9

Busy busy busy month getting the radio show up and running. We ended up deciding to start a series of interviews, which proved way more time consuming than I imagined, but also incredibly rewarding.
I have nearly finished a patchwork scrabble thing I started about a year ago, though, which is great.
I just found these two videos on youtube yesterday. They are both incredible.



This is Ted Gardestad singing for Sweden in the 1979 eurovision song contest. I don't know WHAT they were thinking when they made the idents for the different countries participating. The strange mixture of cartoon backdrops, string puppets and mime artists used to depict a wide range of national stereotypes are beyond surreal. Also Gardestad's (dreadful) song and rather unnerving continued eye contact with the viewer, not to mention the giant rotating sculpture behind him, make this a rather hypnotic sequence.



And Pierre Bastien's Paper Organs. I find them somehow endearing.

8

map sketch:

Close up:

7

Aforementioned new scarf:

6

I really desperately want this cagoule, made from an old parachute by Christopher Raeburn.

It looks like a jellyfish beamed down from another planet.

In the meantime I will just have to make do with my slightly less exotic (and less expensive) ex-waterproof. To help stave off the pangs of unnecessary lust engendered by a garment such as this, I have started to knit a scarf. Bright, but not too bright, with a geometric pattern, it is going to be my new project, it will be at least two metres long,it will be knitted with pure wool, and it will almost certainly never get finished.

Here is a scarf I did manage to finish a couple of days ago.

5

I am working on a map for our new cooperative radio show. We're going to pick out a different theme each week and I wanted to make a picture that would map out the themes. I've been reading this book:

My sister gave it to me for my birthday. It's a ripping yarn, and full of illustrations drawn by its fictional narrator, T. S. Spivet, a 12 year old cartographer. He draws maps of everything; not just locations, but actions, thought processes and plans. A map is not just a way to better understand what he sees, but to rewrite and to embellish upon an event; to not only find and document patterns observed, but also to create them.

I have also been reading a book about parabolic line patterns I got from the children's section in the GU library. And trying to make an abstract illustration. And it's deceptively hard to make something that should be, well, more or less nothing.

So I woke up this morning and subconciously merged the two ideas into one, and have started making some pseudo scientific looking string thingys. And then I consciously realised where I had gotten this spiffy idea from and wrote

this blog entry.

Ta da!

note: This work will get better.

4

"In The Cat's Mouth"

Acrylic on canvas, probably by Pangorda

24"x22"

Acquired by Tom Stankowicz for The Museum of Bad Art

I wish my pictures looked more like this. My favourite thing is the cat's nose.

3

Have unfortunately contracted madmenitis.

2

This is apparently a map David Lynch drew of Twin Peaks, before he and Mark Frost pitched the series to ABC. There's an unsettling perspective thing going on between the depth hidden in those charcoal mountains and the dimensionless childlike diagram bits. Very otherworldly.

I have also just noticed the similarities between this and my own drawing posted below. Which is a pretty spooky coincidence. It reminds me of this fascinating titbit of psychology from youarenotsosmart.com.

1

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

And, coincidentally, the first day of this blog.

To mark this momentous occasion, I would like ivor cutler.

And I suppose I had also better do something constructive.