watching the world

a friend got me on to the guardian's 24 hours in pictures series
they are usually interesting but sometimes, sometimes the images can stop you in your tracks
these are some of my recent favourites

24 February - 5 / 13 Ixcateopan, Mexico: A dancer wearing a deer's head during an Aztec ceremony to celebrate the birth of Cuauhtemoc, the last Aztec emperor
Photograph: Eduardo Verdugo/AP
23 February - 4 / 14 Allahabad, India: A lamp floats in the water as Hindu devotees offer prayers while standing in the Sangam river
Photograph: Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP




22 February - 9 / 12 Semikhovichi, Belarus: A fisherman sits on a frozen lake
Photograph: Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters

20 February - 5 / 14 Berlin, Germany: A rickshaw driver makes her way through the snow
Photograph: Michael Gottschalk/AFP/Getty Images

19 February - 14 / 14 Kabul, Afghanistan: A man begs on a street
Photograph: Ahmad Masood/Reuters

18 February - 11 / 14 Shuafat, West Bank: A Palestinian boy climbs through an opening in the West Bank barrier near Jerusalem Photograph: Baz Ratner/Reuters

18 February - 12 / 14 Sabah, Malaysia: A young boy paddles through his neighbourhood in the Sulawesi sea. Around 30 families of the indigenous ethnic group, known as Sea Gypsies, still maintain a nomadic, sea-based existence without any fresh water supply or electricity. The families only venture on to dry land to bury the dead
Photograph: Bazuki Muhammad/Reuters

17 February - 5 / 15 Baghdad, Iraq: Shia Muslims take part in Arbaeen, marking 40 days after Ashura at the Imam Musa al-Kadhim mosque
Photograph: Ali Al-Saadi/AFP/ Getty

16 February - 3 / 13 Mumbai, India: A man has his vision tested at a free eyecare camp set up by a voluntary organisation
Photograph: Arko Datta/ Reuters

15 February - 8 / 13 Henan province, China: Women fill sacks with garlic in a packing shed in the village of Mulou. The farmers used to be able to sell each sack of garlic in 2007 for more than fifty yuan but this year can only fetch five yuan
Photograph: David Gray/Reuters

alfie

i have found a charming dog

i am often on the lookout for a dog to fall in love with

alfie looks like a good fellow

he is a "from kennel to couch" (safetynet) greyhound

he is listed as being cat-friendly, which is essential because my two monsters, cookie & elsa, are dog-fearing cats

there is a lot to like about greyhounds. their long noses for one. i remember walking down a back alley in north fitzroy once and being surprised by a long-nosed hound appearing above a low-point in the fence.

it was such a winsome face.

their wonderful laziness and commitment to going hard at the couch is another.

they have a reputation for gentleness, and are good-natured.

apparently they are free-thinkers and will ignore pointless commands. i have to respect this, as i'm a bit this way myself.

my favourite dog breed though is the airedale. ever since i saw a tremendously pleased-with-itself airedale taking itself for a walk along brighton road. i was about 10 years old. i'm not sure how old the airedale was. but i have never witnessed such jaunty joy.

they have a deep inner goofiness.

i found a lovely "review" of airedales by chip brown called, style, brains & a clownish wit: everything one looks for in a spouse
one day, i'd very much like to live with an airedale. they sound like they're worth the effort.

snip tuck

old books are finding a whole new audience as visual artists open up their leaves, folding and slicing the paper into wondrous shapes.
the meaning of these books is changed - it's a whole new type of editing
this quite astonishing feathery scalpel work by scottish artist georgia russell
works by "book-sculptor" nicholas jones, who both folds (the land i love) and carves.
poet joe de iacovo writes of jones' practice in an essay called, the drag of the blade,
the covers, the pages, the spine- the memory's image of a book temporarily hijacking each sculpture... crafted by unhurried but time-hungry scalpel-work freeing the book's rectangular confines. exposing its innards,
integrating the layers constituting each mass. art colluding with identity reframing via lines of smooth, collective cuts.
jazz musician danny fisher has also responded to jones' work - you can listen to it on the craftculture site - everyone's a critic!
there is paper cutting everywhere.
this paper tree by su blackwell
and her fairy tale castle which would have made me wriggle in ecstasy as a child.
it reminds me that i grew up with polish cut-out folk art - wycinanki.
intricate, sometimes multi-layered designs. abstract, illustrative, both.
my mum would occasionally get to work with scissors and create something extraordinary. but she was only ever a dilettante. in grade 5 or 6, my sister took a different approach to the folk tradition, creating folk scenes, harvesting crops or village scenes, crafting the figures from pages of my mum's magazines. she did some incredible work.
actually, i am finding a lot of things my sister would like. luckily she reads these pages. it's a good way of keeping in touch. in fact i think she should start a blog so i know what's going on in her creative mind!
this one's for you k, between the folds, a documentary on the science and art of origami


addendum: a link my sister sent me the other day, the magic of a toilet roll forest
addendum 2: image from the guardian's 24 hours in pictures, 27 may - Shenyang, northeast China: Pupils of the Pu River Elementary school, practice a shadow puppet performance
Photograph: Mark/EPA

commune sant'angelo

i have a secret fantasy. slightly bridal although it's not about a big wedding, or the dress or flowers or the ring. it's not even about the presents, although i do love presents.
it's about the joy and happiness of a moment that is caught for me in the dance on the barge at the ponte sant'angelo, in roman holiday.


i love the happy-go-lucky ambience, the string of lights.
i've found a place that reminds me of this scene
it's a restaurant with an outdoor courtyard just near st patrick's in melbourne. there are stairs leading down from the street above. it used to be an empty courtyard with tables moved in and out. now they've built a sheltered area - sensible in melbourne, i suppose. if you strung up some lights, it could still hit the right note.

