Jaz Design

Takashi Murakami by Zenzott on flickr

I was going to write about the reason I’ve seen Muse 8 times now, but I think you all know and I decided this was more important.

If you’d asked me to explain what pop art was a two weeks ago, the most I would probably be able to muster would have been “something to do with Andy Warhol?” Also do note, I’m sure this is riddled with errors to do with dates, movements, titles etc, I’m only just learning about it all, so constructive comments very welcome!

I love my traditional art, love it. The National Gallery is my favourite in London and whilst abstraction is growing on me, paintings of things that look like what they are really appeal to me – the artist’s flair and expression being found in the brush strokes – and the skill required! Compare it to something like Tracy Emin’s bed and there’s no competition in my eyes, “traditional” art wins.

As an artist, designer and photographer, I’m always looking for inspiration. It seems wrong to shut out such a vibrant and talented world as modern art. I think that personal preference will always come back to the more “traditional” art, but the Pop Life exhibit at the Tate has helped the shift in my thinking somewhat.

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Just before Easter the Mister and I spent a week in Mallorca. It was beautiful, a fantastic chance to relax and take lots and lots of pictures and try the beautiful Mahon cheese. There’s an album of these pictures on my flickr! There’s also an album of sandcastle pics on facebook.

In other photography news, I finally finished my black and white film I had in my SLR and now have those to upload when I get a minute (mostly photos from The Great Snow and a day in Brighton). I’m also planning to sit down and sort out my Project 366 photos (though I think this year didn’t start out so well with that as last year).

Week 1. Click to full view!

I love post-its. I use them whenever I can and stick them everywhere! I thought I might try something, really out of curiosity for me, and keep my post-its each week. Some things here might be clues as to what’s on the horizon.

I have to say, there’s nothing I love more on a Sunday than a big mug of tea and PostSecret. Yes it’s been around a while, I’m late to the party. I love art, and I love psychology. PostSecret is these combined, we say art is an expression of a feeling or emotion, these postcards really are just that. Each beautiful in their own way, some very depressing, some uplifting. It’s quite an emotional rollercoaster for a Sunday morning, but I still love it (plus the tea ballances out the really bad stuff, as we all know, a cup of tea is the answer to everything).

For Valentines the Mister got me one of the books. Yes there are more secrets than you could ever want to read on the website, but I still love books, and I love this book. It’s a coffee table book really, one you can go back to. Some artistic inspiration, some things to ponder. If you love the website and it’s message, you’ll love the book. Click here to find out more.

I’m all up to date since the last update I think, here are the thumbs. Actually this is going to turn into a massive post now that I think about it, interspersed with thumbs of my 365.

I had this photograph featured in a piece on NowPublic.com about the government maybe enforcing some kind of smoking licence scheme. I know it’s not that big of a deal, but it’s really nice that they asked to use my photograph. Also VOTE PETE for student support officer. This be him, pictured here.

I saw Sweeney Todd. Whever it was, with the Mister. I thought the movie was good. Not my favourite Burton, but it kept me entertained. Here I tried drawing with white on black paper, which is much harder than it sounds. I will post the finished piece, when I finish it, I guess.

The Mister’s mum sent us pressies from Egypt. This is the little wood camel we got. Name suggestions in the comments please!

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My best friend came to visit that Friday. Haven’t seen him since Christmas so it was a blast. The Mister cooked us up a good dinner and good times were had by all. These are some of the flowers he brought me.

I honestly adore how in England going to the beach in winter isn’t a bad idea. I spent the best part of my day down at the beach whichever day this was, just listening to music and sleeping on the pebbles. It was awesome. The weather was nice too. I love this photo.

My Valentines present was oil pastels which I asked for. Expect an art in the next few weeks This is also the card I made for the Mister, the idea for which I stole from Dinosaur Comics. Check that out. Hilarity with dinosaurs. It’s hand painted anyway. Check me out. Little miss artist.

Valentines day itself, the Mister cooked me a lovely meal, we had lots of wine, and watched Lost in Translation. I quite liked the film, it kind of reminded me of Eternal Sunshine in the way it was formulated and how it was two people making a connection.

Selling my blue Olympus 410. Buy it here.

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Massive emo moment, haha! I’ll post when I have the rest of this set up, I have a few of them. They’re sort of a sequel to my Descent themed set and part of my Self Elected project.

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Today’s picture is about something so exciting, it’s getting it’s own post.

I’m really tired. I think I just finished my show promo, I’m not sure. The perfectionist still wants to poke. But she also wants to sleep.

