It’s a thud. I have thought about it and have concluded ‘thud’ will aptly describe the sensation, forever foreign, despite its regular occurrence, as water collides with the back of my parched throat each morning. It’s a wholly different sensation to any lunchtime sip, perhaps sparkling, as carbonated bubbles slowly rise through my head and I allow extolment through a knee jerk watering of my eyes.
The first cup of each day, for myself, is a cup of water. For others it is coffee. Dogmilque is one of those ‘others’ and, fortunately for us, he has documented a great deal of these ‘first cups’ for the last five years. This has created a most intriguing set of images, each with a brief description, showing that first cup of coffee each morning. Enjoy.
It’s a strange feeling, seeing your entire life packed neatly into old banana boxes. I guess I am moving. I guess the blog will be quiet for a few days. Check back.
I know nothing about Eric Wrobbel, and am rather unsure as to how I managed to find my way to his ‘art’ site today.
All that is by the by, as when I got there I was hooked. It’s like stepping backward, a leap perhaps. It’s a portfolio of advertising work he has carried out in the past, and while the mind wonders just what the clients were thinking in most instances, it serves as a great testimony for the advancement of design and advertising.
The warmth of the images, such as that seen in the ‘Vannelli’ piece above, and the paragraphs of type, often in bright neon. It’s set firmly in a decade. There is so much which has changed, so much evolution of design. It gets me thinking as to where we will be in the next decade, and what will we think of the work being produced now. Of course there will be celebrated pieces, but the bottom line is that you just don’t see adverts like this anymore. I wonder why.
The obsession with awkwardness has reached new precedents, and with it, the level of awkwardness has seen new highs. It’s refreshing then to leaf through some of Jesse Burke’s Clover set and see some far from awkward shots. He also has a blog.
What are you reading? I just took a break from this and rifled through this. Quite the difference in content, never mind the target audience. Both equally entertaining.
Beatrix Potter’s life was a story in itself, so very talented and so very privileged. Read about it all in detail here. Incidentally you can read Johnny Town-Mouse, my favourite of her many books (Image above) here.
Apologies for the scarcity of posts presently, normality shall return in a day or three.
This shot of Belfast Bank, Sligo, at turn of the century comes from the Lawrence Collection. You’d bury your head in your hands if you could see the same shot today. An eyesore of colossal magnitude looms in the foreground.
I do wonder what ‘Himself’ would say about the whole thing.
I tend to stay away from posting realms of pictures, but today I couldn’t help myself. RavenStamps is a collection of the most amazing postcards, envelope’s and stamps, all seemingly centred in and around Ireland and the British Isles.
The first letter above, posted in 1862, is just one of countless examples, all carefully scanned and detailed. Beautifully preserved.
I love the dirt on the edges, the cursive, the stamps. The detail, “Via Airplane, from Galway to London.” There was such pride in they way each one looked, and obviously time was taken to inform both the recipient, and the post man, where the letter had been and where it was heading for.
Who posted these, what were they saying? Who stamped them, loaded them into the mail bag? Who posted them, perhaps through an old iron letterbox, or better still handed them to a butler/servant?
I keep looking at this house, little does it know, perched high on a hillside in the Cascades, just how much I wish it were mine.
The image itself comes from a book, Wood Houses, from architectural writer Ruth Slavid. You can see more images from the book, as well as a summary here.
Despite the beauty and obvious serenity of the image above, there is a collection of wooden houses, gritty and dark, which I would suggest you spend some time on today. It’s from a project by Vladstudio, and is entitled, Siberian Wooden Houses.
Why should the decade which we were born into rest so easily within us? Romanticised and altogether more sprightly in character then those before our charge onto the scene, or after for that matter. Sometimes I like to see just what was happening in said decade, what would I think of that which was within it today? I am concerned with artwork, for to delve into the music is an easy out, it was the 1980’s.
Haunch of Venison, New York, currently has a collection on show, presenting art work solely from the 80’s, and specifically that created in New York itself. It is entitled ‘Your History is Not Our History’. It encapsulates work from a period during which I was a toddler, and documents it in a light which allows me to look back through a whole array, much of which I can confirm I have no romance or affection for at all.
Before today I had not come across Haunch, yet they have one in London, Berlin, New York and Zurich, here, they also have a great collection of artists to browse through.
Oh time, time please be mine, soon, and very soon, for with you I promise to make the most.
I have been looking at handmade zine collections all day, the simple laser printed ones have jumped out at me, like the above, ‘the secret proof’ by Hooded Fang*
I cannot wait to have enough time to get to creating some of these, you of course will be the first to know, parcels in the mail I’d venture to promise.
Also, be sure to check out the collages from Hooded and whatnot on the corresponding blog.
In June of last year I wrote about thebakery in this post and commented with the following;
“I think that it is sad that we expect everyone to have their online portfolios and sites in English. I have been trying to delve into other cultures, and their inner workings of art. Those sites, galleries and collectives which don’t translate to accommodate english speaking audiences, but are quite happy to publish to their own, and their own alone.”
I still enjoy my delve into the non-English side of online blogging, although in the last year I have discovered, rather unsurprisingly, that photoblogs are my favourite tipple. The above image is taken from a Polish blog by Robert Danieluk.
There are plenty of words, all of which are in Polish, and that I am forced to gloss over, but I can cope with that, thanks to the high standard of photography throughout, which keeps my eyes very happy. A great deal of the blog content centers around Warsaw and a great deal of what I have seen makes me want to pay it a visit. The prospect of wandering around the Market Square, in the Old Town has me checking flights.
Art within art within art. I have been leaping into this idea, of art within art, in recent days, grappling with the concept and attempting to see it to an end, of sorts. Perpetual reflection in a sense, perhaps ‘Perpetual Representation’ is a better tag.
I am sure we are well aware of the neccesity of certain art forms to be contained within another, and the consequences of not practising this.
A puppeteer on a street corner may be passed by a few hundred people in any given day, and appreciated by a fair few, but there is a limitation to how many this performance, no matter how terrific, can reach.
