urban zen

Urban Zen

I came across Donna Karan's foundation and new label Urban Zen on one of my ventures out into the big world wide web. I was immediately attracted to the fashion, the same thing that used to happen to me in the early nineties, most of what I saw of her work was inspiring and intelligent, made for a woman's body, I was so glad to know she was over there in New York. I feel like with this label she's gone into the core of her style and heart. And then to make things even more enthralling, ten percent of sales from the Urban Zen stores goes to the people in Haiti. It reminds me a bit of the inspirational Anita Roddick. Thank God for powerful, humanitarian, and creative women like this, they give the rest of us such an excellent reference point.

Asako Narahashi

Kawaguchiko, 2003 From the series half awake and half asleep in the water C-Print © Asako Narahashi, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

A friend just came back from Japan and told me that she had to do a whole review about her idea of what 'culture' actually is. She basically had her mind blown by the culture and civilisation of Japan. She hadn't really grown up with the idea that it is actually culture which immortalises a civilization, not Australian rules football, as so many Australians believe I'm afraid!

I always get a really good feeling about a culture/time/values etc from the photographers who live and work in that place/time etc. So I just went surfing on the web, and found this wonderful Japanese photographer who it looks like, has just had a book published called 'half awake and half asleep in the water', from the exhibition which happened at the Yossi Milo Gallery in NY.

the beauty of bold colour and resin

Resin!

I'm very excited to be rediscovering the beauty of resin. It really is such

a delicious material to use, its so generous with its chunkiness and translucent colour, and some of the opacity is so hearty and strong too. Its so much nicer than plastic!

And this isn't even the lovely organic style of Dinosaur designs, its flatter and

probably mass produced, but I am excited about how its giving me a sculptural layering ability.

I can go crazy with the colours. I love the way jewellery is now becoming acceptable as 'big' again.

I got so bored with all that girly-wirly ubiquitous silver charms look...

Woman need to start wearing their power really now..and colour, shape and

boldness is the way in my opinion anyway!

Edward Steichen's photograph of Marion Morehouse (Mrs e.e. Cummings)

This is surely an amazing moment in time! The photograph by Edward Steichen, the model is Mrs ee Cummings: Marion Morehouse; and the dress is by Louis Boulanger, and taken in 1926. I so wish I could take a time machine back to the twenties and thirties, the fashion, photography, art, design and architecture was extraordinary, especially when you compare it to the late nineteenth century, and Edwardian times, which were pretty interesting. Even the beginning of the awakening in Art Nouveau, however magnificent and iconoclastic at times, doesn't compare in my opinion.

BTW:Thanks to Gatochy on flickr for the shot...

Is Marilyn Minter's work even more relevant now than it was when she created it?

Here is an artist I've only just discovered.

Her work reminds me a bit of Cindy Sherman, because of its lurid erotica or (at times) confronting content. They also have in common that they are not trying to create beauty, but they are both questioning what beauty is.

If you put her name in your favorite search engine and just look at her images spread across the web, you will get a sense of what she's saying.

I find her work important and relevant at this time, when fashion is often a mash of mixed up fads, styles, and genres, and quite often ugly and contrary to our programmed wish for it to wisk us away into a world where everything is beautiful and perfect. When we cannot find beauty in the classical or traditional sense, we have to start questioning what it is that soothes us rather than what is provokes us into a reactive state.

Here is an artist whose mash-up shows integrity and cohesive enquiry.

More about her work is here: Marilyn Minter. 

In defence of dots

I've always love comic books, they had a huge influence on me as a child, and I had a pile at least two foot high, which I collected over a period of about four years when I was in my early teens.

I particularly loved the romance, WonderWoman and Superman comics. I wish I'd kept them, I'm sure they'd still inspire me, with their evocative and powerful archetypal images, all made the more emotional because of the dots somehow. (like what one imagines to be swirling molecules or atoms...always keeping one's feelings on the edge and stirred....)

When I went to Art School in the late sixties, I was delighted to find Lichtenstein ofcourse.

