Silly Birthday Cards silly.

Cheak out the jumper!


Got a the Cats observer guide too, brillant.


Happy Birthday to all!

More of this please.

He also did a talk on how he thinks schools are killing creativity. Quite an enlightening watch if you agree with me in thinking that our eductional system is in a shambles.

"Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today." Malcolm X.

Birds really ARE musical, and who says you need to buy a guitar?

This was a nice little leaving present from our lecture on Tuesday. The video was an example of new ways of creating in our contemporary society. It shows that enable to create, we do not need any grand manifestos anymore, we can use the available sources around us. There is a less dictated approach and new models illustrate we now build our own knowledge. Amen to that.

It reminded me of the film 'It Might Get Loud' where Jack White makes a guitar in a field. Always remember Jack White everyone, he is a genius.




The lecture ended on the note 'it's the way we do things, not necessarily what they are.' which i felt quite liberated by. Anyone can create something today, art has become for everyone. Who'd ever thought birds could play guitar?!? Maybe it will become a recording and sell for millions?? Get Simon Cowell involved and there's your answer.

Canine Christmas.

Christmas cards. For them but mainly against them. At school, giving out Christmas cards was a nightmare. Do i send them to my whole class? or just my year? What about teachers? Will i be 'sucking up' if i do that? If i put 'love Lucy', will he think i fancy him? Will anyone notice i gave the best cards to the people i like the most? I hope i spelt their name right..etc.

Above all this, you're mainly thinking: 'i hope they don't just chuck it away the next day. I spent ages choosing your colour and writing 'and a happy new year!' in bubble writing i learnt that day from art attack.' Some do, some don't but for a young avid doodler/handwriting copier/paper collector, it was a horrible thought all your efforts were dumped with the rest of the lunchbox leftovers.

But when you get into secondary school, everyone becomes 'too cool' to send them and it's not an issue anymore. If you still did you'd send them to your best friends, which still bodes uneasiness. What about your new best friend? Do they count? Oh and Dave sent me one so surely it'd be rude to not send one back? School is weird.

I've always enjoyed making cards. I remember spending whole Sundays making birthday cards out of whatever i had in my junk shop of a room. I got really excited about the thought of giving it to them, seeing their faces and having some attention for my creation at that moment. They weren't always necessarily cards; birthday banners, birthday booklets, boxes. As long as the words 'Happy Birthday' was on it, surely anything goes? I have no documentation of those creations, i wish i did, i hope they still remains as a trigger which helps the receiver remember that particular time.

But hey, blogs are now here to project your snippets you want to share. These days, i can't help thinking 'ooh if this picture turns out alright, blog it is!' which is an exciting thought. It has influenced my sketchbook work as the 'roughs' are diminishing and the more 'finished' work is being produced. Well ain't that good.

So these are my 2010 Christmas cards. Firstly i have to apologise for the poor quality photo's. I'm not getting on with my current digi cam and my room is dimmer that dim. I will do better next time. The theme being 'Small Dogs'. Why? Because they are simply quite hilarious. Look how big there legs are?! I hope everyone enjoyed them. I have received some positive feedback already: "The best Christmas card I've got this year". That one comment made my Christmas. Screw you new shoes!

















Here's some finely wrapped presents too.

The City

The Brief: Compose a visual Essay of THE CITY.





TEXT AND IMAGES YET TO COME!

Education Cuts.

What an exciting yet financially terrifying time for students!

When i joined the socialist students union, the cut backs and tuition fee rises was the hot topic of discussion. I'm not at all well informed about politics, so i joined to learn from other people and to meet others that had the same concerns as i do. I felt abit useless at meetings because i didn't know the ins and outs of the political structures, but i do try to contribute by expressing my opinions about social issues i feel need to be heard.

I also wanted to use illustration to communicate ideas that were being presented. I thought it'd be a good opportunity use my skills to help raise awareness, practice working with a deadline and gain feedback from the public. I had a week to design it, bearing in mind a had another deadline the following week! i feel quite proud i managed to do it all in time. This book helped me along the way...



Here's some pics from a protest that happened on the of 24th of November. Noseying around Cardiff unis fancy building was an additional plus...











