beautiful porcelin crystal-shaped jewelry

While reading the Craft Victoria   blog (from Victoria, Austrailia) I came across the website of porcelain jewelry designer Danielle Maugeri. She makes some really interesting and irregular geometric and crystal shapes. I love her colour palettes and her sort of casual arrangements. 

doilies from my giant great grandmother

While at my parent's place over Christmas my mom dug out a gift my great grandmother gave me years ago... She died 11 years ago (I think she was 98).  She was an incredible woman, had a beautiful garden with a peach tree and a cherry tree and she made beautiful lace and doilies.  Did i mention she was a huge woman?  Not in the obese kind of way, but she had huge hands and feet and she must have been close to 6 feet tall. She wore floral dresses she would make and when she would get bigger she would just sew in extra panels of floral fabric.  She kept her thick hair in a wild, grey bob.  She clearly didn't give a hoot about what anyone thought of her, and my mom and I really admired that.

I kept the wrapping paper from the present she gave me.  I wanted to keep it so that I could remember her uniquely beautiful handwriting...

Here is a really interesting dual doily that came in the package. She may have intended for it to be Christmas themed, with the green and red, but after all my Christmas decorations were put away it doesn't seem so Christmas-y.

The package also contained two delicate doilies in a ziploc bag. I'm thinking about framing them together.

Another sand animation experiement, goodbye aunt Dorothy

Goodbye Aunt Dorothy xoxo

The past few days have been very strange for me... my old aunt Dorothy died this week, so I Joe and I attended her wake on Thursday and her funeral on Friday.  After running into people I hadn't seen in years and meeting new people, we realized that I am second (once removed??) cousins with one of Joe's friends and co-workers, Scott (our moms are cousins).  Joe and I are looking to buy a house together, so on Thursday before the wake we went to see some houses, saw one we love in our neighbourhood and decided to place a bid on it.  Now it's taking forever to hear back from the other agent, so we've been totally a bundle of nerves... plus my good friend is having her bebe any day, so I'm so excited about that.... and in a few hours we're going to another funeral/memorial for our friend Tom's dad, who died last weekend.

Between sitting around paralyzed in fear over spending a gazillion $$ on a house (or should I saw, borrowing  a gazillion $ form the bank) and going to funerals, I managed to get a little animating done.  My camera konked out on me, so I didn't get much done, but here it is.  It's based on this india ink painting I did a while ago.

Bjork has a weaving-themed video, made by Michel Gondry, of course

I just read in BlogTO that Bjork has a new concert film/doc playing at an Images Festival screening this Friday at 9pm at THE ACACIA CENTRE at 186 Spadina Avenue. The film is called Voltaïc: The Volta Tour Live in Paris and Reykjavik.  
There are two songs that I am crazy for on her record, Volta: Declare Independence and Earth Intruders.  


 I looked for videos for these songs on YouTube, and came across the video for Declare Independence, and I had no idea that Michel Gondry had made a video for it.  Like most of Gondry's videos, it's out of control.  He created a huge loom machine that weaves people into it, kind of.  It's extremely hard to describe.  Watch it below and you'll see what I mean.






Here's Bjork singing Earth Intruders live. Look at her outfit and the way she's moving in it.


Earth Indruders set to a rearranged film clip of Jaan Pehechaan Ho from the 1965 Bollywood film Gumnaam.

Sand animation experiments

Here's a very short clip of some sand animation. I was just playing around for a few minutes. The camera I have is painfully slow, so before I spend some more time I'll have to get a new one, or I'll end up tearing my hair out. Anyone have any suggestions for a fast digital camera? I may look into a fancy webcam. I don't need one with a very high resolution. I wonder what resolutions webcams come in nowadays...

I haven't been able to spend very much time experimenting with my new sand animation set-up. Hopefully I'll get to that this weekend. I've been working on a special project for a special friend. I can't reveal it just yet because this friend may be reading. I'll be posting photos up in the coming weeks.

I was poking around youtube and found this weird video "51 Things I Found Around my House". The video is basically a teenage girl holding up different objects for the camera, edited with quick cuts and put to music. I feel sort of voyeuristic posting this video, but there are over 1000 video responses to this video. I love how teens are so obsessed with documenting their lives. 

