and talented people i know and NOTHING will stop him. especially now he has an AWESOME NEW WEBSITE (made by my skinny fingers... ahem...) he should also be your first port of call for a portrait of your favourite furry friend...


richardphoenix.co.uk
huxleyboon.wordpress.com

and oh yeah... the mug. that's my new mug. it's really big and good and hungry caterpillar? little smiley sun? ace!

there was this one time...

when i went to Edinburgh. in fact it was last week... too many great things happened for me to write a very coherent blog today, instead i'll let it trickle into some entries over the next few days... but here's SOME stuff that went on... Jez and Lizzy (are awesome), walking up hills, walking down hills (and not walking up a windy hill in Holyrood Park). sun and rain, then a bit more sun... rain... sun...rain... (etc)... meeting new friends, and the occasional old one. ghost tour. trees. art. and buckets of inspiration... i just realised this was my first trip away since Stockholm last year, which is perhaps why i treated it like a proper holiday and drank too much, slept too much, spent too much. totally worth it.

but let's remember why i was even there in the first place. i owe it all to the brainchild of Jez and Lizzie... 'We Are the Friction'. i'm not going into what it's all about again, but here's an update...



the book was launched at Analogue Books last thursday. it was pretty great. it still is pretty great and is on until the end of August... numerous images can be seen on Analogue's flickr. i already wrote all about this on my website and feel like i'm repeating myself, but here's some more shameless self-promotion... both my images (in full on my website now) and many of the other illustrations from 'We Are the Friction' can be purchased as a limited edition digital print from Sing Statistics. mine are £20 each. WOW! you know it. and that's not all folks, the original Tigress is for sale, she's £290... holler if you need a tiger made of leaves in your life.

another massive thanks to Jez and Lizzy (best tour guides ever) for putting up with me all week. shout out to my homeboy Charlie (best travel companion) and thanks also to Russell, Julie and Rudi (best family ever? quite possibly) at Analogue (best bookshop ever? for sure)

best present ever... when i was small (smaller than i am now i mean) i was pretty fond of curly wurlies, chocolate buttons and comics featuring the cast of Rainbow... curly wurlies i'm not so fussed about these days and my nostalgia for Rainbow has been marred by that infamous 'plucking' video... but clever Cadbury made GIANT chocolate buttons, which has meant that the ratio of chocolate button : my mouth is the same today as 20 years ago and thus i suppose, i am trapped in the grips of a marketing ploy of pure genius

let battle commence...




















friction vs. friction... i know what would win my £12

I am the friction...
























singstatistics.co.uk
analoguebooks.co.uk

so, what do you DO?...

ketchup #2...

last Sunday Arild and I saw the Radical Nature exhibition at the Barbican. maybe another £8 poorly spent, but there was a couple of nice parts... one being the wooden hut in the courtyard with free pink tea, another being the projects by Agnes Denes...



read more about her here

Arild brought Tinariwen to my attention, and as it turned out i had already downloaded the new album 'Aman Iman' (the result of last.fm spying) and their first is on spotify. it's what i am mostly listening to this week... Tinariwen's website tagline is this...'Legendary poet guitarists and soul rebels from the southern Sahara desert.' ...yeah! i managed to bypass the youtube photographic montage videos for this...



Arild is one of my oldest and most loved friends. though we rarely get to meet these days, i can confidently say he is the most constant and influential person in my life. i'm happy that the sunshine held out until he left for Morrocco...

on Monday the storm clouds descended. i nearly missed seing Why? because of the river flowing down my road. in the end i did make it, albeit late (headline band on before 9? what?) i just about managed to force my way into the crowd enough to be able to see all components of Why?'s heads (standing on tiptoes and utilising my contortionist skills)... naturally i ended up with the speakers at my left and a group of rude, obnoxious teenage boys to my right (including the spawn of Zeegen)... i'm not usually a violent person but... anyway... it WAS a good show. and I got to hang out with Ridda (a.k.a. clarelevitt.com) after too. she's pretty good...