The latest news concerning Cardiff students was the annoucment of the proposed cuts of the sculpture pathway in Fine Art. Last Tuesday, the 14th of December, i popped along to the protest which was conveniently at the campus round the corner from my house. It was so good to see a diverse range of people there, not just anarchic art students! there were tutors, ex students and members of the public who came along to see and listen to the current concerned sculpture students. It was liberating to hear ex students talk enthusiastically about how the course has shaped and affected their lives. I liked it when he said this:

"Some of the best people i've met in my life have been art students, you guys are awesum!"

This was led by a big cheer, i even did a little one too. Another person who stuck out for me was a mum who expressed her anxieties for her daughters educational future. She quoted she said 'When i'm older, i want to be an artist.' awww. So she made the point of if they're making cuts to the arts now, will there be art courses by the time she grows up? Everyone should have the choice to study what they want. Here here!

Here's a delightful animation by David Shirgley about saving the arts. Genius.

Seasonal Inspiration.

Bottle from Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo.

This is the best piece of stop motion animation I've seen in a looong time. I love the simplicity of it. It proves with a little imagination and ambition, you can create something beautifully heart warming using earths elements as your medium and inspiriation. I especially like the part where they send each other hair!

ANNNNND RELAX.

For days and days I have been waiting to not feel up to my ears with work. It has been my only priory for the past two weeks! Having the leave-it-to-the-last-minute spontaneous ooh-look-what-I-finished-at-5am style, staying up in a jittery caffeine fuelled flux has been an regular occurrence!

It felt all too much at one point; essay to write in 2 days, 5 week project hand in, puppet show to perform, and on top of this, the Christmas was lurking round the corner, agitating me, waiting for me to start sporadically flapping about the expectations I felt to meet. Christmas is nice yeah, but I dislike the one-week-till-xmas stint as the day itself is usually a quiet one, so when all the worrying and pointless spending stops, the day can sometimes feel like a strange come down of it all!


A snippet of the Shadow Play, here's the King peering from his castle window, more pics to come!

19.41 and I should be sprawled out on my living room floor, next to the fake wood burner (the worst interior choice my parents ever made, the ‘wood’ resembles human shit and there is red glitter, YES GLITTER, to emulate a roaring fire), with my over fed dog in the company of the Parkers.

BUT NO, darn pretty white cold stuff had to fall from the sky at the time all us students want to be at home. Home and ready to do nothing but watch tele on real tvs, eat non-blue-and-white-label food and reunite with your sorely missed buddies. So this weekend I’m staying put in lovely Llandaff, enjoying being able to walk into civilisation and observe city life in the snow. I’m sorry Bratton Fleming but you’re pretty boring to be stuck in. especially minus the pub. Now we shall have to revert to drinking in our houses, pretending we’re enjoying life watching x factor.


Notice the yellow sky.


'shroom head LOL.

Today, I trawled through the parks and over the mountain to partake in what we humans call 'shopping'. I thought I’d help me get ideas for gifts, but it just made me want clothes that would make me look cool. Yes you little leather snakeskin boots. And floral hip flask.

On my second ever visit to urban outfitters; I saw they were selling Keri Smith books. An illustrator turned Guerrilla artist who s work and writings I simply adore. I brought ‘The Guerrilla Art Kit’ during my art foundation year, 2008, and have ever since thought of it as my saviour. It was defiantly a bookmark that opened my views to what illustration could be, or what you want it to be. Mail, d.i.y, post its, stickers, badges, stamps; woweee all my collected fetishes can finally become something!


New books! Perhaps the prefect gift for Lucy Parker?






‘Extol the virtue of the negligible and overlooked’….is what tutor Chris Gylnn keeps scribbleing down in my tutorials, and that’s exactly what I aim to do.

So for the past hour or so I’ve found the online existence of Keri smith and thoroughly enjoyed looking at blog and flickr. See here!Goes to show how a little trip into town can surprise you by turning the concept of the day around. I now plan to get scribbling and start making some the most radical xmas cards you’ve ever seen. No pennies required: )

Adbusters Article Review

Cocaine Culture : A global apartheid of decadence and death.
The audience that Adbusters captivates are people who are concerned about our cultural environment and the physical relationships within them. They are people who don’t want to ignore the problems of the modern world. They are concerned about current issues about our environment and our cooperative culture.

