Sculpture on the Gulf

Graham Fletcher, The Eternals, 2008

The Sculpture on the Gulf exhibition is currently on at Waiheke Island. For exhibition dates and information about the 26 artists involved click here

assemblage for kids

Even though I don't read or speak Spanish I couldn't resist ordering a copy of this children's book beautifully illustrated by Javier Solchaga with simple assemblages made from found objects.

The story is about a Princess whose golden ring is stolen by a magpie made from a painted peg and the sequence of events that leads to the recovery of the ring.

A cat catches the magpie, a dog catches the cat, a stick beats the dog, a fire burns the stick, water puts out the fire...

Each part of the narrative sequence begins with a cropped image with the question 'What is this?'

and the answer

This is the goat that drank the water that put out the fire that burnt the stick that beat the dog that chased the cat that caught the magpie that stole the cloth that wrapped the ring of the Princess of Trujillo.

Here's my favourite:

This is the kid born of the goat who drank the water etc...


This is the shepherd who found the ring...

and received a kiss from the Princess of Trujillo.

In the corner of the endpapers we see the naughty magpie up to no good again...

Now that's what I call a sophisticated picture book.

a fresh look

I'll be spending a lot of time in my office this year but I found that when I sat at my desk I got distracted by the clutter and the general shabbiness of the room. So I decided to spend a day rejuvenating the space. Here are the before and after shots:

Before
After:


Before:

After:

Before:

After:

After two coats of Taubmans acrylic in duck egg blue, the rearrangement of furniture and art works and the transformation of my ugly but functional mdf cupboard I have a fresh new office that I'll look forward to stepping into every morning ready to get to work.

2009

Happy New Year everyone. What a relaxing break that was! Good food, great company, lots of swimming at the beach - it doesn't get any better than that. I got some fab prezzies for Christmas including two stunning new pop-up books to feed my growing addiction to paper engineering.

The design of Marion Bataille's ABC3D is brilliant - simple combinations of red, black and white for the letters and amazing use of pivots and sliding devices throughout. And then there's the completely outrageous One Red Dot by David A. Carter, a pop-up counting book where you have to find the single red dot in each spread.

This one makes an amazing clatter when you open it as the serrated shapes emerge from the white box.

And how the heck you manage to get eight connected orbs to open out like a flower and hover on the page with only one small support at the base is absolutely beyond me. Truly magical!! Just goes to show that I still have much to learn about pop-up design so that will definitely be one of my fun challenges for 2009.