Posts Tagged Art

Pop Life

Takashi Murakami by Zenzott on flickr

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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Art, Design & Photography Inspiration

jazdesign_tumblr

I love inspirational images. Love. I read a lot of blogs and galleries every morning (slowly being documented here!) and figured I needed a place to put all of my favourite images that I find. If you’re interested in a bit of daily inspiration, but not an overwhelming amount, check out my tumblr! I am using a default theme, time is short right now.

I’ve also added a tumblr widget on the right here, and a flickr one (when I redevelop my site I’ll find a better one!)

ETA: I’ve actually stopped using tumblr. The servers are constantly down, and it’s a lot of effort to add things to it. I’ve started using vi.sualize.us because it offers a similar functionality to Delicious, but for saving and sharing images! View my visualized here!

As for the tumblr widget, I’m using it to display my flickr photos for now because I couldn’t find a flickr widget I liked :D

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James May’s Lego House

On Saturday the 1st August some friends and I went along to the James May Lego House build at Denbies Wine Estate in Dorking. I mean, how could we not go? James May is attempting to build a life sized house out of Lego for his Toy Stories series. How many people have wanted to do that? I know I have.

lego house 10-450

After queueing for three and a half hours, we unfortunately did not get to play with any Lego. We were dedicated to our cause though, despite being told many times we were in the “danger zone” and felt that the organisers did their best – 2000+ people showed up for the 600 places.

jamesmay

You can see a selection of my photos from the day here. There’s some cute pictures of kids with Lego and James here on the Mail website.

More details about James May’s Toy Stories.

If you were one of the ones who queued, regardless of if you got in or not, there’s a Facebook group for you.

I’ll post if I hear of any more news on what build stage it’s at. We’re hoping to go back and view it in all it’s glory!

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Review: PostSecret

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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.

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Samskeyti

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…

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This is amazing.

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!

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Brocolli Pops not as Popular as Expected

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 :D 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 :)

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London Baby!

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. :)

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You ARE Amazing

Things are good.

I’m on the mend now. Fingers crossed it stays that way. I made it into town the other day, and I’ve even been to Portsmouth and to uni. I was mortified about missing the start of that really. And also, I have so much work to do now, last semester’s, and this semester’s… but that’s ok. Because it’ll get done. So long as I can stay well. I still get fairly tired easily, but that’ll go. Thankfully the feeling depressed about it has passed, I think that went with the actually being able to do things again-ness.

South Park, good or bad?

I actually did something artistic the other day, it felt good.

I’m also reading Design Anarchy – finally managed to put my hands on it in the uni library (yeah, because I can afford £50 for a book). It’s good. It scares me sometimes, as do the Adbusters magazines, but it’s good. I like it a lot.

I finished The Modern Pagan: How to Live a Natural Lifestyle in the 21st Century. It came across to me as a little preachy at times, a lot of things are common sense, but it was alright. Not the best book in that vein that I’ve read, but still good to read all the same. I know I marked off some pages to go back to, maybe when I do I’ll think some more about how useful I thought it really was.

I started a Library Thing thing actually, though I’ve not had much time to play with it. I like the site and what it does, but not the interface so much. I don’t know. Anyone know of any similar sites? I guess it’s like last.fm in a way.

So it’s halfway through February. Anyone keep their new years resolutions this time? I didn’t make any. I stopped eating chocolate for a bit, but that went to hell when I got sick. I can’t count how many Mars eggs I’ve eaten – they have to be the best invention since…. cream eggs. Still, that needs to stop. Really.

Actually, that’s a lie, I did have a resolution in mind. Haha. Guess that went to hell too. I’ll dig that out and maybe start doing it. It involves cameras.

Happy belated Val Day world. Love is amazing. Find some.

I got an essay back that I wrote “analysing an image found within contemporary visual culture”. I got 70% which is really good, and some really nice comments. Considering I was in quite an upset/stressed out state the day I wrote that, that’s pretty amazing. I did put in some library time for that though, and it paid off, judging by one of the comments. I guess I might just live in the library this semester. It’s not like I don’t have too much to do.

Quite probably one of my favouritest photos ever. <3 Although it should be the other way around, as per the way it was developed ;P

I’m getting rid of my tellybox. That’s not to say I won’t watch telly elsewhere, I think that’s inevitable. And you know, the stuff I watch on the PC, but but but, I’M GIVING UP HOLLYOAKS. Properly this time. Yes. You heard. Giving it up.

24 is scary. It’s all going wrong. Fix it.

I should do the stuff I came home to do.

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Take a Bow – Coming Soon to DA

Update: Now available on DA, although still not happy with the photo.

Some of you know I was painting, and painting I did. The piece is finished, however, the photo I have of it, it was still wet, and the painting is now down at my boyfriend’s in Portsmouth. So, until I’m next round there to take a decent photo to put on DeviantArt, you’ll just have to cope with the sneak preview in my photobucket here. The lighting of the photo is also rubbish, so basically, it looks an awful lot better than that.

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
Click to fullview

DeviantArt Description – This is Matt Bellamy (aka Tiny Man) of Muse, at the opening of some concert in Las Vegas. Or at least that’s the reference I used for it. There are differences however, just not many. Reference is here

I went to see Muse a few weeks ago with someone quite lufly. The concert was amazing, and I missed art, and felt like doing something creative with the experience. They opened the concert with Take a Bow, and in this amazing moment when the singing stopped and the music took off, Matt stepped up, kissed his fist and thrust it in the air. Everyone went wild, it was amazing. And that was the entire basis for this painting. You can see a not great quality vid of the opening here

Acryllic on card – roughly A2 size. Maybe, 20 hours? On the painting, the sketch took about 2/3 I should imagine.

I gave it away the same day I finished it, now hung proudly on the lufly person’s wall.



As an aside, we have tickets to see Muse at Wembley Stadium – woooooooooooooo.

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