Coveting: H! by Henry Holland collection at Debenhams

I popped into Debenhams yesterday in a frenzied search for an interview outfit. I'm not going to say what or when the interview is as I have a strong superstition that any mention of such details will jinx precedings. It's the only superstition I have so forgive me. (Except for walking over 3 drains. I won't do that.) Shops were closing and I was all 'omgwhatamigoingtowearithastobeamazing' - I'd already gone into H&M and was sort of trying to build an immense outfit in my head of things I already have plus things I'd just bought out of desperation. So I was wondering round the womenswear floor of Debenhams in a slightly more relaxed panic as the opening hours are later there (thank you department stores, thank you) and I had about an hour. It was then that I stumbled across H! by Henry Holland and nearly yelled 'Oh Em Gee!' out loud. Which would have been silly. Because I hadn't even heard about this collection and it's uh-mazing. It's just me, entirely and thoroughly, every single piece in that collection is Rachel Lewis all over. Henry Holland is of course a brilliant designer, my favourite things he's done so far are his stripey block colour outfits for A/W 09:
So insane. You can get the tights fairly easily, he also did amazing alphabetty tights for the typophile in me:
Mmmm. Hosiery and lettering.

So the H! collection carries on in his normal crazy colours/patterns theme, in a very wearable and mix and match way. Seriously, I've never seen a collection where you can build so many different outfits - everything seems to match and wonderfully clash with each other, it's amazing. So my interview outfit quandry was solved - with a few pieces from the collection and other bits I've got, I've got about 3 different options now, of which I'll decide later.

I want nearly everything in the collection, which is bad as I have very little money; but it's all so affordable, it's hard to justify why not to have it all. It's never going to be one of those things where it's like, oh what do I wear this with. Here are a few of my favourites from the collection:
There are quite a few pieces with this crazy floral pattern in different colour ways. I just love the acid yellow of this one. Nothing says 'come on spring, damn you!!' quite like this dress. £30.
These shoes would go well with it too. Very 80's inspired, they also look quite comfy for a heel-connoisseur such as myself. Purple and yellow used to be my favourite colour combo when I was 7. Then I discovered the colour wheel. Clash-tastic :D £35.
There are a couple envelope style clutches, this one coming in bright pink too. I couldn't choose between them; I'd have to buy both. Perfect for zinging up a boring dress. £20.
I love this bag, mainly because it's called The Hobo Bag, and I love the word hobo. I want to be a dandy hobo. (I invented that term, if I ever become a fashion designer (lols) then my first collection is being called 'dandy hobo'. Ha.) £30.
This body is one of the things I bought; finding a body that fits you like a glove is actually quite hard. I don't have a weird torso or anything, but you want one that doesn't turn into a thong (ew) when you sit down but at the same time isn't baggy around the boobs. This one is perfect for me. And a size 10, I was quite excited that I could wear a size 10 body. I just love the colour more than anything, it's a gorgeous shade of purple and it's going to be the foundation of my immense interview outfit. I might do an outfit post later actually. £12. (bargainous, I thought)
Oh em gee! Cycling shorts! Told you they'd be back. They're not exactly lace cycling shorts like the ones I'm still unable to find but in this shade of pink, who cares. I nearly bought them but as they're not for interview purposes, I had to think of my bank account (which is on it's death bed and pay day is still a month away, slightly scared) so it's on the wish list. £8 though, sweet.

This blazer, is actual love for me. It was one of the first things I saw in the collection and I could not believe the perfection. It's just 'soooo cute', which is what I'd say if I was ditzy and american. But seriously, it's got that preppy/boarding school thing going on, made out of hoodie kind of material and purple check lining which, what's that? Matches the purple body exactly? Really? You don't say. I love blazers. I love school-themed fashion. It also reminded me of that outfit Anne Hathaway wears in Devil Wears Prada which is all preppy too. You know what I mean. Where she delivers the book. Yeah. So! This is the backbone which holds my outfit together. Its smart but not in a suit-way. Because I need to be way more creative than a suit dress, I feel. £35. Done. Hanging up right now. I feel smug.
The jewellry is great too. In a totally silly OTT way, I love it. Like this ring. Same purple. Didn't buy it though. But you see what I mean when I say everything can go with everything? £8. Comes in turquoise too.
Oh, this. This is beautiful. It doesn't look like much, but it's genius in disguise. It's called Holey Boyfriend Cardi and it's exactly what I need. Days are still cold and I love wrapping up in big cardi's but I hate all the thick knitted ones that are out with the belts (you know what I mean) and the oversize jumpers are cool but it's supposed to be spring soon and it's hard to rock a jumper when it's hot cold all the time. You need a cardi, layering style. I love slouchy clothes when I'm cold and one of the hottest trends this year is holey stuff. I know right, let's all rips holes in things, but it's going to be massive and this cardi is bucking the trend. It's the perfect spring piece - keeps you damn warm when it's chilly under a coat, but layer it over an interesting print dress/tshirt and you can see the pattern through the holes when it's a bit warmer. I tried it on and stared at myself for about 5 minutes (which is a long time in a changing room) trying to talk myself out of buying it. It's £40 so one of the more expensive items, and it's not interview material so I cannot justify it. Taking it off was painful. I need this cardi. But there's no way I can buy it until the end of the month. And if it's sold out by then, then I will cry. So please, appreciate it, but just don't buy it nation, ok? Nobody buy this. I want one. Just one, in a size 10, keep it safe for me and leave it on the hanger :) Fanks.