I still need to sort out the comments system on here. I am thinking about it, honest! And I wish to reskin. This one’s too… something. It’s not me enough.

Anyone who has a GFXartist account, I have one too.

South Park this week was awesome. I can’t wait for Ed to get his X-Box back (it had the “ring of death” or whatever) so we can play Guitar Hero. It better be back before GH3 comes out…

I was reading The Good Human today, and my attention was drawn to this collection of artwork by Chris Jordan. As he says:

“This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.”

It definitely does that – even from the images there a scary reality is easy to see. I can’t imagine how those must appear in reality… or how long they took to produce. I am terribly curious. I may well have a nose around the net tomorrow, if I get time. IF. That’s a big if. Check it out anyway, you may be surprised!

Just a general blog about general things. I was thinking about what kind of focus this blog should have, maybe think about target audience, but I think I’d find that too hard. I like to talk about random things, things that go on in my life an so forth. Thus, I suppose my target audience is people with similar interests (I do need to update my profiley thing actually…), and my focus is just plain everything.

I’ve had a good week. Made my second trip to London since I’ve been ill, mostly to see my Mister, mostly It was good to have a day out. I’m not a fan of London but I did have a good day.

We had lunch down at St Paul’s – there’s a large Marks and Sparks food court there, they had this amazing vanilla and maple syrup smoothie thing – lush!

Then we hopped across the river to the Tate Modern. I’m not big on modern art, but I do love Cy Twombley’s ‘Four Seasons‘. Mostly because of the way he uses such a variety of materials, mostly. They’re just stunning pieces. I also really liked ‘Billingual’ by Juan Usle – however I can’t find a good photo of that online.

We were going to get the boat to the Tate Britain but missed the last one, so hung out on the grass outside the Modern for a while since the weather was so nice. Mosied back in a Waterloo direction and watched the sunset from the banks of the Thames over the Houses of Parliament.

We found dinner at a fancy Pizza Express restaurant, and ate far too much. It was so good though. I haven’t been out to dinner in ages, much less taken out to dinner, so I felt really spoilt We wandered down the river and looked at all the lights. All in all, a good day out.

Monday I did my first ever drive to Bognor to see Linz. J used to take me but we used to go the long way round, so going the proper way involved a lot of guesswork and following road numbers. We got some chips and wandered down the beach at dusky time. It was really good to see her.

I took my Mum to Brighton on Tuesday, we went shopping (picked up some guitar strings for the acoustic – my Mister appears to have got me back into playing), and then got ice creams and fell asleep on the beach.

Wednesday I drove up to see my Mister in Harpenden, got stuck in the most horrendous M1 traffic I’ve ever seen, and so came off at the first junction and guessed my way to his, and got quite lucky with my guesses really. Had a couple of nice meals with his family over the duration of my stay – tried some new food too which is unusual for me, it was good.

Friday we came back and went to Sainsbury’s in search of this easter egg I’ve wanted for about a month. They didn’t have it, which is very unfortunate as all their eggs were 75% off and as the one I wanted was a tenner originally, that would have been an amazing deal. I got a different egg that would have been equally expensive – a Lindt chocolate thing with a box of chocolates – and while the chocolates were amazing, there’s no way I would have paid a tenner for it! The Mister picked up a load of little Lindor eggs which were only 13p – if you wish to stock up on chocolate, head over to Sainsbury’s.

The past few days, when not working or doing other things, have been spent playing Sim City 3000. The Mister built up a city together and have actually done quite well so far. We got hold of a copy of SC4 Deluxe, and have developed a region as a starting point for both of us to see how we do things differently. I swore I’d never play Sims games again, but I guess I was mistaken. We’ll have to wait and see how City of Ghosthands does

We went up to Londinium yesterday. We have this project at uni at the moment which entails some science research and looking at how people engage with science and various things. I didn’t think I’d be well enough to go to London, but really wanted to because there’s so much one could get out of this project. I was also still miserable about not being able to hit the galleries in our two weeks off.

As it was we didn’t make it to the galleries, just the Science and Natural History Museum – both of which were awesome but exhausting. Worth a visit, I really want to go back to the Natural History Museum for a proper nose about.

I might have some photos, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll check the camera in a minute.

Anyway, huge step for me, and I survived. I’m not too tired today despite having to get up at 7am to go do a table top sale. I have to sell a lot of my unnecessary stuff simply because it’s unused clutter – I didn’t make too much today, but will be doing another sale in a few weeks. Hopefully do a bit better.

Bruce Mau wrote this in 1998, and I always find it an interesting and inspirational read.

I don’t agree with all of it, but I do like what he’s saying.