Thursday 21 June 2007

Red shoes and other things


Sometime in May Jade from the gorgeous spectrescope tagged me to name five things people don't know about me and while I almost decided not to spend time on this I felt bad about interrupting this chain of blogs (does anyone remember this chainletter thing which almost put a curse on you if you didn't continue it?) and found myself thinking about what I would mention, so here it is:

1. I love the colour red, in flowers painting yarn summerfruit sunset jewellery clothes anything. Once I tried on every single red item in a shop but just about managed not to buy it ALL. I also have a thing for shoes and red shoes, or better the idea of red shoes is pure bliss.

2. I am scared of drawing, of committing lines to paper. Did a life drawing course years ago and drew with pencil lines so fine they were barely visible to the eye.

3. My favourite smell is of freshly cut grass, the sweet freshness, greenness of it. At the moment I go through my small garden everyday, which is surrounded by bushes, and breathe with nose buried in the foliage, trying to sniff out each distinct scent. Some scents are barely perceptible, the ivy’s is the clearest, and with the other leaves I have to work a bit harder, but there is something there.

4. Words can hold such mystery. My favourite German word is Zitronensilber which literally translates into lemonsilver. It holds an elusive link to my dad’s childhood, describing a lemonade that he loved as a kid. I’m not sure if it was self-made or actually sold in bottles and can’t ask him about it as he died some years ago. The word itself, its sound and imagery in one stroke evoke the treat of a sweet and only subtly sour faint-yellow fizzy liquid tickling the child’s tongue.

5. I can’t tell jokes to save my life.

I in turn now nominate the following to do their bit if they want, definitely no curse involved: Under secret door, sighbirdrift, tattingmydoilies, diary-project, cally creates.

Back to (art)work: A little while ago I bought an old pair of girl’s shoes, red of course, maybe from the 50s. I’ve been working with shoes off and on for ages, more about that another time, and as I’ve lately been tired of the narrowness of my vision of what I do with - dresses, shoes, figures, dresses, shoes - I decided to try to use these in different ways. I see these as sketches, I’m trying to feel my way somewhere different and am intrigued with new shapes emerging; not sure yet where it will take me.


12 comments:

Feltbug said...

I love the clarity of these new pieces - so simple yet utterly beguiling.

Mark said...
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Mark said...
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Cathy said...

Hi, I really like your shoe explorations and will be interested to see more. Cathy/novembermoon

Mark said...
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Cally said...

i particularly love the hanging red shoes! and fully concur with your love of all things red. i love red, but i'm quite fussy about which specific reds, especially if a i am to wear them, i like something a little darker than bright.

re. the tagging, I'm actually a bit owing on that front, I have several half finished responses on the go so I'll include your tag in one of those and, spookily enough, I have actually tagged you too, but it hasn't been posted yet. I've nominated you for a Thinking Blogger award. I'll let you know when I finally post it.

Still trying to get enough energy to organise the photo's from the degree show people, they are coming in in spurts but I want to just do a single post with them all in it.

Nearly forgot to say how much I enjoyed reading of your leaf sniffing expeditions in the garden.

Susan Kruse said...

I love the shoes in the net and the wrappings. Wrapped things are so exciting, almost erotic in the pleasure (wrapping and bindings and stuff we don't really want to go in to here!)
Keep pushing it!
:-)

MoonChild said...

thx for your tag"
and i like the last photo ^ ^
it sounds exciting that you hv no idea where it will take you.

Catherine Scriven said...

Drawing is not just pen on paper, you seem to draw with shape/shoes, thread wrapped, hair through brush. Have been looking at your work since you left comment on my blog. For me drawing is physical, not 2d actually, it is the movement of arm/hand moving round the object, stroking the contours and the thread round the shoes does the same with a very suggestive female form as a result.
About red shoes I have been reading a chapter from interesting book/ mad book about Women who run with the wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Rider editor. It deals with fairy tales and the inner mind of being a women. Subtitle: Myths and Stories of the Wild Women Archetype, similar to the theme you mention about childhood, womenhood, memories, what makes us what we are.

Thanks for the contact, was a wonderful spark amongst children duties and family chores.

Meabh Warburton said...

I love the bound shoes - very beautiful in their form and the precision of the binding but with a real sense of unease. I find them a bit scary.
Meabh

heather smith jones said...

I was going to say too, that wrapping string around the shoes is like drawing!

Kirsty said...

Thanks for your insightful comments on the 'little bundles' drawing on The Diary Project. I agree that it may well be about the potential of surprises. As you can probably guess from the structure of the Diary Project, I'm very interested in hidden and concealed things.

Thanks for tagging me, I'll do it from my livejournal at fragiletender though because I'm just using the Diary Project for the drawings.