Best about Bilbao

Sorry for the lack of posts! I escaped the grey skies and went on holiday to Northern Spain to visit friends in Santander. I was very happy to see my friends again and to catch a bit of warmth and sunshine (though Northern Spain isn't as hot as you might think, the weather is pretty temperamental and they do get quite a bit of rain. Which means it's very green; the landscape is just stunning!)

We started off our trip in Bilbao. Best things: €1.20 for a glass of good wine and the pinxtos, sort of like the Basque version of tapas. They are served on the top of the bar and you just have your pick. Most of them include ham, seafood and/or tortilla. Mmmm!!

Equally as good are the museums in Bilbao. Of course The Guggenheim is the most famous, but we also enjoyed the Fine Arts Museum, where we visited an exhibition of etchings by Goya (entrance is free on Wednesdays!).

∧ Frank Gehry's Guggenheim is worth a visit no matter what's on. But as it happened David Hockney's exhibition A Bigger Picture was on show! I had missed this exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, so I was thrilled that I was offered a second chance. 

The exhibition focuses on Hockney's fascination with the landscape. It shows his latest iPad paintings, as well as older works that has lead up to these works. Over the last 10 years Hockney, who has lived in California since the 1960s, has spent a lot of time capturing the scenery of his native Yorkshire. I was especially impressed by the watercolors he did there. He has a great technique and the colors are so vibrant for watercolor. It was also amazing to see that he used a gadget like the iPad for a theme that is so traditional as the landscape, and that he managed to paint on the iPad in the same way as he would on canvas; they are undoubtedly Hockneys.

A few of his (large format) watercolor sketchbooks were on display as well. I personally find it difficult to draw or paint the 'bigger picture' (landscapes, rooms, environments in general) and I found his sketchbooks so inspirational that I bought A Yorkshire Sketchbook. The sketches are quite simple, but very effective and convincing.

50s novelty

Probably fueled by the idea of making a circle skirt from my recently bought fruit pattered curtains, I've been looking at lots of 1950s full skirts and dresses on eBay and Etsy. I'm absolutely fascinated by the NOVELTY prints from that era.

 ∧ Now that's what I call a poodle skirt!

Both for sale here on Etsy.

 ∧  Bananas, pineapples, brown leaves and monkeys = want. 

If you do have a 25" waist you can buy it here on Etsy.

∧ Sold for $200 here.

 ∧ Shakespeare themed fabric!

Snap up a bargain due to slightly yellow stained armpits here on Etsy!

 

∧ Possibly my favourite: various brands of tobacco ands smoking paraphernalia. 
Unfortunately already sold here.

Shelved

A while back I finally got around to putting some shelves up in my studio to display my collection of zines and illustration related magazines. And recently I finally got around to taking a picture of it. I now I'm finally getting around to actually blogging about it! I'm pretty pleased with it, I wouldn't go as far as to say it ties the room together, but it definitely brightens the place up. 

(click to enlarge)  

 

On the upper shelf, from left to right: The Illustrated Ape, Can your Monkey do the Dog by yours truly, The Cardigan Heart by Lizzy Stewart, Skelet Man by Geeske de Graaff, Brain Blood Volume 2., by Ian Watson, Did you know that Flapjacks can Rhyme? by Sarah Edmonds, Birds of a Feather by Saskia Haex, Monotonos by Albert van Nood, ...

On the lower shelf: a couple of zines I bought at Desert Island in Brooklyn NY, a zine I got through my subscription to Zine of the Month, Nobrow magazine, Egel & Ballon by Jeroen Funke, a couple of issues of A Sick Zine and Zo Ordinair by Gees Voorhees.

Special mention goes out to A Sick Zine, a zine that was born in 2010 during a workshop I taught with Geeske at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. Tonight the boys of A Sick Zine will be presenting their fifth issue - De MEGAZINE - in style at Roodkapje, Rotterdam.  The release will coincide with the opening of an exhibition on A Sick Zine, which is up till June 17th. They also made a great video to show you how the zine is made. WITHOUT THE USE OF A COMPUTER (this was the golden rule in our workshop and I'm happy to see they're still sticking with it)!

Their zines usually sell like the proverbial hot cakes, so (pre-)order from their website!

