Alphabet bags

www.alphabetbags.com

Mother Nature, you are my favourite artiste

Having recently moved out to Glasnevin, I made my first visit since my primary school tour 1990 to the Botanic Gardens. I remembered little from that day back in 1990 except that i took a photo of my friends and one of the mammies said i should pursue a career in photography and I took that quite seriously and 16 years later paid €5000 to do a course which led me to the realisation that just cos an Irish mammy says you should do something, doesn't necessarily mean she's got any idea what she's talking about. Bless her.
What I didn't remember is how deadly the Botanic Gardens really are. I was awestruck. Here follows pictures of some of the plants that struck said awe.

Polypodicaeae platicerium grandis

Gondwanaland...brilliant


It got a bit softfocus..


Some South East Asian beaut




Rhododendron

What a day...the weather was amazing. I've just had some vegetarian sausages... I'm only a pair of open-toed Birkenstocks away from joining Greenpeace or keying my neighbours Jeep.

Well worth a visit, especially while the weather's good. Do it.

THE tattoo...

After years (and years and years) of debating it, I've finally decided on a tattoo i really want. I still have the fear but now I think i have the design that i want, i think... I'm thinking of two birds on a wire across my left hand, but the final design has yet to be, well...finalised. I'm torn between a silhouette or a very delicate line drawing. Or maybe something like this.....


well, the bird anyway....


any thoughts, much appreciated

Oh! Weegee

...yer the greatest

Frequency: Padraig Timoney, Mark Garry and Hayley Tompkins at the Hugh Lane Gallery

If you're at a loose end today, try to get over to Hugh Lane. There's a number of things going on including an installation by African artist Yinka Shonibare commissioned by the gallery to do a piece based on Jonathan Swift's Gullivers Travels. The result is 'Egg Fight'. Pop along and see what you think.

Upstairs, you'll find Frequency. Here's the blurb:
Anachronistic in a secular society where almost every object has a defined function and end use, the works of artists Mark Garry, Pádraig Timoney and Hayley Tompkins expose and explore possibilities of contingency and transformation.

The over saturation of information we receive in our hypermodern, post-global era continues to expand and accelerate. As witnessed in the fashions of the entertainment industry, the ever widening and rationalising sphere of technology results in the solidification and stagnation of our avenues of perception.

Frequency raises questions of ethics and value that emerges in the work of these artists and their relationship to aesthetics. It encourages a reappraisal of the established views of reality and provide us with points of departure for alternative frameworks with which we may rethink our perceived knowledge of the world.

I particularly liked this piece, Untitled by Mark Garry and the accompanying piece which I can't find a photo of on the internet but it's a large-scale white steel model of a crashed paper aeroplane. It looks simple but very impressive.



More colourful work from this artist:



Finish up with a visit to Francis Bacon's Studio (born in my hometown of Kilcullen, Co. Kildare actuallement) and you'll have had a day of culture made all the more wholesome 'cos of the Irish influence and just in time for Paddy's day.

Blaise Drummond

Lighthouse Cinema

Today i made my very belated first visit to the new Lighthouse cinema in Smithfield to see Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The film was great but the cinema building was an experience in itself. It is a triumph of design. A thing of beauty to behold. Pleasing to the eye. Tender on the arse. (The seats).
Anyways, you should go, it's ace.
DTA architects get all the credit for this one. The cinema descends into basement levels with clean lines, sparse colourful furniture and oversized signage.

The food prices are cheap: €2 for popcorn. And so are the tickets, i paid €7.50 for a matinee showing.

I'll be heading back there to see Let the Right One In

I miss you Sammy

Thanks for the photo Ciara! That was a great night x

Hazel Nicholls

I love this print by Northern Irish artist Hazel Nicholls. You can buy it online at keepcalmgallery.com. Apparently, she has a passion for cross-stitch and old sayings and loves a cup of tea. A girl after my own heart then. I'm parched...

Paper Rock Tetrahedron

The primal war between angular paper shapes and rogue string rages on....

Siggi Eggertsson

Siggi Eggertsson- From Iceland. Illustrator. Brilliant person (probably). This is a quilt he made as part of his graduation project in the Iceland Academy of the Arts. It's made up of 10,000 pieces.

Magnifique...
Although, having just finished a collage myself that took 5 days to complete I feel a bit nauseous looking at it. Fair play to him, though. I'd say he got an A.

Animalphabet

How brilliant is this? 26 image makers were each given a letter of the alphabet each to draw in aid of UNICEF. Ace...
These letters are by Andy Rementer and Marcus Oakley.

I am coveting....

...this!

William Eggleston

Good afternoon,

William Eggleston is my favourite photographer. I love colour photography and no-one does it better. He uses dye transfer printing and all the colours come out really sharp and saturated.

The red ceiling (1973) is a pretty famous Eggleston using this technique and a perfect example of how dye transfer printing affects the colour saturation. The ceiling and walls appear to be painted with blood.


William Eggleston was born in Memphis, Tennessee and some of my favourite pictures are taken from a book I got in the Gallery of Photography in Meeting House Square 'William Eggleston Guide' like the one at the top and the ones below. They're all taken in Memphis or northern Mississippi. They invoke a totally misplaced feeling of nostalgia, I wasn't born then and i've never been to the States, ah well...I miss Memphis and it feels good.

FFFFOUND...

Good afternoon,

I ffffound this today....it makes me so happy.

Get yer brain smiling at www.ffffound.com.