Check out this video response to "51 Things I Found Around my House".   I wonder if the little girl actually edited this herself. I know many people may think a 6 or 7 year old girl is not capable of video editing, but I know there are kids out there that can use iMovie and Moviemaker.  I have actually taught a stop-motion animation class to 6 and 7 year olds, and met several kids that knew the basics of iMovie. I'll post some of their animations in the coming days.  It's so amazing how the non-linear concept comes naturally to kids now...

Bleak psychedlia - Russian animation by Ivan Maximov

sexy cut out animation and pancakes of the century

Giuseppe Ragazzini

I found this animation while doing some research about my next animation, which will be love themed... Here's a sexier, slower version of the same animation, but there is some morphing. Make sure your volume is up because the soundtrack is very... sexy.


A few friends and I went to Hen House (1532 Dundas Street West) for brunch this afternoon.  My breakfast was AMAZING!  The best pancakes I think I have ever had.  Thin and crepe-like.  Mmmmm....  My beautiful friend Denise is extremely preggers and will be pushing out her bebe in a few weeks.  I'm so excited!!!  Amy and I had some spicy cesear's, Denise had a virgin cesear...  heehee. 

This is The Hen House. 

Magdalena Abakanowicz

BROWN ABAKANS
1969/1972, sisal weaving
300 x 300 x 350 cm,
collection of the artist

ABAKAN RED 1969
1969, sisal weaving on metal support
300 x 300 x 100 cm
Collection of the Museum Bellerive, Zurich

ABAKAN ROUND
1967, sisal weaving on metal support
300 x 100 x 100 cm
Collection of the artist

3 BROWN ABAKANS
1969/1972, sisal weaving
300 x 300 x 350 cm

I think this photo of Magdalena Abakanowicz working on her "Abakans" is so beautiful.

The texture of the weaving is so lucsious and the golden colour of the weaving she is working on in contrast to her black outfit is gorgeous.  I love pattern of the hardwood floor. Her website talks about how her Abakans (she named them after herself) are more than just objects but are also actual spaces to explore and experience.  Reading about that made me even more curious about their texture, weight and internal structure.  I wonder if there is a rigid skeleton in some of them. I also wonder how she actually weaved them. 

Yoko Ono - is kind of dirty

Yoko Ono
Open Your Box
This song was made in 1971.

I just got home from The Garrison, where my friend Alex was Dj'ing. His night is called Rad Habits. Dj Grasshopper (Derek Madison from THE band Grasshopper) was also playing music, played this Yoko Ono song.  I also never realized how great Six Finger Satellite were.


However, Huggy Bear still remains my favourite band of all time:

New ceramic project

My ceramics class at Central Tech starts again tomorrow. The course is called "ceramic ideas and techniques", and this will be the third time I've taken it. I would call it more of an open studio, with a technician available for tips on technique and a technician that fires. So far I've only done hand building, but I'm planning on trying out the wheel. I've met so many wonderful, inspiration (sometimes a little kooky) ladies (the classes are almost exclusively women), a lot of them are fellow teachers.  It's very warm, relaxing atmosphere.

Since starting ceramics, almost everything I've done has been very geometric. I'm interested in the geometric randomness of crystal formations, which is why I loved Carly Waito's paintings of magnified crystals that I saw last week at Narwhal Art Projects as part of show called Little Crowns. Gorgeous.

I also love this chair I came across in the blog Design Milk. It was designed by Jethro Macey. (A awesome stool made by someone with an awesome name)

For my first ceramics project of the term I think I may create a scaled-down version of this piece I made form paper mache:

I was inspired by a copper cake pan:

Thanks again for reading. Goodnight!

A little animation I made

Kisses
Hand drawn and digitally assembled

if these drawings aren't animated, click on them and they should open in a new window as an animated gif.

I'm reviving my interest in animating.  About four years ago I did my first (and longest animation) called "Heaven", (you can see it on the side bar of my blog too).  I did lots of exploration as I trying to figure out what I was doing.  The animated gifs above are from that period.  While working on Heaven I totally drove myself a little nutsy... spending so much time by myself, obsessed with creating several thousand drawings... It was my thesis project for my degree.  i was drawing so much that I had to run aspirin cream into my hand to stop it from cramping up.  SO... to make a long story short, I sort of abandoned animation for years and now I think I'm ready to go back.  I have more stories to tell and more ideas to explore.  My friend Victoria (who makes beautiful videos) asked me to submit something to New Toronto Works at Pleasure Dome in March.  I work well under pressure, so I've decided to get my butt in gear and make something for this show.  It will involve sand, cutout collage and After Effects.  i am pumped!