Bill Cunningham New York

Earlier this week I watched a lovely documentary on fashion photographer Bill Cunningham. Bill is 83 years old and has been photographing New York City street style for the last few decades. You see this kind of photography all over the place now, in magazines and fashion blogs, but Mr. Cunningham is its true godfather. Hardly anything was known about his personal life up until this documentary and it took the makers 10 years to make this movie, from which 8 were spend on trying to convince Bill to cooperate! In the end he gave in and the result is an amazing film about an amazing man; it didn't cease to amaze me!

Like, the man is the biggest workaholic ever. Every day, rain or shine, he cycles through NYC to capture the city's birds of paradise. During the day he snaps the extraordinary ordinary people on the street and at night he photographs the he rich and famous at charity events and galas for his weekly columns On the Street and Evening Hours in The New York Times. Uptown and downtown he goes and uptown again. He can't stop, he even takes pictures during his own award ceremony/party.

And like, the man has a backbone. He doesn't take money for his photographs, because "if you don't take money they can't tell you what to do". He doesn't care if the person in front of his lens is a celebrity or not; if he or she isn't wearing anything interesting he will not press the shutter. He will not tolerate that his photographs are being you used to ridicule people, to judge them and label them 'hot' or 'not'.

It's also remarkable that, as much as he loves beautiful, extravagant clothes, Mr. Cunningham looks rather inconspicuously. Always wearing  a very practical, janitor-like blue overcoat. He doesn't care for food (more than once we see him eating at Maccy D's), nor comfort - he has lived in a tiny apartment above Carnegie Hall for 60 years. His flat is filled with filing cabinets, containing his photos and film. Somewhere in between lies his bed (a mattress raised on magazines!) and there is no bathroom. Really, his life is his work (Bill: "it's not work; it's pleasure!"). He has his reasons for his lifestyle, and you get a hint of why at the end of the movie...

I won't spoil anymore of the peculiarities that this movie reveals on Bill Cunningham. Because you should watch it. It doesn't matter if you're into beautiful clothes or beautiful pictures or not, because that's not what this film is about. It really is "deeply moving and visually stunning".

∧ A few spreads from Bill's column On The Street in The New York Times. Bill also gives a weekly digest of what's going on fashion-wise on the streets of New York through an audio commentary and a slide show on the NY Times website. They are a joy!

Bill Cunningham New York is now screening in UK cinemas and is available on DVD.  Watch the trailer:

Marbelous Wood

Things are slowly starting to come together at the new studio. The butt ugly carpet has been ripped out and my roomie and I have painted our space. Big question now is what to do with the bare wooden floor?? While looking online for some inspiration and (low budget) solutions I came across this beautiful floor by Pernille Snedker Hansen, a Danish designer. She uses a combination of an old Japanese technique called suminagashi and a Western style marbling technique to create a wood grain-like effect in amazing colors.

   

Watch Pernille at work:

Definitely no low budget solution, but certainly inspirational...

Warmest wishes

Warmest Wishes and Happy Holidays my dear readers!

This year I made a card inspired by vintage Christmas cards featuring pets, more specifically cats. I found a lot of these and they are just bizarre...

∧ The cats look either extremely sad, or sinister

∧ or mean

∧ cats and champagne, of course!

∧ those were the days that Christmas Wishes were still sincere.

The Bill Cosby Sweater legacy

Last Saturday I went to a dinner party for a friend's birthday. The fact that he was the birthday boy wasn't the only thing that made him the focal point of the evening, his knitted cardigan made him the centre of attention as well! Opinions varied on his - what I would classify as a - Cosby sweater.

It's pretty amazing what an enormous influence Bill Cosby's sweaters have had; I mean, there's a whole type of garment named after it. And they still prove to be a source of inspiration to artists and designers today, even after a 30 odd years. Now I only recently found out that the guy who designed the sweaters is Dutch! His name is Koos van den Akker and he left fashionless Holland for New York in the early sixties. Vice interviewed him recently in his NY studio (watch it here - highly recommended!). Koos hits the nail on the head when he looks at the sweaters and says, with a very cute Dutch accent: 

"This is a very thin line between absolutely awful and something of genius. Somebody can look at this and say 'What the fuck is this? This is the most horrible thing I've ever seen' and you know, somebody else says.. 'it's inspiration'".

