HEADSPACE + HEARTSPACE Page 21 of 22

Pottering about

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Thinking about our new garden today, and realising how little I know about how to care for it. My gardening history to date has revolved around pots of basil and the odd tomato plant on many an apartment windowsill. Our house was empty for a few months before we moved in as the previous owners had emigrated to Australia. As a result the garden has gone a bit wild.  It has lots of tropical plants in it and I kind of like it that way, all a bit crazy, but it seems a shame not to be able to even see the sunken table, never mind eat dinner at it! Time to get green fingers…

feet and pot
Photo from recent island travels in Greece – photos of our new garden coming soon!

Unpacking

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How come the things which make us happiest often stress us most along the way?  

I am exhausted from the move,

from all the unpacking,

from the decorating, 

from trying to make it all perfect

from day one.   

But today,

we just stopped,

dropped the boxes,

and shut the door. 

We left the paintings unhung,

the books unshelved,

the shoes un-put-away. 

And flopped.  

Given the small inconvenience of not having a sofa until September,

that actually meant we flopped onto the floor.  

Still, the icecream tasted just as good sat leaning against the wall.

And as we sat laughing,

surveying our new home,

the aches started to fade, the excitement returned

and we remembered what it was all about.

I think we’re going to like it here

***

This month I am going to aim for more photos, less words, so keep a look out for a peek into my August (including some shots of our new house, once we have unpacked a little more!)

We got our dreamy little new home!

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homesign
Sign on the wall in our ‘old’ kitchen

We’re in! 

All the wishing worked! 

Our dream has come true…

Thank you to all of you who wished for us. 

This is such a special day.

We LOVE the house,

and are so excited about turning it into a home.

 

You are all welcome for tea and home baked cakes anytime.

Over the next few weeks

I look forward to sharing a window on our little place

as we unpack

settle in and snuggle up

Joining in some creative summer fun!

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Just wanted to share a couple of cool things I am joining in with this summer, in case you fancy having a go yourself.

The lovely Louise over at Dream, Inspire, Create has launched a ‘Creative Color Challenge’.  It’s a great idea, and gives you a bit of a steer for creating but also gives you a lot of freedom to play with juicy colours. I will be sharing what I make over the next month right here.

creative color
Image: from Louise Gale

And Susannah Conway has just launched the ‘August Break’, a photo blogging challenge for the summer – so I will try to share a photo (nearly) every day in August. 

Joining in some creative summer fun! august+break
Image: from Susannah Conway

And I am also trying to keep up with learning some new techniques from the very talented Claudine Hellmuth.  Her class ‘@ Home with Claudine Hellmuth’ is very cool.  I will share some of the things I make over there in the coming weeks too.

Joining in some creative summer fun! %40home
Image: from Claudine Hellmuth

What creative challenge are you setting yourself this summer?

seduced by Japanese ink painting

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Cherry blossom (Japanese ink on rice paper 12" x 6")Cherry blossom (Japanese ink on rice paper 12″ x 6″)

When I started learning Japanese 15 years ago I used to stay up until the early hours of the morning in the college library copying characters from an old dictionary, dipping my brush in juicy ink, sweeping it across the rice paper and marvelling at the words that spilt out. Such a beautiful script, each word a picture in itself. The therapeutic quiet rhythm of shaping the text belied the speed at which each piece was created.

Although sometimes it is good to work on a creation for days, weeks, months even, there is something fundamentally satisfying about finishing a piece in under a minute. I took out my old brushes again yesterday and tried this with sumi-e (Japanese ink painting) with a little help from Takumasa Ono.  As the ink flowed through the bristles the memories flooded back.

Heron (Japanese ink on rice paper 9"x9")
Heron (Japanese ink on rice paper 9″x9″)

Girl (Japanese ink on rice paper 12"x9")Girl (Japanese ink on rice paper 12″x9″)

A Homemade Life

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Just wanted to introduce you to this delicious foodie/love-of-things-homemade book ‘A Homemade Life’, as author Molly Wizenberg has just announced a new book tour of the US. As I am not planning to be in the US in April I sadly can’t go to any of them, so I thought I’d tell you about it instead, so maybe you could pop along and indulge for me! The dates are on her award-winning blog Orangette, along with lots of tasty recipes and ponderings about food and life.

A Homemade life by Molly Wizenberg

Following the death of her father, Molly took herself away to Paris, a city that ‘held vivid memories of a childhood trip with her father, of early morning walks on the cobbled streets of the Latin Quarter and the taste of her first pain au chocolat’. There she discovered that her heart was in the kitchen, and she goes on to tell a tale of cooking, eating, reading and love (with recipes!).