*BONUS* Yoni Wolf interview by the awesome Dan Hancox

ketchup...

the thunder and rain outside is an underline to the fact our heatwave is officially gone. i'm happy i worked hard on my tan whilst i had the chance. plus i can always top it up in L.A... this is still currently the plan. i'll maybe even book flights this week...!

i have done it again. too much to catch up on but i'll do my best. the past week i have been busy with Arild, art and architecture. and whilst we are on the subject of A, i have also entertained my love of vegetables beginning with A - asparagus, avocado (yes, probably a fruit)... unfortunately the artichoke search was a failure...

last thursday i met up with Robert for a day of art/free beer... in my not so expert opinion, Per Kirkeby at the Tate Modern was not quite worth the exhibition space, or the £9 it cost me. i feel i was tricked into imagining a entirely different experience - the few paintings of his i'd seen previously were really the only ones i liked there. the aesthetic of most of the rest of his work did not appeal to me and all in all his work seemed to lack direction and progression... more like studies towards something greater never reached. still here are some i did enjoy...





and here are two contrasting reviews from The Guardian... here and here

after the Tate we headed to the NPG to see Francis Alÿs's Fabiola exhibition. this time i'll keep it short. it was BRILLIANT. on until the 20th September, so plenty of time still

highlights of the rest of the night included free Asahi provided by 12 yr boys, the awe-inspiring collage art of Brian Adam Douglas (see image below), and meeting Emily and Matt (aka Emily Forgot and Hellovon) not realising who they were at first. duh! i am a huge fan of Hellovon and though i was aware of Emily's work , i hadn't looked at her website for a long time... there's some amazing work there. an inspiring pair, and very nice people (thanks Matt for the beer!)
hellovon.com
emilyforgot.co.uk

(the herringbone is collage too!)

i finished the night at the Brighton GDI09 graduate show at The Rag Factory off Brick Lane. a very good show in a very nice space. i really should have posted about it earlier as they are probably taking down the show as i type. but you can still explore the talent here... GDI09.co.uk

ok. having already spent more than an hour wirting this post, i'm going to leave the rest until tomorrow... but before I go let me return to Robert.

Robert Phoenix is the kind of person that makes you wonder what you would do if you didn't know people like him... he is a talented artist and yeasayer and good friend. i admire him for the brave choices he recently made to progress his painting, and they seem to be working out. and if this wasn't enough, he also runs failedrockstar.org, an online collection of his own interviews with artists

check Robert out...
his painting, his blog, failedrockstar.org

wie is?...

following my blog in Amsterdam?

fresh socks...

the spontaneous nature of the blog seems to have been lost on me these past couple of weeks... I have either been too busy out and about doing I can't remember what (probably a play park or 2 in there) or with my Mum who visited last weekend, or just pondering life in general - the latter having taken it's toll recently. here is a selection of musings from the past week or so...

1) Jarvis Cocker is DULL, despite what Nigel says. I am amazed that an uncoordinated middle-aged man with the stylings of a geography teacher, balancing (not very well) on one leg and generally prancing about looking like a fool, singing not very great songs, could attract so large a following. Nigel says this IS his appeal.

2) Malcolm Gladwell is not dull. our current financial climate explained via the american civil war and the usual research based anecdotes, was not dull. you may think I must be lying, but I'm not. his hair is not dull either... I am still dissappointed that Nigel and I failed to get rainbow 'fros in time. dammit...

3) because it's always good to wear clean socks, my new new favourite band, thanks to Lyndsey...myspace.com/wearephoenix

4) my Mum visited at weekend, and most importantly she got to meet her granddaughter for the first time. Mila sometimes looks like this...



5) and the result of my near internal combustion?? a semi-rejection of my (not very apparent) creative career and, for those of you who are expecting a free place to stay in Berlin during the next few months, don't call on me cos I'm more likely to be in L.A with Lyndsey... yes. L!A!