Bye, i'm going home to make a big pot of chili.

I am so out of it today.

Sand animation

Dear friends --> thank you for reading my blog today.

I'm having a very lazy day.  It's Saturday night and I'm wrapped up in blanket, drinking wine with my hubby.  Earlier today I did the followig: Drank coffee at home and then got the globe and mail and drank more coffee at Ideal, thenI went skating this afternoon at Trinity Bellwoods with Amy L (we froze out bottoms off, but it was  fun). After skating we went over to Narwhal Art Projects to see Carly Waito's paintings of crystals (I'm going to post about that show tomorrow). We then drank more coffee at the White Squirel. I went home and listened to some Simon and Garfunkel while animating sand on my new light box set-up:

I rigged up an old darkroom enlarger I found in the garbage.  I bought a bolt so I could attach a point-and-shoot digital camera to the part where the enlarger head would sit.   I can move the camera up and down by turning a big knob.  I placed my new lightbox over the piece of wood. It works fairly well, but I'm having a problem with static cling...I bought really fine sand, which I think it the problem.

Here is a sample of what I did today:



This could be the best song ever.



When I think back on all the crap I've learned in high school
It's a wonder I can think at all
Though my lack of education hasn't hurt me much
I can read the writings on the walls

Chorus:
Kodachrome, they give us those nice bright colours
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera, I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away

If you took all the girls I knew when I was single
Brought 'em all together for one night
I know they'd never match my sweet imagination
Everything looks worse in black and white

Chorus

Mama don't take my Kodachrome away, mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama don't take my Kodachrome, mama don't take my Kodachrome
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome and leave your boy so far from home
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome, whew whew, mama don't take my Kodachrome away

hunting in cakes and Magdalena Abakanowicz

I had a dream last night that my landlord (and friend) gave me a present for Christmas -- a cake with a baby rattle hidden inside. I had to go hunting in the cake for the rattle.  It was as if the cake was the wrapping paper. I knew that something was inside.  I pulled out the baby rattle and felt embarrassed.

I looked up the words "giant loom" in google and stumbled upon the name of an artist who I had never heard of before. Her name is Magdalena Abakanowicz. She is a polish artist who creates giant woven sculptures (and also uses metal) using big l melancholy shapes and faceless people.  I will be writing more on her soon when I read more about her.  Here are a few images I've taken from her website.  She is prolific. I highly recommend that you check our this website.

EMBRYOLOGY AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 1980
1978-1980, Burlap, cotton gauze, hemp rope, nylon and sisal
Approximately 800 pieces: from 4 to 250 cm long
Collection of the artist

 

WHITE

 

AGORA
2005-2006, iron
106 figures 285-295 x 95-100 x 135-145 cm
Permanent installation in Grant Park, Chicago

oldies - blondie stripper and drawing

Thanks for reading my blog today! 

For inspiration, I borrowed some porn videos from a friend that shall remain nameless. I made this about three, maybe even four...years ago. Since doing this, I've tried to animate some more porn, but ended up feeling too creepy.

I made this years ago, inspired by a visit the city of Los Angeles. My band The Sick Lipstick played a couple shows there while on tour years ago. This drawing originally had text on it that said something like "we made it in l.a., baby".

I am in love+++++++++with a piece of furniture

First things first!
I came across this desk (called Spencer Secretary) on a blog I read regularily called Design Milk.   The furniture line is called 4-Orm and it's designed by Paul Guzzetta, who at one time was a haute couture designer for YSL.  I can't stop staring at this desk. I think 'm in love!

Today I thought I'd share another ceramics piece that I made last month.  It was a very last minute bowl I made to give to my Nana.  I didn't expect much of it, but the glazes did all sorts of mysterious and beautiful things.

A productive thirft trip with my homegirl

My dear friend Amy L and I ventured out into the snowy suburbs to go thrifting tonight.

Amy L was on the hunt for an old radio and she thought she had a winner, until she saw noticed a pair of strange winged insects inside.  eek
 

Amy L is a musician. Her band is called The Youngest and you can hear her songs here.




Amy L and I play in a band together called Librarian's Touch.
We used to play together with Amy G, Denise and Jennifer in a band called Fox the Boombox.