It’s funny, reflective, inspiring, and you can almost taste the vanilla bean buttermilk cake. Yum.

Books of the week

ART: Manolo Blahnik Drawings by Anna Wintour  – a collection of sketches of some of the world’s most gorgeous shoes.
ADVENTURE: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert – ‘one woman’s search for everything’.
STORY: The Other Hand by Chris Cleave – on the back cover it says ‘We don’t want to tell you what happens in this book. It’s a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it’. I won’t spoil it either; let’s just say that it is stunning and shocking, sad and uplifting in equal measure.

Noise in silence

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graffiti

What better breath of fresh air during the working day than a quick gallery fix? One of the most wonderful things about London is that apart from special exhibitions, all the museums and art galleries are free, and no-one tries to sell you anything (except when you exit via the gift shop…).

Anyway, finding myself at a conference near the financial district, I snuck into the corner gallery of ‘Bloomberg SPACE’ to see Damien Deroubaix’s contribution to the new Comma series of special commissions. 

Enitled ‘ A place to lose oneself’, the blurb says ‘The visual noise that Damien Deroubaix energetically orchestrates in his paintings, sculptures and woodcuts is overwhelming: brutal, deafening, sharp and dissonant.’

His piece is a tree.

But somehow it is more than that. It is an angry tree, and in the silent white gallery space, it really does create visual noise. Not my ‘taste’ and perhaps not the most peaceful lunchbreak, but certainly a thought-provoking one. 

It made me think about what makes me like some art and not other, and in the end I think it comes down to whether it speaks to me, tells me a story, and whether the colours and textures draw me in. 

How do you know what you like?

Hanging out with London’s emerging new craft talent

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One school night last week I blissed out at ‘Craft London: the exhibition of emerging new talent’ in Clerkenwell. I headed over to the cosy gallery space of Craft Central for wine and chat with some of London’s most talented makers. Having been challenged to rediscover their city and represent this visually, the exhibition was as varied as the capital’s 32 boroughs, and reflective of the city’s incredible cultural diversity.

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French-born illustrator Julie Vermeille (above) translated her love of fairytales into 3D characters living in her installation, creating a fantasy world of fabric pigeons, lace clouds and stringy stuffed people based on children’s book Arthur’s Seat. Quirky and cute.

Ruth Babajide celebrated her West African heritage with a range of loud, colourful ceramic storage units, in stark contrast to the delicate and peaceful collection of hand thrown porcelain whispers created by Hannah James (below).

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Jessica Light is a woman on a mission to revitalise the dying craft of tassel-making. Jessica was responsible for the ornate embroidery on Buckingham Palace’s balcony hangings, and now works with designers such as Vivienne Westwood to find a new life for a centuries-old skill.

But my favourite of all was the set of magical cobwebs created by Katie Barton. ‘Spun’ from metallic embroidery thread and fixed into jewellery cases, they took two days to install and will be destroyed after the exhibition. Katie, who describes herself as having an obsession with making repulsive things beautiful, said she loved the ethereal nature of piece. I felt simultaneously privileged to have seen these gorgeous creations, and sad to know that they will soon be swished away to nothing, as if they were never there.


Katie Barton_Spun _3180731_blog
We entered into the age-old ‘what is art, what is craft?’ debate, swiftly followed by a lively discussion on the pros and cons of being university trained vs being a self-taught artist.

These are topics I shall return to, as I ponder them often.  What are your thoughts?

The exhibition also featured fabric craft, ceramics and jewellery from Laura Felicity, Jo Davies, Ana Meneses, Daniele Geargeoura, Yuki Sasakura Assiter and Alexandra Simpson.

 

Did that just happen?

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Something quite amazing happened today. I have been thinking of my ‘Mondo Beyondo’ list for some time – not that I need help with dreaming big, just juggling all the dreams! Anyway, this morning I sat on the train racing towards London, and put pen to paper. As the countryside flew by and the morning opened up to a bright blue sky, I spilt my long messy delicious list of dreams, big and small.

And then I arrived at Kings Cross Station, packed my notebook safely at the bottom of my handbag with a smile, and got on with my day.

And then, just five hours later, the weirdest thing happened.

One of the small but important things on the list I wrote this morning was ‘get published’. And by 1pm, someone had asked me if I would write a chapter for a book being published later this year.

Unbelievable.

Maybe the Universe is listening…

clouds