i think having this secret locale is enough for me because i really couldn't imagine recreating the festivities, or even living through it. my love isn't interested in this kind of show and fuss, i could probably show pony my way through it. maybe i'll have a birthday party instead.

favela hope

i saw a wonderful documentary on tuesday night. the content was inspiring but it was backed up with great cinematography, editing and vigour. favela rising, about musicians afro reggae in a favela in rio de janeiro who decided to take a stand against official corruption and the drug gangs ruling their community.

i used to be afraid of the energy of brazil. the sexuality. this was before i even knew about favelas. this is just thinking about the frenetic dancing at carnival, samba and tiny shreds of clothing on gleaming taut bodies. maybe it was just a fear of string bikinis.
but i'm braver now. curious and inspired.
i bought the são paolo issue of parachute (no 116) - 2004 and it contained an article about the work of mônica nador. she works with disenfranchised and marginalized communities, and her projects are driven by a dehierarchization of art. walls are enlivened by the repetition of colourful images.
there was also an article, the sudden stardom of the third world city. the author, rana dasgupta suggests, a huge shift in the West's picture of the world: the third world metropolis is becoming the symbol of the "new"... the stacked-up, sprawling, impromptu city-countries of the third world.
all the more thrilling for its utter improbability: surely those suffocating piles of slums and desperation are too exhausted, too moribund, to bring forth futures?
this feels slightly parasitical to me. the privileged feeding off the desperate and desperately poor. and i feel implicated in this. inspired and enamoured of the shanty-town shabby chic, without having to suffer the violence and poverty.
the favela rising documentary cuts through this because it shows the spirit of the communities. mônica nador's work is inspirational because it is grass-roots, and doesn't fetishise the favelas but treats their citizens as they should be treated - with respect, as equals.
other favela painting projects
some more of nador's work i'm stupidly pleased her name is mônica.

glow mesh

like many others who drive down victoria rd, thornbury, i'm delighted by a garden filled with colourful animals.

this is no skanky christmas display but beautiful life-size creatures created out of coloured mesh.

this is the work of tom ripon.

apparently he's hard to contact. i googled "mesh animals" to find his name, and then googled his name to find a story in the local leader newspaper reporting that one of his kangaroos had been stolen from his front yard, bounder grabs roo from thornbury sculptor.

i also found a lament that tom doesn't have a website making him hard to find. weird how we take the choice not to go online personally.

but he makes beautiful work and soon, very soon i'm going to stop the car instead of driving past and ask whether i can adopt one of these marvellous creatures.

photo source: fitzroyalty

wabi sabi

i came across a website today while trying to find a stone pond for the garden. it deals with wabi-sabi philosophy in art and included some beautiful images
"The rock garden at Ryoan-ji, a zen temple in Kyoto, Japan. The temple’s rock garden believed to have been built in the 13th century features 15 rocks so placed that the viewer can only ever sight 14 rocks from any one perspective. Tradition states that only through enlightenment is one able to see all 15."
this too,
"What's so special about the garden at Ryoanji?"
"The spaces between the rocks" - in Looking for the Lost: Journeys through a Vanishing Japan, by Alan Booth

this spider web which looks so much like an andy golds-worthy.
it reminds me too of work by sue pedley, sound of bamboo and sound of lotus - scarlet yarn threaded through bamboo reeds, a rake and scrabbling scribbling down stone steps.

and i love the beautiful twee-ness of this ikebana. it has the quality of cupcakes.

saturday 7 feb 2009

my only thoughts on saturday were keeping cool. i was watching some b-grade movie when the abc ticker went across the bottom of the screen advising viewers to listen to local radio stations for fire updates. my first thoughts ... fires? what fires?

i knew the conditions would be as bad as those on Ash Wednesday (they were worse) . hot and windy.

but i had the arrogance of "we know better now - we can handle these things (fire, nature) better now. not true, as it happens.
I find I'm filled with dread, with ceaseless worry. I think about people packing cars. The pure luck and chance of some survival stories. That the best laid plans can still lead straight into a firestorm.

I've been trying to ground my fears. But I think all I'm doing is feeding them. Checking updates online, watching the bodycount rise. It doesn't help.

Victorian bushfires 2009 on wikipedia

just read an article about gardening which included a suggestion from a canberra fires survivor - "pot something up", grow plants for the people who've lost everything - they'll need to start their gardens again. article accompanied by tanberg.
i think i'll tell my mum.

sew what

i have a yen to sew. the problem is i'm crap at it. my sister is the one who is good at sewing. so much so (oh dear) that if i ever tried sewing - or any kind of needle-y stuff - my sister would take pity on me and kind of take over. and i would happily relinquish responsibility, and get a garment that was actually finished and wearable too.
but i'm trying to grow up, and know how to do things for myself.
sewing's on the list. there's a place in richmond that offers classes so i might go there.
and there's a book i can buy (isn't there always something you can buy?)
then i can be clever like this angry chicken woman and adapt clothes.
i have clothes in my head quite a lot. i wonder if this is special or just a girl-thing.
my mum sewed clothes for my sister and me when we were little. cute basic stuff.

skipping girl

i was thinking just the other day how i'm sick of girlie-cutsey (with an edge). like the cute/ugly soft toys everyone's making. and naive&winsome illustrations. it's too samey same. too much. good for a while but now something else needs to happen.
this was my thinking.
and then i was scanning through my favourites and a blog showed me an awesome book and a felt a little skip of delight. i might add it to the "buy me" category in my favourites.

besides, grumpy isn't a particularly nice way of being. follow your bliss i was told just this morning. helps keep grumpiness and other intolerance away.
& there's lots of good stuff to look at, i can just skip the crap.

here are some dutch treats