Antique Objects of my Affection

This is a lovely little reproduction of a classical Greek bust, literally!  Her breasts are very balanced and look lovely – but as I’m living in a Muslim country with potential house buyers viewing my house on a regular basis, I thought it best to cover up my little lady’s attributes.

She is currently wearing a bronze or brass neck-piece with various imitation-coins, beads and glass gems that I bought at a souq in Karama, Dubai, a few years ago.  The shopkeeper told me this was a part of an Afghani formal outfit, usually sewn on the dress itself, and dating back to probably 20 years ago.  I have no real way of verifying this information, but I fell in love with the piece and had no way of displaying it properly – until my little Grecian beauty came to live with me.  I consider this a win-win combination, and at least she is not flashing anybody anymore!

I collect all kinds of weird, wacky and downright bizarre items.  Pictured here, is my little steel shopping cart.  I find consumerism a very fascinating topic of study.  Apart from immersing myself in it when I did my first year Bachelor of Visual Arts at UNISA (not complete yet, sadly, because I moved to Dubai), I still like to observe people performing their daily rituals during the act of consumerism.  The ultimate symbol of consumerism is the SHOPPING CART.  I use mine at Amazon quite often!

In the little shrine to consumerism is my antique ostrich egg.  I helped my uncle clear out our great-uncle’s (by marriage) storeroom a few years ago and found this egg.  It has two dried up objects on the inside, which rattle around in the sealed egg.  I wish I could take it for an x-ray to see if it is a little ostrich in there, or just the dried up yolk itself.  Eggs symbolise potential, which is why there is an egg in the new South African coat of arms.  You can read more about it on Wiki:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_South_Africahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_South_Africa

I love books!  And here is my oldest book, a very worn third edition of A New Method of Chemistry; including the Hiftory, Theory and Practice of the ART: Tranflated from the ORIGINAL LATIN of Dr. BOERHAAVE’s ELEMENTA CHEMIAE, As Published by Himself, To which are added, NOTES; and an APPENDIX, shewing The NECESSITY and UTILITY of Enlarging the Bounds of Chemistry. With Sculptures. By Peter Shaw, M.D. F.R.S., The Third Edition, corrected, Vol II and printed in the amazing year of M.DCC.LIII – which translates (if I remember my Roman numerals correctly) into 1753.

I derive much enjoyment from reading the entries in their original print-form with the bizarre letterforms replacing the common letter “s”.  Some of them use an “f”, while others use a curved s-shape, but elongated like a flourish “f”.  These always make me laugh, especially in such a serious scientific work – for example:  “glafs-veffel” is “glass vessel”, but try to read out loud a whole page of serious scientific instructions in this typographic format WITHOUT laughing!

This is quite a unique book, in many respects.  Boerhaave’s Chemistry is available in current edition format from Amazon and is still in use today.  I bought my copy from a little vintage shop in Pretoria for about R400.00 a few years ago.  I just saw a good condition Volume I for sale on the internet for about R5,700.00.  I don’t know if my copy would be worth as much, because the back cover has torn loose, there are child pencil scribbles on the inside covers and the overall condition is “poor”.

But the most amazing aspect of this little bit of history:  this book was published in 1753.  Marie Antoinette, the doomed Queen of France, was only born two years later!  Not that she would have read it, but as a contemporary object it occupies a special place in my heart.

Mad Hatter… we’re broadcasting live

Is this fashionable enough in today’s plastic society?

I love my birthday present from my dearest friend.  She knows me so well.  When I saw this little cutie-pie in the shop, I literally couldn’t put it down.  A few days later, she took me back to go and buy it – I was so happy!

It really is a very versatile hat.  Apart from being able to receive all kinds of interesting signals from outer space, it also protects my head when inspiration strikes…. heehee.

When I brought it home, my husband seriously thought it was a bizarre hat.  I’ve been known to add some pretty wacky designs to my collection.  But even he was floored when I revealed what it REALLY is….

… the funkiest baby bottle drying rack design in the WHOLE WORLD!!!!!   Beaba has some really interesting designer baby items on their website, but this one is just fabulous.

This little object is such an inspirational design piece.  Some days I like to imagine that it’s an alien pot plant, hybridized to be immune to my black thumb.  Always in bloom and never needing watering, it is the ideal flower for my study.

If I have a bored moment, I can always take it off its base, stick it on my head, and see if I can tune into any inter-galactic broadcasts or cross-pollinate my fertile imagination from the universal consciousness!  And if you think I’m totally off my rocker for admiring a bottle drying rack, think again:

Marcel Duchamp changed the art world and shocked the Establishment in 1914 when he presented a wire bottle rack as a “ready made piece of art”.   Dada refers to the art movement of anti-art and anarchist works that ridiculed the meaninglessness of the modern world.  The above image is from the Marcel Duchamp World Community at http://www.marcelduchamp.net.

I rest my case!

Little House on the Cabinet

I have a “thing” for doll houses.  I’ve loved miniatures and miniature houses since I was a little girl.  I saw this doll house for sale on Dubizzle (yes, I browse their classifieds every day!).  I was so excited about it, I actually asked the lady selling it, to remove the advert immediately, before anyone else could see it and try to buy it before I could get to her house.  Obsessive – who me???  Anyway, the ad stayed up and thankfully, no other buyers called.