  

Inspired by this (pizza??) sweater, pictured above, Andrew Salomone created this jumper on a HACKED electronic knitting machine from the 1980s (God, I wish I was so nerdy as to be able to hack a knitting machine!! Watch the tutorial here on the Craft site). Bill on the sweater is wearing the sweater, so there's a nice Droste-effect!

 

Another Cosby sweater inspired project is The Cosby Sweater Project. Kelly Tucker makes drawings of patterns of all the knits worn on the show. Maybe it was the outrageous 80s, but everybody in the Cosby show seemed to wearing awesome sweaters!

Even musicians have been inspired by the sweater: a quick research shows the garment gets a mention in songs by Ghostface Killah, MF Doom and Yelawolf. In 2008 Oh Snap!! released The Cosby Sweater EP. This remix by Hostage is a proper banger, with a nice Miami Bass-y intro. "... the elbow's leather and there's pink and green and o and blue..." hahaha.

Oh Snap! - Bill Cosby Sweater (Hostage Remix). Download it here.

Interesting faces

Totally inspired by the Grayson Perry exhibition and replenished with tea and a scone from the cafe I started wondering through the rest of the British Museum. It truly is a treasure chest! I went downstairs to the African section first hoping to find out more about the masks I bought in a charity shop recently. Idle hope of course... But I did see a lot of other interesting faces!

 

 

∧ Don't these African masks remind you of the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland?! 

  

 

 ∧ Love Assyrian beards!

 ∧ The Etruscans also did nice beards. ∨

 

 

 ∧ Brrr.. F.R.E.A.K.Y.!

The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman

As soon as I set foot on London soil this last Friday, I hurried myself to the British Museum for the Grayson Perry exhibition The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman. What a joy it was!  

Perry curated his own show, displaying new as well as older works next to artifacts that he had picked from the British Museum's vast collection (it contains 8 million objects!). I know the man mainly for his ceramics: vases on which he makes beautiful drawings and collages. But I loved seeing works in other media here. I love the themes in his work like shrines, magic, maps, 'scary figures', gender, authenticity ("I love fakes for they make us think about what is is we see in the authentic") and craftsmanship itself. I love how he draws from folklore and outsider art, and mixes tradition with the contemporary. I also love the fact that he talks about his art in a pretty straight forward, unpretentious way and the way he sees himself as an artist: 

"Part of my role as an artist is similar to that of a shaman or witch doctor. I dress up, I tell stories, give things meaning and make them a bit more significant. Like religion this is not a rational process, I use my intuition (...)"

As you can tell by my multiple use of the word LOVE I really LOVED this show and I urge you to go and see it if you have the chance!! It's on until 19th February 2012.

∧ The Rosetta Vase.

∧ detail of  The Rosetta Vase. 

 

∧ The Frivolous Now.

He made the sketch for this vase the evening before decorating it by doodling away in front of the telly. 

∧ A dish from c. 1700. You can see where he gets his mustard.

 

 ∧ One of the most impressive pieces was this immense tapestry (almost 3 x 7 meters),
depicting religious and secular pilgrimage destinations.

∧ Perry went on a pilgrimage himself, to Germany, on this motor cycle, with on the back seat his 50-year-old teddybear Alan Measles (“the benign dictator of my childhood imaginary world”). 

 

 

∧ He made sort of a pope-mobile construction for Alan. The bike is on display at the British Museum, but the teddy is a replica. The real Alan is far too precious to be displayed! 

 

∧ Inspired by pilgrimage tokens/souvenirs Perry designed one for his and Alan's own pilgrimage. Several tokens were on display including this contemporary one from Japan:

"Perhaps more than any other object this hand towel embodies the spirit of this exhibition. It is fitting that it comes from Japan, a country that seems to have a remarkable ability to blend ancient traditions with modern technology and popular culture. Two Hello Kitty characters, created for merchandising in 1974, are dressed as traditional Japanese pilgrims (o-henro-san) in white robes, sticks and straw hats. This towel was sold as a souvenir on the island of Shikoku, famous for its 1200 km pilgrimage route taking in 88 Buddhist temples. So here we have an object featuring modern cartoon characters and a ritual dating back to the 18th century AD coming together on an object carried in most Japanese women's handbags."