Adbusters have organised events such as “Buy Nothing Day” and “Digital Detox Week”. This enables the community to engage in an event and to also see what impact their action is making. It will intrigue the outsider public, which therefore achieves their goal of spreading their beliefs.



Adbusters started as a collaboration of people from various backgrounds who shared similar passions and spiritual outlooks. They have made a stamp for themselves and created a global community. The general readers of Adbusters are people who seek other likeminded souls. They want to find opinions that can influence, shape or fire up their views. They want to see a change happen in the lives they lead and for the future generation. Struggles with modern life is an everyday occurrence, but it’s the people who take action are the ones that want to stop the simulation occurring in our 21st century world.

I am going to talk about the current article ‘Cocaine Culture – A global apartheid of decadence and death.’ Written by Blake Sifton, 01/10/10, featured in ‘The Revolution Issue’



He begins the article by stating how the American cocaine culture is affecting the Mexican drug culture. He constantly collides the two contrasting lifestyles to conjure a bigger impact on the reader. This direct blame makes the reader feel uneasy, as it causes you to question your place within the senirio. If the reader has participated in drug usage, they will feel guilty of being unaware of the crime that surrounds it.

Sifton takes the mickey out of the activist-hippie stereotype.

“And so they march in protest, volunteer abroad, shop ‘green’ and insist on drinking fair trade coffee.”

As Adbusters is a non-for-profit, anti-capitalist publication for mostly activist, he is making direct stabs at the audience. By doing so, he is fulfilling his aim to cause controversy and seek conflicting views. He aims to cause a direct emotional impact that will influence their original preconceptions.

He bluntly states they have no moral concerns, which paints a wrong impression of young people. This is just one example where he has created assumptions about today’s youth culture.

“They do not seem to care that for coke to make its way up their American noses, Mexican heads must roll in the streets of Juárez..”

The tone of the article is aggressive, bold and roofless. He uses words such as ‘poisoned’, ‘sick’, ‘brutal’ and ‘horrific’ to describe the Mexican cartel. It is trying to ingrain the message in the most efficient way by using descriptive yet clear language.

The last two paragraphs summarize the key issues being addressed and suggest a solution to solve these. It would be a pointless publication if it simply stated problems without voicing solutions to people who crave change. By discussing serious and frightening issues about a particular country, it creates a distance from us to them. To conclude the article, he puts the topic into a global perspective. He states that the US isn’t the only country dealing with the relationship between countries consumption, and how it’s affecting developing countries. There is no evidence for this statement, therefore, placing it at the end of the article entails he wants to leave it as an afterthought.

Is it a cry for help? a deep concern for our human race?; or on the other hand, it is a plead to legalize drugs for recreational usage?, or an ill-informed rant on a subject only the people living it can tell the tale and find a solution.

Whatever side you take, Adbusters was created to get people thinking about their presence on the planet, and if you didn’t feel any emotion after reading the article, then maybe you should get back to reading ‘Take a Break’ magazine….

Museum of Me - Curating the Self.

Brief - Research, design and illustrate the ‘MUSEUM of ME’. (That’s it).

6 Week project.

My original idea for this project was to showcase my future ambitions and messages i want to share with the world. Since being at university, my interest of ways we communicate and send messages have risen to the surface. As an illustrator, we are trying to communicate ideas and information to the world in our own unique language. What interests me is the history of human interaction and how technology affects this.

Everyday life is bombarded with information and messages; Internet ads, those REALLY ANNOYING spotify ads, e-mails, texts, facebook updates, post, conversation. Technology has created new ways of communication, therefore in today's society we have a choice of how we choose to communicate.

I never thought as myself as a 'tech' person. I often feel frustrated and senseless when using some technologies. i.e. computer always has a problem, wasting hours looking at a screen. There are days where i feel suffocated and drowned with information from all directions. But i hypocritically go on my computer everyday and spend a fair amount of time on my phone. This is not by desired choice. I try my hardest to only use these tools for communication, music and receiving information from my tutors. I feel i have to change and adapt myself to live on this day and age. I have to learn to deal with my frustration, learn how to stay active, learn how to avoid mislaying important information, learn to seek ways i can fully relax (this is where i think mediation/yoga should step in) and learn to accept i am not alone with these anxieties.