She had the house custom-built, at a carpentry shop in Hong Kong.  It’s made of wood covered with wicker, with a roof that lifts up to reveal an attic room.  The front doors hide four rooms, built in a cross formation.  It is a very basic design, almost similar to my doll house that my grandparents made me when I was 7 years old.  I’ll try to find a photo of it, so that you can see the similarities.

Here is an inside view of the doll house with the four rooms.  I’m using it to store my recipe books on the lower rooms.  The books are very heavy and have to lean towards the inner column, otherwise they push the structure out of alignment and the doors cannot close properly.  It’s amazing the structural knowledge I’ve picked up over the years from my design engineer husband!  I’ve stored the odd bundles of chargers/cords and various electronic ephemera that always clutter my dining room, in the upstairs rooms.

Since the doll house is easily accessible to my girls, I don’t want to keep anything breakable in there.  I still have space to store more things in the upstairs rooms and the attic.  It is a bit too low to use as for bottles, otherwise it would have made a pretty cute drinks cabinet.

The lady apologised for the paint being chipped from play, but I like the white, weathered look and won’t change it.  The only distraction is the open windows.  I’ve come up with an interesting solution though!  Ikea have these small wooden frames, cheap and cheerful, that would make great “window panes” for the doll house.  And I can choose what scenery I want to display in them.  Voila – it hides the contents and showcases something more artistic and quirky.  I’ll post photos of the finished window “dressings” after I make a trip down to Ikea during next week.

The little cabinet with drawers is also from Ikea.  I have a few of those in my studio.  They make excellent storage for stamping pads, rubber stamps, dies and templates for my Ellison Big Shot die-cutter and various papers, game boards and quirky bits and pieces.  Deep drawers are such a waste of space, I prefer shallow drawers so that I can see the contents at a glance, without having to dig through piles of stuff.

And, if you’re wondering:  the silver vase is metal and was previously displayed in a friend’s boutique until they closed it.  The silver branches were originally painted brown when I bought them from Home Center in Mall of the Emirates.  It was very difficult to find interesting shaped fillings for the vase, it is very tall and very deep.  I spray painted the branches with chrome, to make them more interesting.

Lastly, the black wire mandala on the wall was also bought from Home Center.  I’m still mulling over some ideas for it, but all I’ve got so far, is an idea of using photographs as leaves, flowers and berries on the “branches”.  It is a striking piece, so I’m enjoying it as it is – until some other wacky idea pops into my head!

A few years ago, a trusted friend of mine looked around my living room and said “You have the most bizarre tastes and collect the weirdest crap, but somehow you make it all work in your house decor”.  It was the nicest thing she could have said.

Long live the quirky decorator!

I got the blues, baby… 30 of them!

Last night, while surfing the internet, I checked out Dubizzle, a local second-hand online site like eBay.  I don’t often look at the books for sale, as the odds of finding something really interesting, are very low.  Imagine my surprise then, when I saw these babies for sale.

Do you remember paging through encyclopedias way back in the day, before schools had computers and internet access?  It was the only way to find out ANYTHING remotely interesting.  Some days I would just grab the next one in line and start paging through it, cover to cover, and absorb all kinds of weird information.  It helped that I was a library prefect and was allowed to sit and work in the library if my class teacher was absent.  Luckily, I was a girl, so no-one really teased me about it.

After negotiating a fair price with the lady selling them, I picked them up this morning.  So, what am I going to do with them?

Firstly, the blue is the same blue tone of my leather lounge suite.  Now I have 30 spines, 30 front covers and 30 back covers in the perfect shade of blue, to assemble and collage into an installation.  I’m thinking maybe a low-relief work in a box frame, or maybe a stand-alone sculptural piece.

An artist whose work I really like, is Brian Dettmer.  Go check out the photos of his pieces on www.briandettmer.com.  He excavates images and text in thick, old books and creates wonderfully abstract sculptures with the books.  I don’t really have the patience to try to recreate one of his works, but one day I’d like to try his techniques for myself.

Another fabulous book artist is Daniel Essig.  Visit his site and explore some of the fabulous sculptures made of books, with books, and containing books, www.danielessig.com.  I really like assemblage, but don’t have the proper welding equipment to really get into metalwork.

Secondly, I have some crafty ideas that are also floating around in my head.  I could cut off all the spines and mount them on a false panel, thereby creating the look of matching blue volumes, but hiding my real books behind it.  My art books are very colorful and don’t blend in very well in my blue/gray/silver/white colour scheme in the living room.  Hmm, as I write down these colours, I guess you could call my colour scheme “stormy ocean and deserted beach on a cloudy day”, which is my favourite time to sit and watch the waves.

Of course, 30 volumes x 900 odd pages in each volume = a lot of paper I can use for collage.  Modern-day stickers are very expensive, as are decoupage papers (which are faux vintage paper designs and elements anyway).  This should be enough paper to finish a few little projects!  And, as an added bonus, most of the imagery and text date back to 1986 – wonderfully vintage already.

