trevor noah

trevor noah. what to say? this seems pretty accurate when it comes to the state of day to day britain. is there a backlash? if there is the new public order act will sort that right out. or it would if we had enough prisons. when i was in sweden quite some number of the refugees there wanted to get out and come to the uk, such a good place to make business they said. never, i said, anywhere else but there. and that was before the current shenanigans. of course now sweden is trying to catch up madly.

amazing how, in a representative democracy, no matter what the political colour, just how little our democracy represents its people

hania rani

and because i'm not doing any music, analogue or electronic, nor doing any recording (tho i think this is in large part because somehow in my last big move i lost a huge chunk of  that i have no explanation for and which i remain quite traumatised about) - here's hania rani for your sunday.

samantha muir

 

i'm sitting listening to this loveliness from samantha muir and i'm reminded that i'm supposed to be moving into the time of year when i'm picking up my musical instruments again, something that, so far, ghas been complicated by the fact i'm just too busy with either language or making stuff to have done anything so far. time enough tho and, so far as music goes. i'm put in mind of this story, attributed to kurt vonnegut, about the importance of just doing

When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of ‘getting to know you’ questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went wow. That’s amazing! And I said, ‘Oh no, but I’m not any good at any of them.’

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: ‘I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.’

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could ‘win’ at them.

bernadette banner (and friends) rate costume design

 

  

i'm aware i've posted bernadette banner before but this is such a good episode it bears watching (i will admit i got to it via her vid on making a dress to suit a victorian mob boss woman - on the grounds i don't know how to do any of that stuff - super worth a watch) not least because it's her doing her thing but because she's got youtube pals along for some of the specifics. 

it's true i don't watch much tv or movies at all now - whoever's responsible for the scripts, i'm looking at you - but i will watch something for incidental detail. i love a chinese or korean or chinese historical costume drama. chinese for the general sumptuousness and korean because i just like the clothes but i'd be the first to admit i know next to nothing about either. valuable links below her vid.

as for the european stuff, aside from period lace that's super hard to get/eye wateringly expensive i'm a bit disappointed, if not surprised, by the lack of accuracy. i appreciate a bit of dramatic license but given how much goes on with hema, re-enactment, medieval weeks etc etc it does feel like the ball gets dropped rather too often.

justin hawkins on barbie girl

 

i can't lie - there was a time back in the nineties when i tormented my daughter with my great love for barbie girl. here's justin hawkins breaking it down. i never liked the darkness but i find i quite like to listen to him blethering on, esp when i'm cooking. there's something, for me, very english about him, that i like in a podcast.

i can only be grateful i wasn't working in a kitchen during the summers when these were popular. but, obvs, this post wouldn't be complete without either gunther or the camp behemoth that is my all time favourite from that era

* yes, more videos. i'm still sick, what can i tell you?

bam's way tries inktober

 

    

came across this after seeing a video challenge on bill making stuff. i like bam's choice of pencil, clear lines and i covet that light. most of all tho i like him taking on a daft challenge. i'm doing a lot of this lately. in between the being ill i'm just after reaching the varnishing stage of a picture i really don't like. that said, the person who wants it really likes it so what do i know! same thing with bam here - he wasn't super happy with some of the images but finished. and others he liked that he may work up later. the moral of the story - work is work! 


*many moons ago i had a colleague who was being really sniffy about her son's miniature painting. i'm not the best you'll see at this but i did used to do it for money and everything i know about washed i learned from miniatures. so i loved the bit with bill and his light source. if it's not 'art' enough for you , take a look at yourself! lol

making a teapot

 

  

i'm absolutely rubbish making anything out of clay. here's what happens if you practice

jo stephen

my favourite landscape/botanical photogrpaher of the moment is jo stephen. she's remarkably candid about her technique and gear on her blog but, at the same time, it's her eye that makes the difference. she's got a calendar out for xmas if that's your thing.

 

albert camus writes a letter

i'm sick and while i'm trying to console myself with a book about montaigne i really only have energy to watch videos on youtube. and while i'm not averse to cats it's letters live that has my attention. a dying, if not dead, form (no emails are not the same), i think it's been ten years at least since i got my last actual letter and i can't remember when i last wrote one. this then, from albert camus to his former teacher

*this by way of a shout out to those teachers for whom it's not just a job and manage somehow to realise, likely without knowing, that it's in the little moments, that their influence will last a lifetime. you are beyond compare.

and now a cat video. you know you want it! lol 

life on the rocks

 

many, many moons ago when i was a wee student i went to the bass rock to study gannets, unaware then i think, the ground had been thoroughly prepared for us years before. great wee film about an environment now properly vanished. a tragedy unfolded across the whole of my life.

tlingit myths

 

it shouldn't be any big surprise that i like a corvid based story so i was happy to come across these tlingit myths on public domain. but, while they're a nice read, the sense of the story misses what it actually sounded like, which is, of course, why we have the internet. i know virtually nothing about the pre colonial languages of the americas, aside from a brief flirtation with navajo and quechua years ago, but i love to hear something that sounds so different from what i'm used

sean layh

i don't normally go a bundle on detailed representational works but instagram keeps throwing up the goods. in this case sean layh, who details the process of the above on his instagram account and the results are, for me, astonishing. there's not a bunch of stuff on his personal account but he's worth the look and a search on insta as his technique is just beautiful and the images suffused with an old school sensibility that just invites attention. check him out!

