{Riika Sormunen}

A new find that's really excited me to get drawing and use my chalks again! Riika from Oslo can be found here on her charming blog featuring her sketches, and here for some of her more finished illustrations and paintings. I've actually had a go at re-creating the colourful swan princess two drawings down. They say imitation is the best form of flattery... but being able just to draw and look without having to think about what to do next was very freeing. Now I can go on to draw my chalky characters... thank you Riika!

Terrible Beauty

I've been assigned a new project on my costume design course based on Lorca's play 'Blood Wedding'. In my research, i've found myself looking at the myths of the Greek goddess Persephone and of course, the wonderful fruit that is the pomegranate. I immediately thought of the work of Jane Wildgoose (my post titled 'Cabinets of Curiosity', March). Her fascinating on-going work a the Wildgoose Memorial Library is dedicated to:

Persephone, who delighted herself in contemplating beautiful views, flowery meadows and limpid streams*. And to Ceres, her mother, who successfully interceded for Persephone’s safe return to earth for six months each year, after her daughter had been ravished by Pluto and abducted by him to reign as Queen in the infernal regions.

During my research, I stumbled upon the moving-image work of Ori Gersht. Below you can see a still from a piece entitled Pomegranate. You can watch it here {it only takes seconds}. It actually shocked me at first - it's so simple, so obvious, and yet very brutal despite it being incredibly slow. Here's a description below...

In a carefully composed scene reminiscent of a Juan Sanchez Cotan sixteenth-century still life, a pomegranate fruit stands out from a muted, theatrical backdrop. After a few moments, this highly symbolic fruit is exploded by a high-velocity bullet; seeds spilling from its disintegrating carcass in extreme slow motion, and with an eerie and terrible beauty.

Terrible Beauty somehow captures it for me.

Take a look!

{Crying Gold}

I just found the costume I made last year on my college website! Ok, ok, so I googled my own name, but I haven't done that for a very very long time. Check out my fellow classmates' creations here. We made our designs based on characters from the medieval play of Everyman, and then put on a costume parade at the National Gallery this past May. It got pretty hectic before that final happy day, probably because a week before the show I decided to remake/weld the skirt and shoulder panels from copper rods instead of the plastic I had used initially. In the last photo, i've got a hideous plaster on my arm where I gouged out a hole with a random piece of sharp protruding metal in the workshop. Brilliant.

I also want to say THANK YOU to my model and friend, Lisa, for sustaining many months of prodding, tight corsetry, heavy armour and of course her favorite - the latex mask. All in all, a cumbersome ordeal, but i am ever grateful.

Spraying the 'bodice' breast plate, after having removed all feeling from my fingertips by spreading hot plastic to create the 'hammered metal' look. Trust me, there are more efficient techniques out there.

Lisa models my second attempt at the hip panels, which I then covered with two layers of silver and black metal-shot organza.

The mask was a cast of Lisa's face and painted to resemble a death mask with liquid gold pouring out as tears. Macabre, I know.

Strolling out in Trafalgar Square - happy and relieved (perhaps due to the insane painkillers I took to treat a sudden back spasm that had me twitching on the floor moments before the show). I was pretty out of it for a few days after!

Thanks for reading...

bright {snippets}

I love the bright colours in these interiors. I was actually looking for inspiration for entrance halls (especially narrow ones), but had to include the one above. I mean, turquoise chandelier candles? yes! Pink, green and turquoise. What's not to love? All refreshingly laid against pure white walls.

Lovely Luberon

This house {or, Mas - a French farmhouse} is pure rural French idyllicism. It's actually for sale which is why these lovely photos are bandying about for people like me to salivate over... up high in the Luberon in the south of France, this house is ten minutes from an equally idyllic village and half an hour from Avignon - one of my {many} favorite French cities. Really, it's the lavender, the green pool, the stonework and the bridge arcing over a path, the courtyard, the uneven windows,the blue sky and the cypress trees to mention but a few things. And you're up high, nestled against a mountain. I can't think of a better retreat into beauty and nature... enjoy x

Bottelicious {Two}

A charming gift {above} proffered by the lovely Florizelle at Le Divan Fumoir Bohemien. Aren't the multitudes of blue simply delicious? They remind me a lot of my great grandmother's glass collections which she grouped mostly by colour {below}. The photo above is "...a picture of Elephant House, Edward Gorey's house, by  Kevin Mac Dermott." From what I read, Edward Gorey lived an isolated life in his house which he very rarely revealed to others. In a new book of photographs, Mac Dermott, a close confidante of Gorey's, opens the doors to the inner life of Gorey and his fascinating collections. I really must track down this book... thank you Florizelle!

 

Elephant House.

A close up of one part of the installation which I blogged last March in "{Twisted} Stories".

Do take a look at some of Gorey's illustrations, they really are magical...

Thanks for reading x