Then again, I may just display them in their natural state, to give the bookcase in the living room a more formal look.  But I must admit, that I’m itching to disassemble them and create something wonderfully weird to display.

There you have it.  A treasure trove for the price of a regular glass vase at the local Home Center decor store.  I love a good bargain!

Current work in progress

This is my current large-scale work in progress.  I first saw the basic concept painted on 5 canvases in an umber/ocher/sienna color scheme as a finished piece of art, advertised for sale on a second-hand website.  I liked the composition very much and decided to recreate it in blue/teal/silver/white on a larger scale.  The largest canvas in the middle is 80cm x 60cm.

I first had to join all the canvases together with G-clamps, balanced on 3 big easels, to draw the basic outlines of the bands to the right scale.  I chose Cryla Artists’ Acrylic Heavy Body paints in the following colors:  Primary Cyan, Prussian Blue Hue, Ivory Black, Pewter, Silver and White. I especially liked the metallic options for added subtlety in the color-mixing.

Then it was a matter of custom-mixing the paint hue for each band, as I went along, to harmonize the overall balance of the piece.  Over the course of many weeks, I mixed and painted each band individually, using only solid colors while I worked on the balance and flow over adjoining canvases.  It was necessary, in some places, to adjust the tonal balance over adjoining bands to accommodate my color choices.

The original artwork that inspired me (in all the natural brown hues) had highlights and shadow painted with black and tonal adjustments to show movement of the bands flowing over and underneath each other.  My vision ultimately includes found objects, ephemera, embroidery, beading and DIY hardware to encompass a variety of emotions, situations and symbols all relating to the Moon and her influence on water.

Water is very fluid and can also carry objects that float.  Water also acts as a separate environment for various intricate life-forms.  While the human body comprises a large volume of water, it takes on many forms within the body.  There are tears, saliva and urine (which consist of the consumption/digestion/excretion chain) and the most obvious and exclusively female water-form of lunar-sympathetic hormonal fluctuations and fertility cycles.

All forms of water on the planet earth are subject to the gravitational pull of the Moon.  I hope to explore the various interactions of water-forms and the almost melodic lunar movement in this artwork.

The theme and title that keeps on popping into my head, is “Moonsong and Waterdance”. The Moon sings to entice the water, while the water dances to seduce the Moon.  To me, it is a very beautiful and timeless performance that can only be understood if you can respect the potential power caught in a single drop of water, and lose yourself in the intricate minutiae of an entire ocean.

So far, I have almost completed the white central band curving in a U-shape over the middle, 2nd right and far right canvases.  I have covered the entire band with dozens of little white buttons.  I like the way they feel when I run my hand over the band.  They represent various repetitive concepts and objects:  teeth, finger nails, white buoys floating in the ocean currents, medication that we swallow to aid with the flow of our emotions and health.   I’ll post another photo as soon as I’ve finished that band.  My progress has been hampered by the supporting wooden planks on the back of the canvases – it takes longer to get my hand under and around them, to continue with the stitching.  Each button is hand-stitched with Nymo beading thread and I find the repetitious motions very soothing and meditative.

I have collected many different hues of blue/teal/silver beads and objects to add to entire piece.  I am letting this piece develop organically, and as the Moon or mood strikes me. Therefore, I am not planning too far ahead in terms of design and object choice.  I will be reviewing the overall balance of the piece as I complete each band, before I start designing the next one.

Thank you for following me on my journey as an artist and putting up with my mental musings while I flex my creative muscles.

Hello brain!

This September is very symbolic to me.  Apart from the tragedy of 9/11 which haunts me whenever I see 09:11 on any clock, it is also the month in which I gave birth to my youngest daughter, Vivian.  A very bittersweet month indeed.

Two years have now passed since Vivian’s birth, and I can definitely feel the hormone levels stabilizing.  Hopefully I will have my brain back to full working capacity very soon.  I often joke with my friends that my ob/gyn removed my brain along with my placenta.  Do not laugh, but last week I threw the teaspoon in the rubbish bin and put the empty yogurt pot in the kitchen sink!   Fortunately for me, the bin was still relatively empty.

And a dear friend of mine made me a “genuine Halal ham” sandwich – with such a convincing face that I actually found myself reading the label to see for myself how on earth they managed to get pork certified Halal*.  I felt so silly, but then I couldn’t stop giggling for the rest of the afternoon.  She really got me with that one!

(*Note to readers:  Halal is the Muslim word used to indicate food is considered safe for Muslim consumption, similar to the term “Kosher” for Jewish foodstuffs.  Pork is banned in both religions.)

I have so many exciting and interesting things happening in my life all the time, it is too much to share individually with all my nearest and dearest friends.  Hopefully, I will be able to share my experiments, adventures, triumphs and completed projects through this blog.

So, apart from starting this blog on the first day of September, another reason why this month is special:  the school starts soon!  That’s when Shannon (my eldest daughter) will return to her Foundation 2 class and Vivian will start nursery.  It was a very long, hot, humid and dusty summer here in Dubai and we are overdue for cooler weather and shorter days.