I found this image along with some great words and other fantastic edits here

Kabala 2

In Defense of Dots: The lost art of comic books

A photograph is a universe of dots. The grain, the halide, the little silver things clumped in the emulsion. Once you get inside a dot, you gain access to hidden information, you slide inside the smallest event.

This is what technology does. It peels back the shadows and redeems the dazed and rambling past. It makes reality come true.

—Don DeLillo, Underworld (1997)

From the 1940s to the 1970s, comic book art and comic books were the same thing. In the decades since, the art of comics has been carefully separated from the original physical conditions of its reproduction. Elevation of the 20th century art form has resulted in the erasure of the 20th century mechanical processes that enabled comic books to exist and thrive – for ten, twelve, fifteen, or twenty cents, millions of times over.

It was an economic bargain that significantly defined the aesthetic terms of comic books: cheap paper, cheap printing, and four-color separations that could not hide their limitations. These accidental aesthetics governed the experience of comics for generations, were appropriated for fine art in the 1960s, and today fall into the “retro” category of graphic design.

Dil Hildebrand ~ beautiful paintings about the present

I came across this Canadian painter Dil Hildebrand, a few days ago when I was signing up to a great blogging site called posterous, where I have now started a blog about my Yoga classes (amongst other things).

I love the illusion of photographs taken in a mirror, or something like that. It gives the feeling of other dimensions, which is always of great interest to me.

I will keep an eye on Dil Hildebrand, and the blog where I found him: collections from the last place.

Inspiration from a master photographer: Patrick Demarchelier

As nearly always when I see a photograph that shifts some deeper ingrained notion I have about the role fashion, the media or celebrities play in our lives, Patrick Demarchelier's photographs pull the rug from under my feet.

Here we see an image which on the surface could almost be a photograph of 1920's flapper getting her portrait taken on her way to a soiree.
On closer inspection one finds the theatre of a Japanese Geisha girl, or the wild and woolly outrage of a girl today defying her parents wish for her to be the ingenue of their dreams.

I continue to be inspired by his photography as I have for the last twenty years or so.

Piet Mondriaan ~ his influence continues to enrich us ~

I took this photo at Gemeente Museum ~ The Hague when I was last in the Netherlands a few months ago. I've tried to find it on their site or elsewhere online to find the title and when it was painted etc, but to no avail! And my picture here is not ideal, as the glass reflection undermines the luminosity and beauty of this work. I think it was quite an early piece, before his more famous works, which everyone knows off by heart.

I notice that there's an exhibition on at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and there's an excellent little film clip about that here.

Picture on the left shows the beautiful original Art Deco design of the Gemeente Museum in The Hague. All the interior, fittings and everything are elegantly original Art Deco. The whole building is a museum to that.

Its worth a visit if you're in Europe.

Louise Bourgeois in Venice

 At the Magazzino del SaleWe saw some works which Louise Bourgeois made just before she died at age 98.
I have always been so inspired by the power which quietly is revealed, often in retrospect, when thinking afterwards about you've just seen. Her deep female message, and even the spider has a sense of the intricate lives us women can lead. I didn't realise much she has influenced some picture I have in my psyche about 'a woman's lot'. 
When I was about to start high school and they talked to me about what I like doing and felt I was good at in order to help me work out which subjects to do, they ended up telling my parents that it would be best if I did needlework and cooking.
Louise Bourgeois has healed the wound in me, which thought perhaps I wasn't good enough to think of myself as anything other than a housewife. (which was the subtext of the headmistress' message to my parents I think...)

if only we could capture the scent of daphne on camera

Amsterdam - the late fifties

This is a photo my father took of his sister Katinka Bruin-van Rood and me when we were visiting 'home'- Holland in about 1959 I think. It was Amsterdam, my grandmother's house, as far as I can remember.

My aunt was also known as Toos, and much loved by all of us. You can see here what a very beautiful woman she was. Full of life and intelligence. She loved her brother (my father, as you can see here too).
She was a great sculptress,  and probably inspired my to take the career path I have taken. My parents would leave us in her
studio for a day, and she would give us clay and set projects for us.
I once spent a whole day making 'a glass of water' out of clay. I was so excited that you could make anything, anything out if this wonderful pliable substance. I can still smell that wonderful earthy smell when I think about her studio. And the pale Amsterdam light flooding in through the tall windows.

