1000 Poems

There's a lot going on around here at the moment and my mind has been spinning with ideas as well... I've had this post on file for a while now, but lately, I've found I keep having a peek at the photos. They are so calming. This is like a fairytale garden to me :) 

1000 Poems by Mail is an installation by Luzinterruptus, guerilla lighting artists extraordinaire. They filled one thousand envelopes with poems written by 17 poets and hung them from the leaves of the garden at the Madrid Poetry Festival venue last year.

On the last night of the festival, one hundred visitors were offered the chance to have a poem sent to their loved one with the light inside.

One of the things I really love about this installation is its aim to highlight days past when special words were sent by post.  

I have a computer-phobic friend in London with whom I correspond. We put together tomes of clippings and photos and pages and pages of news in our letters. We also take care to comment of every single inclusion in our replies... it's quite a task and takes forever. 

I only manage to send 3 or 4 letters a year but I love doing it :) Do you get many letters these days? Do you write letters?

p.s. 

In case you don't already know, the

 Queensland Poetry Festival is on 26 - 28 August.

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Christmas Decorations Tute :)

We're in our second week of school holidays here and, so far, it's a very wet long summer stretching out before us. So, what to do inside leading up to Xmas? My Little One and I have been doing some paper cutting of Christmas decorations from templates one of her teachers gave me at the Christmas Craft Day. 

I'm not sure if there's a copyright on these designs or where they came from at all actually... I'm hoping it was a teacher's resource and that it's okay to share :)

You can find the templates here. 

(1) Print them out on paper of your choice and cut out a square around the dotted line. 

(2) Fold the square in half to form a triangle along the line of the black shapes.

(3) Fold the first triangle in half to form a smaller triangle. 

(4) Start cutting out the black parts of the design.

(5) Once you have cut out all the black shapes unfold the paper carefully... and here's your Christmas Star!

Happy paper cutting! :)

Greener grass

I couldn't tell you why exactly, but whenever I have things I absolutely must get done I come up with ideas for other things that take me running away in another direction entirely... Is it a grass is greener syndrome? I should be doing my silversmithing course homework... I really want to do it actually... but then I found myself doing this...

... I suddenly became obsessed with designing a continuous pattern for screenprinting. I pencilled up the grid and used my protractor thingy for the circles. As you can tell, this is very scientific for me ;) While cutting the last two circles I decided it was going to be a bit too technical-looking so I started cutting some creative anarchy into it ;) Next screenprinting trials... Here's hoping it all works together fine in the end. Knowing me though, something else will draw me away in another direction... :)

Inspiration: Isabelle Bonte

I've recently started a silversmith course and so I'm finding my attention is captured more and more by artists who utilise metals in interesting ways. The whimsical fine constructions of Isabelle Bonte are a real treat for the way she approaches her work but also for her inspirational application of paper to this process. Visit her website to see more of her fabulous work and (with the help of the translating facility) read some of her poetic artist statements. Just to share one of these:

Understanding of space

Always light the paper between the lines

Design of volumes and surfaces. The light and dark.

Light is vital, the line helps to define it.

A question of pace.

Do not say everything, create the key, and suggest the rest.

They really do add poignancy to her pieces, don't you think? I love it. Hope you've had a lovely weekend :)

found via

Bean Prints

[click on image to enlarge]

Do you remember a couple of weeks ago now, I was helping my friend Michael sew up some fabric that he'd screen printed? Well, his exhibition opening is tonight and if you're in Brisbane you might like to come along and have a look. We've done a bit more sewing since then and he's done some super yummy prints on paper and fabric. The exhibition runs from 2 - 16 September and is part of the Small Australian Projects initiative. 6pm start - Shop 2, 60 James Street, Fortitude Valley. Come and say hello!

p.s. some pics from the night...

Winners are grinners...

... and I'm certainly grinning here! :) The lovely Nicola at My Handmade Heart had a giveaway last week and guess who won one of her exquisite paper sculptures? Yep, grinning me! The only problem is where to place it? It looks good everywhere...

...maybe in the planter box? It has a fabulous public art look about it there!

... maybe on my bedside shelf? So gorgeous but very selfish of me...(geddit?). So, maybe on the sideboard? ...but that's not really the centre of the room...

I think I know the best place. Sorry for the washed out photo, but don't you think it looks wonderful here? Thank you Nicola for such a fabulous giveaway! To see all of Nicola's amazing paper sculptures and craft works you can visit her blog here and her Etsy store here.

Print/Craft + Synchronicity

I think this is the first time I've ever posted about the same artist on both of my blogs, let alone on the same day...! Perhaps this gives you some indication of the extent of my delirium about this work ;) I love sewing and I love paper, so when someone comes along who actually sews paper, I get pretty excited. But groan not... This is a separate post and not a cut & paste job! Read about Evelin Kasikov's book project Printed Matter on my other blog, Scissors + Paper Rock! right here.

Now that that's all sorted, let me tell you about Evelin Kasikov's poster work, Gil Sans Light... Graphics-savvy readers out there will recognise this title as the name of a typeface and they've probably already identified the CMYK palette of Kasikov's threads as well... So, no surprises then that Kasikov's work is very much about craft within the context of graphic design. Cyan, Magenta and Yellow are of course the primary colours from which all others are created and we see this happening all the time in other areas of the visual arts - paints are mixed, light shows etc. I don't know about you, but this is the first time I've seen someone do this with embroidery thread and I think it's pretty cool! Kasikov has created the illusion of other colours, like the green in the "a" posters... By cross-stitching cyan and yellow on the page, the "a" begins to look green once the eye has enough distance from the paper to blend the colours. This is so exciting and I feel truly inspired to experiment myself with this amazing technique.

You can find more of Kasikov's work on her website here and on her Flickr photostream here. I found her via this lovely blog here.