I don't like the idea of spending 'leisure time' on the computer i.e socialising, reading, playing games. Everything has gone digital and i think people need to peel there eyes off the screen for a moment look back on when people were being present with one another. I don't not hate the Internet. I feel very lucky to have a tool that enables me to delve into archives from years ago, listen to whatever music i want, watch whatever i want, find out about anything i want! And it's ALL AT THE CLICK OF A BUTTON! WOW!
But i am just a little concerned on how it's affecting our way of life and well being. It's the power if the Internet which i find alarming and at periods having no control over what your exploited to. After a certain amount of time using these objects i feel drained, numb, achy and tired. 'A day at the office' is what i like to call these computer filled hours.

I never crave the newest version of things as i think 'well what happens to all the 'old' versions?' Probably get dumped in a big hole in the earth somewhere that's where. Fair do's if its broken (which of course it eventually will, as most machines are built to break after a few years, ridiculous silly madness i tell you!). Being an avid recyclers/hoarder/collector, i like to look back on old technologies to see how they fitted in with the social and cultural aspects were happening at the time. I find the fast paced nature of new technology bloody scary. There is a computer now that is apparently as intelligent as the human brain. Meaning it can feel real human emotions. I find this hugely unnerving. Can you fall in love with a computer? Digital love? Computer love? (According to Kraftwork you can) Our consumer culture instructs us to think we need the latest version of everything. But we really don't. When is this rapid influx of technology going to take a breather and think about what is needed of our day and age?

RANT OVER.

Coming back to my MOM piece, I'm aware it doesn't communicate my resolved idea. My final concept was inspired by Marshall McLuhan's 'Meaning is the Massage' book. He says that each medium is independent of the content it mediates. It has its own intrinstict effect which is the unique message. This led me to look at the movement of Fluxus artists. They created flux boxes which contained objects, drawings, letters, games and printed empherema. As i collect similar things, i felt i could emulate this way of representing my ambitions, messages and past times using the medium itself. I wanted the piece to be interactive, so the viewer can be part of a sensory experience - an experience i feel is missing in our digital world. I wanted them to touch, smell and look at the messages. We treasure material objects, like letters and postcards, because the way we receive and transmit them.






Reflectively, i feel the piece came together as i came back to my main idea of 'who would be my messengers', but this time using my collections and findings as the medium. My intentions of creating a tactile and sensory experience was lost, however, i enjoyed making the scenery and characters for it. I wanted to included pieces of paper in an envelope that had my messages written on, for the viewer to take away. However, i couldn't logistically find a space within the narrative composition. Instead, i created rubber stamp stickers for people to keep. The stamp idea steamed from looking at examples Mail Art, where many of them created their own stamps. Stamp collecting and designing is an area i would like to explore further in future projects.





In previous projects, my work pattern goes as such: usually spend too much time in the research/early development stage, which leaves me little time for final development and making. This happened again in this one too! I often felt i was reading irrelevant text, so I'd stop reading and start searching again. For future reference, i need to have a more specific subject and to use the resources efficiently. It was only in the late stage of this project i really got my teeth in something i felt very connected with. I also wish i branched out my sketchbook more and experimented visually rather than just note taking. This would have avoided feelings of being unproductive.

I would like to continue developing characters as i really enjoyed it but left little time for it. I'd also like to continue using photographs as a medium for creating another image. I could look at the Dada artists manifestos to further this interest.




Tape horses RULE!






^ My personal zebra messenger through the years : )


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Keri Smith, The Guerilla Art Book,Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2007.

http://www.ubu.com/sound/mcluhan.html - Audio recording of Marshall McLuhan's book The Medium is the Massage Columbia Records, late 1960's.

Tom Philips, The Postcard Centuary London: Thames and Hudson, 2000.

http://www.postcards-letters.org.uk/index.php/picturethis/pt

http://www.logolalia.com/mailart/archives/2006_11.html - Dan Waber Mail Art.

More pictures from assesment viewing>





^ The post-its where to give critical feedback for the project. Sami left me a blank one - speechless!


^ The exterior of the box is supposed to emulate a computer, a macbook in this case, playing on the idea of a computer being the dominant tool of how i/we communicate.