Hungry for Art

Stumbled across this quirky 'Sandwich Art' project by Portland based artist Brittany Powell. So you can really get a taste for your favourite art work:

Piet Mondrian

Damien Hirst

Mark Rothko

Book Landscapes

My first post of the New Year, and it's been so hectic I have no time to reflect on last year & make predictions/ aims for the year ahead as one may traditionally do so.
I'll just jump straight in with showcasing these beautiful book landscapes carved & crafted by artist Guy Laramee. In the two series entitled Biblios and The Great Wall, dense pages of old books are excavated to reveal serene mountains, plateaus, and ancient structures across the cross section of the book. It makes contour maps far more exciting to look at than the dull pages of my geography textbooks back in the day..

Happy Holidays!

A very Merry Christmas to One and All!

An important thing to remember...

A beautiful illustration by Maira Kalman for a book entitled 'Food Rules' by Michael Kullen, a guide to the approach we should take towards food nowadays; that perhaps we should listen to advice from those elder & wiser than us rather than what is 'officially' advised by the government. If you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, you're probably not hungry, and, Place a bouquet of flowers on the table and everything will taste twice as good. 
Sending out the message that food is as much about pleasure and communion as it is about nutrition and health.

Monsters illustrated

It seems one of the illustrators I love & and wrote about recently is the same person that did this print sold in The Hoxton Street Monster supplies, since it's opening last November.

'Zingoula Cudacuda' by BEN NEWMAN 

School term has started again, so I'll be back there the odd morning illustrating the wild & wierd creations the youngsters come up with, as well as mentoring on the Saturday project The Hoxton AM. I'm kind of jealous really as I'd have loved a place like the Ministry to go to when I was young, to have a go at being a journalist, or local press photographer. These are some of the great workshops held regularly at the small shop located on the market, including the recent re-write of The Awfully Bad Guide to Monster Housekeeping. Children from the local schools worked with some top writers and poets on various sections to complete this important guide on on areas of monster Etiquette. But they are in need of some funds to get it published. If you can donate anything please do so here.

The Awfully Bad Guide to Monster Housekeeping from Ministry of Stories on Vimeo.




Alternatively feel free to pop along and buy your next jar of Pickled Eyeballs and support a great project.

Is it a shoe or a sculpture?

Like most women, I absolutely adore shoes in all their shapes, sizes and colours. I make snap purchases, without even considering whether they'll o with anything, or the practicality of them..but these, yes these people are SERIOUS un practical shoes. But I love them! They fuse my love of shoes and art in one.
Created by Israeli born footwear designer, Kobi Levi, these creations are a visual feast, forcing you to look twice and work out how this object can actually fit a foot inside it. Levi says of his work, "The piece is a wearable sculpture. It is "alive" with or without the foot or body".

 Amazingly, all the shoes are hand made in his studio. Follow more creations on his blog.

Making music look good

So I managed to get on down to GLUG the other week & I wasn’t disappointed. The theme was music videos with top directors from the likes of Partizan, SkinFlicks, and Sony Music showcasing some of their best work. It really made me stop and fully appreciate the creativity and crazy amount of hard work that goes into producing some beautiful mini films that you never fully see or just catch a glimpse of.

Here’s a selection of my best video’s & the odd fact or two:

Phil Tidy who has produced some well known videos for the likes of Lily Allen, The Ting Tings, Dizzee Rascal to name a few, showed this great story of a hypocritical TV presenter in this video for Chase and Status. 

Mike O’Keefe of Sony revealed Jonathan Glazer had a budget of around £100k to produce Jamiroquai’s floor sliding Virtual Insanity. He then went a quarter of a million over budget creating the 3D creature coming out of the sea in the opening sequence of Deeper Underground.

Aside from these facts he showed us the brilliant piece of marketing for the launch of Kasabian's new track 'Underdog'. By recreating Guitar Hero on a massive scale and getting a West London football club to hits the notes at the right time by kicking a football at the relevant colour dot. Hours later of practise, the team manage the full version of the track. You can only imagine their elation.

Directed by Dan Henshaw.

Found Collective have produced some highly creative & powerful films for Pendulum, Depeche Mode and LadyTron. What caught my attention though was this cool viral made for Vodaphone to show The Evolution of the mobile phone. 

Found collective also collaborated on this piece for the Director's showcase in Cannes, making a kinect performance that can only be explained here. The effects produced as you can see are quite intriquing. 

We also got a sneak peak into some of the test video tricks from Henry Schofield of Partizan which was a highlight for me.

And I'd like to leave you with this beautiful film created by an upcoming Mexican Director, Alberto Gomez whose response to Saatchi's 'Hello, Future' music video competition no doubt won him some fans in Cannes where he was announced the Winner. His stylish and beautiful art directed interpretation of Moby's track takes the viewer to another realm.

After - Moby from Alberto Gomez on Vimeo.

Psychedelic invigoration

Loving the tribal inspired work of Bristol born illustrator, Ben Newman as profiled in last month's Creative Review. Yes I'm a month behind. Work, holiday, you know how it goes. So I have about five 'drafts' to pop up here - Expect more action! Anyway, a visual feast while you wait... 

The bold graphic shapes and colour palette have quite a retro style about them, while the symmetry plays havoc with your eyes - Love them!