Graphic artist, Antonio Ladrillo. See website here.
In grade one I was in awe of the little girl who sat at the desk next to mine.
She drew beautiful horses.
Real horses! Not just the stick figure variety.
I couldn't wait to tell my mom when she fetched me from school. "There is a REAL artist in my class!"
From as far back as I can remember, I have perceived artists to be the most amazing, luckiest, magical people.
"With the word creative we stand under a mystery. And from time to time that mystery, as if it were the sun, sends down upon one head or another, a sudden shaft of light.... "
-- Pamela Travers, Creators on Creativity
Choreographic Drawings by Tony Orrico. See Tony's website here.
Self portrait by South African artist William Kentridge. See more here.
Anselm Kiefer putting the finishing touches to his painting, Journey to the End of Night. Click here
April Zanne Johnson working in her studio. See more here
Abstracts by Conny Niehoff. See website here.
Isabella Ducrot. See website here.
Nnenna Okore. See website here
Neckpiece by fiber artist and sculptor, Jennifer Moss. See website here
Woodfire Ceramic Artist, Ashwini Bhat. See website here
"I gather shapes from the world around me, from travel, and from my journeys through books. I also look inside myself for forms that arise from my experience as a dancer, seeking to rephrase that understanding of the body through a new medium of expression, the body of clay."
-- Ashwini Bhat
Wood Sculpture by Pilar Ovalle. Photographer Silvio Lacerda, click here
Joshua Vogel (Photo by Rose Callahan). See website here
Ariele Alasko makes eye catching furniture from reclaimed wood. See Ariele's website here.
Wood sculpture by Bruno Walpoth. See website here.
Patrick Dougherty. See Patrick's amazing sculpture here.
"Life is so ridiculously gorgeous,
strange, heartbreaking, horrific, etc.,
that we are compelled to describe it
to ourselves, but we can't!
We cannot do it!
And so we make art."
-- Miranda July
At the moment I'm obsessed with decluttering. After cleaning and painting and throwing out anything I haven't glanced at in a year I'm finally sitting in my little think tank/computer room and being able to call it a studio again.
For a while it lost it's identity midst the mounds of things other people didn't want. The best thing I did was to ditch the exercise machine which lay supine right in the middle of the room. "Nobody" wanted to get rid of it just in case "Somebody" wanted to use it. Nobody ever did use it. You know the story! Now that it's gone a weight has lifted and I've been inspired to create a little nest where I can carve (though I will still do the messy machine work outside). All I need is some sort of mat on the floor that will make it easier to clean up the wood shavings and a lamp shade to replace the one that was smashed during the Orbitrek exorcism.
I've held onto my daughter's old desk which was passed down to my youngest daughter and then to me. It will be a good place to carve. Notice that God and Tom occupy the same space on the desk.
" There is a ritual in it ....
entering a space that is set up for creative work."
- Terri Moore, Art Making and Studio Spaces by Lynne Perrella
This is Cuddly. He's not nearly as frightening as he looks but he does keep intruders out of my studio ;-)
" My current studio reminds me of the little bedroom I had growing up. In a way, it was my 'first' studio, and it always overflowed with mad experiments, midnight projects, endless tapping on the typewriter, and sliding piles of papers and cardboard. Some things never change!" Lynne Perrella
The Loeries woke us this morning. We couldn't have asked for a more gentle way to slip back into city life after our week away.
We've just returned from our annual Wild Coast holiday where we woke every morning to spectacular sunrises and the cries of Fish Eagles and Oyster Catchers.
This is the view from our bungalow. I would need to be a poet to describe the beauty of this place ..... and since I'm not, I'll share a few photos and a story or two about chance encounters and new friends.
Otter tracks up the dunes
While M fished I had time to try my hand at land art. Nothing serious but quite absorbing all the same.
These flowers look like they come from another world.
We met many caring people who shared our enthusiasm for the Wild Coast. Two young vets on honeymoon presented me with a bar of Belgian chocolate on my birthday as well as a huge driftwood log (because they knew I loved wood). They hauled it along the beach, floated it across the estuary in a canoe and dragged it up the hill to our veranda where we found it when we returned from our walk. I was so touched by their thoughtfulness! So if you are reading this, Robbie and Taneale ...... the log is in our courtyard reminding us of you.
One evening I heard my husband talking to the couple who had moved into the neighbouring bungalow. They spoke with American accents and had visited all my favourite places so I joined them on the patio. Slowly it dawned on me that I actually might know who these people were. Several months ago a a reader of Art Propelled had asked me to email a few travelling tips to her friends who were thinking about visiting South Africa. What an amazing coincidence that we should meet them by chance and spend a lovely evening together before they left on the next leg of their trip. Synchronicities often seem to happen when we're on holiday. I suppose that's the magic about taking time out, away from home.
More Wild Coast pebbles to add to my cache..... a reminder of the happy days spent gathering them.