 

ana mendieta - death of an artist

 

away back in the day i was interested in body art, as it may've been know then, and i'm reasonably certain that's when i first came across ana mendieta. it's possible i saw her work or read something about her earlier as i was living in new york just after her death.

so i was pretty interested to listen to death of an artist, pushkin's series about her death, which is ongoing just now. truth be told i've not enjoyed it overmuch. even when i was there, the art world, that heady sphere so breathlessly referenced again and again by host helen molesworth, was nothing to do with, or for, the likes of me, indeed, as she makes clear the role of the museum is to make people like me aware of what we should and shouldn't like. until the 'art world' has a disagreement with itself and suddenly the hangers on and the proles are expected to take a side. an implicit binary, if you will.

which is kind of the problem with this show. if you're familiar with 'the art world' then molesworth's observations need no reiteration. curious too that, and despite that very familiar trope of american podcasts where the presenter has a massive need to talk about themselves, in a show that's predicated upon silence, molesworth is coy, so far, about the particulars of her own exit from her curatorial role.

which is likely me being picky. what's more frustrating is an apparent basic lack of understanding of how her own justice system works. and this (and another silence) layered upon an almost complete avoidance of the nature of capitalism, esp as it applies to art, museums etc. her history is selective at best, there's all the usual double standards - mendieta is a 'refugee', at least she is when her privileged cuban existence is upended but she leverages that privilege to get herself back into the corridors of power. then there's the incidental music, the american racism of which i could rant about for a whole post on its own.

but that said, while it's worth ignoring almost everything that's said about ana mendieta in the podcast, and going and looking at her work and finding out for yourself, it's actually a decent listen. yes. i found great tranches of it annoying, not least molesworth herself but the questions it's asking, about gendered power overtly, then not so much about power itself, capital, and about privilege are absolutely worth asking. and then there's the stuff that she doesn't do - like asking why we should bother with this gilded class in the first place, why we should bother with galleries or museums (give all that stolen stuff back!), why we're so fixated on the past and the establishment of canons instead of dealing with stuff that's happening right now.

and then the guerilla girls. i knew nothing about them and they deserve a podcast all by themselves. so it was worth it just for that.

sculpt a head

winter's coming and there's surely better things to be doing than watching tv, cat videos etc etc. me, i got a bunch of clay recently that's utterly unsuitable for what i wanted it for so i'm looking for wee projects i can try out new things with (lots of wee projects - it's a big lump of clay!). i've never done any sort of realist three dimensional work before so i'm going to give this a go. i have little doubt this guy is making it look easier than it is! lol

sound design in batman

this is a great wee vid about sound design in the last batman film and really captures the skill and craft of the sound design team. that said while there was lots to admire on the technical side, the film itself, for me at least, won't have me rushing back to watch it 

minnesota starvation experiment

 

it's no secret i like a podcast, esp when i'm in the house working. the latest one i've come across is malcolm gladwell's three parter on the minnesota starvation experiment as part of his revisionist history podcast. it's great to hear the actual voices of the test subjects. equally it's a wee sliver of insight into that period in america, what was acceptable and what wasn't. a fascinating listen

men and hunger, written by the guinea pigs, and mentioned above can be seen here and is well worth a browse

milk clarification

it's a fact of life that i've become too old and i do too much exercise to do anything in the way of drinking anymore and my cocktail lab is packed away and hardly ever used. that said, as autumn comes in apace it's that time of year when i tend to think about cooking generally and drink making in particular, milk clarification is finnicky, time consuming and tricky to get right. but if you've time and patience (and the right equipment) it's a great way to spend an afternoon 

*scottish people - just drink the booze. you know you want to

rings of power - chladni figures

it looks pretty that rings of power, and it has nice costumes. the racism, not so much. better than wasting your fridays waiting for another turgid episode to thump into your amazon account, watch this first and do some maths. this is what the internet was supposed to be for!

*i could've done a (much) longer post on the racism that underpins rings of power. in summary, wearying fanboys, tokenistic casting, public school elves, leprechauns and groundskeeper willie mining jews. you can fill in the gaps....

gilberto gil and iza

 

augustus jansson

came across these brilliant designs for ink vis the ever reliable public domain review. for me, who loves a drawing ink, i immediately thought of michael peters' designs for winsor and newton

 

islands

 all islands of my acquaintance. katie k here in arran, where i've not been in years but, given how good the roads look i should surely go back

then barry godin gives it some beans up to my old stamping ground in the western isles and back down to the lovely (though very tourist blighted) island of mull. great trip

*i would point out that my time for camping and sleeping in bothies is long past. if i'm to indulge in such pastimes these days it involves prearranged pickups, hot showers, good food and comfy beds. i apologise for nothing! lol

roberta boffo

i'm loving the work of roberta boffo. clearly there's some of her stuff that has much in common with some of mine but she does it with a brush! absolutely have a look at her instagram to watch her technique!

 

satellites

 this just made me smile!