On the left here is one of her bronze cast sculptures which I treasure. She adored cats, and always had them in pairs.
But even though that's what this depicts, there is a lot more going on, it has something about it which reminds me of the 'Tree of Life', something ancient and magical.

Katinka lives on in all who knew her, she was luminous and unforgettable.

Shirin Neshat Montage

Shirin Neshat Montage from sam neave on Vimeo.

I first saw Shirin Neshat's work in an exhibition at ACCA here in Melbourne. I thought about it for days afterwards. And every now and then over the years her work pops into my mind, the power of images and almost emblematic gestures and actions is transporting and exciting. She's an extraordinary woman who inspires many, as well as making changes to consciousness.

The ARt of Robert Frank

Yesterday was my birthday and my brother took me into my favorite bookshop and told me to choose whatever I wanted. So I chose a beautiful little book: Robert Frank - Paris. I wasn't familiar with his images of any European city. I've always associated him with America. (the above image is not in my book). So now I will spend the next weeks dipping in and out of these exquisite minimal images, evocative narratives.

Alfred Stieglitz

I read an article about Alfred Stieglitz in the Australian yesterday, there's going to be a show of his in Sydney later in the year, I was attracted initially to him, because he was Georgia O'Keefe's husband, and I find her such a remarkable painter, her erotic works of nature. Then I looked into her husband's photographs, I just googled his name and 'images', so I still don't know a lot about him, except for the article and the images I've just been exploring. I realise that he is amazing too, that you can see how his photography has influenced so many other artists, including artists that are better known than him, to the likes of me anyway. (eg Ansel Adams).

the extraordinary images of Willy Ronis

Place Vendome, Paris, 1947

 I came across Willy Ronis, because I kept thinking about Brassaii today, and how he has influenced the way we think about Paris to this day I believe. I didn't know about this photographer, he was around at around the same time as Brassaii and Lartigue, and had a strong style of his own. More lyrical perhaps, less of social commentary, I'll get back about this, as I need to investigate him more.

Degas and the light

I am currently doing Geoffrey Dupree's 'From Drawing to Painting' course. For the last three days we have focused pretty solidly on tone, and how it indicates space. Most of us look at colour and shape all the time. I found that I rarely look at tone. And then I thought about the painting of Degas' that I saw at the French masters recently. It's just a small painting which is probably the first painting you look at when you enter the exhibition. I stood in front of it for a long time, just absorbing the light and the space he created with light, and the absence of light. And then ofcourse there's his flawless draughtsmanship. Need I say more. But with very little colour, he allows you to enter into his illuminated world of light and space. Magic.

inspirations from Canberra

Paul Cezanne - Rochers pres des grottes au-dessus du Chateau-Noir

The soft eloquence of the colours and the paint strokes made me feel like I was being held in the arms of an angel...

Claude Monet - need I say more! This painting, not very well represented here, brought me to tears. I felt deeply that this was painted from his heart, and that my heart was opened by just standing in front of it. I can't explain why...

A beautiful collection of Jude Rae's paintings were at the Canberra Museum and Gallery, the other dimemsions brought forth with her sparse cool style.

 I took this picture when we came out of the National Portrait Gallery. (which I highly recommend!) It was bucketing down in Canberra. The cab driver told us that they hadn't seen rain like this for four months, maybe 'years'...

Charles Anastase AW10

 

Charles Anastase only showed 19 things in London a few days ago, and they were all absolutely original and intensely refreshing. There was a style sensibility, and even though there was deconstruction, there was a tailored feel of someone who knows what he's doing with the body and clothes. After paging through derivatives, wannabees  and copies mostly, I went: "ahaaa! At last!"

'want me'

Barbara Kruger, one of my favorites, brings emotion into her often dry or sardonic collages.
I am inspired by that ability to merge these two seemingly opposing forces.