6) LYNDSEY... is one of my best friends, but she lives in America which as we all know is a lot of pennies away... so soon I'll be spending a lot of pennies. she's amazingly talented / dedicated to the extreme / kind / beautiful and all round awesome. I don't think she'd mind me telling you she's is pretty damn hilarious too... I wish I could tell you the peeing incident, but it's not my place. HAHAHAHA...HA

lyndseylesh.com
lyndsey's blog


























7) I have also been embracing the SUN and it's myriad healing properties

thank you Lewis...

last week Lewis told me he was going to see some guy called Austin Lucas play this weekend... I'd never heard of him but did some investigating (see below) and discovered that Mr. Lucas and also Mike Hale seemed more than worthy of 6.5 of my english pounds... so, this is where I would fail to give a suitable account of the show, but in short it turned out to be one of the most amazing and heartfelt performances and beat any expectations by far. the evening culminated with Austin Lucas playing fully acoustic and fully in my face. thank you Austin, Mike, Josh, Chris and the fiddle guy (who's name I forget) - you seem the nicest, most gracious, whisky-swigging, country men a girl could wish to spend a few hours with on a Saturday evening. thank you Miles for coming down too. and thanks again Mr. Collins :)

investigate...
myspace.com/austinlucas1
myspace.com/mikehalemusic

my new favourite band...

myspace.com/thegaslightanthem

it really doesn't matter which track i show you, every one seems as damn catchy as this one...

Aurelia, deer...

re your post... they are progessing exactly as I imagined they would... you can imagine how mine are (not) progressing... BUT I did make a picture today (happy birthday Jo) - YAY ME!


keep me posted, as I will you. and oh... love yoo!

nice.

i'm developing an obsession for drawn stop animation, but that's healthy right?



myspace.com/firekites

bananas...

I don't remember reading Anthony Browne's books when I was little though I really wish I had... I once read 'Gorilla' to the girls and it has the most painstakingly beautiful illustrations (of which there is a online dirth)...



Browne is the new children's laureate... read this...I thoroughly approve

piabramley.co.uk
piabramley.blogspot.com

henriettaswift.com

cameo...

yesterday my friend Chris was in Brighton, an unexpected (though very welcome) surprise. I met him last year when I put on his band, TANAOU... anyway, he was down acting as TM/sound engineer for Run Toto Run, on tour from Manchester. it was great to see Chris again, and to meet the R-T-R gang... when their impromptu show was cancelled last minute, fate took us to The Druids pub quiz. our team won first prize at sculpting a Lionel Richie bust in plasticine... thank you very much... anyway, mostly I learnt that meeting new people can be a lot of fun, and that I wish I was in a band so I could go on tour... at the end of the night the band filmed their day 4 blog in their van outside my house and I was granted a cameo role. I was more than a bit sad to say goodbye...

myspace.com/runtotomusic

hannahclare.co.uk
hannahalexandraclare.blogspot.com

I am pretty new to Hannah's work, despite her being a good friend for a while now... I'm sorry it took me so long to discover... what I like most is how she combines accident and her own invention, often with a beautiful outcome... her degree show is well worth a visit...

daaaaaarling...

i'll keep this short and sweet... University of Brighton graduate shows on until thurs... here's graphic's and illustration's site - www.gdi09.co.uk... i'm going to post up some talented people day by day...

first is Benjamin Phillips. I helped Ben put up his show a couple of weeks ago and I'd go so far as to say he is BRILLIANT (or really really stoopid... the line is fine)... benjaminphillips.co.uk

(click on the comic strip to view bigger)

FAO Nigel...

yesterday I went to Goring-by-Sea for an epic, but gratis, haircut. like you do. with a couple of hours to kill beforehand I took a trip to the beach and discovered what I assumed to be someone's abandoned beach project (http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/textiles/lawty/world_beach/map_gallery/index.php)...
proceeeded to make my own...


and then realised that my unimaginative effort was also pretty foolish as on my return an hour later I discovered the inevitable annihilation of my heart...

oh... and, believe it or not, this took almost 4 hours...