Anyway, after pulling myself together, this is the last item on my list. I usually hate parkas. I generally think that just because it's cold, doesn't mean your coat has to be shapeless and slightly farmer-ish. A good tailored coat will save this country from itself. However. I saw this and had a slight epiphany. It might just be because of the purple check and purple buttons (there's that purple again, good times...) or it might be because I saw a tres pretty girl wearing a parka with an amazing ensemble and forgave her instantly. Don't know. But it's cool. And I allow everyone to wear this. £45.

So that's my top pick of the lot. It's all great though, it really is. I was talking to the girl at the checkout and she was saying it's been slow to pick up but now it's gathering sales; I don't see why not, it's my favourite collection anywhere right now. Yes, anywhere. Debenhams seem to be on fire recently though, first the Ben De Lisi collection for Principles which is back (after folding) and also the size 16 mannequins, Debs is going to have a good year I think.

I'll sort out my interview outfit and probably do an outfit post actually; haven't done one in ages. It's not a regular thing I assure you.

The Daily Ampersand Project: No. 21

Ampersand No. 21 is Auto 2, in italic. Really nice quirky font, this. This ampersand was drawn in pencil.

To see the rest of the (Not so) Daily Ampersand Project, click here.

Debenhams: Would you like to see more of me?

I read the other day that Debenhams have decided to use size 16 mannequins in their Oxford Street windows:

Image from metro.co.uk

Signs next to the mannequins, which will be wearing the recently launched Principles by Ben de Lisi range, will ask customers: "I'm a size 16. Do you want to see more of me?". If people decide that they do, the mannequins will be rolled out across more stores. Personally, I think this is pretty great to raise this issue. Also, they've done it smack bang in the middle of London Fashion Week, which is very clever of them; every year there's a debate about the size of catwalk models and this is sure to stir some debate.

However, I do have a small qualm. It's great that the majority of women are now being represented in one of Britain's largest department stores (can you believe that the average for UK women is a size 14-16? I feel like everyone's so damn skinny these days), but a small voice is saying that maybe, using size 16 mannequins will mean it's OK to be a size 16. Which, you can argue it is, but also, you can argue it isn't. It depends on your height/weight etc - but if I was a size 16, I'd be obsese. (I'm 5ft4.) I don't really want to be encouraged to be a size 16 - I already have enough trouble with cakes etc! Sometimes I like to look at mannequins and although I feel a bit depressed, it makes me want to keep myself slim(ish). Is that just me? There are of course lots of plus sized shops out there, Evans being the obvious, and they already use larger mannequins. Maybe this is just a rant at my feeling of Britain 'casualising' itself (I made that word up, ha) - think Ugg boots (more like 'Ugh' boots, they're so disgusting and unfeminine) and tracksuits/loungewear/PJs on women more and more these days. And having size 16 mannequins sort of says 'Look, it's ok to let yourself go!' What happened to aspiring to be well groomed, looking after yourself, healthy, fit, and an ideal, curvy weight? I'd say size 12 is more appropriate. It's not skin and bones skinny and it's not unfit muffin top. You know? That's more an inner thought/rambling than my final say on the matter. I'm still happy this has happened; mannequins should represent the minority, after all.

The main positive thing that this will do is inspire debate, and enable people to question why size 8-10 is standard in shop windows. This is a good thing. People come in all shapes and sizes. Especially, as I said, during LFW.

Mark Fast famously uses size 12 models on his catwalk shows and I think they look great:

Taken from Topshop Inside Out

The model in the middle is a size 12 and a University student; she looks amazing and the perfect size for women to aspire to. Not a size 6. Mark Fast himself says he wants his clothes to fit real women so models them on real women. This image is from his new knitwear collection; click the link, it all looks ace. Could do with some of that right now, I'm uber cold.

So what do you think? Is it stupid of Debenhams to try and change the way the fashion industry works? Is it amazing and all shops should have size 16 mannequins? Is it just going to encourage women to let themselves go and accept that size 16 is what they should be? Hmmm. Let it rip.

5oup.net - My profile is featured!

A few days ago I joined 5oup, which is a creative social network, portfolio showcase site, that type of thing. Well my profile has been chosen for the 'fresh list' on there and will be displayed on the front page for the next five days!

Go take a look.

Nonsensical Spam Project: Bravo

Bonjour! Another nonsensical spam illustration for your perusal and satisfaction. Aha. This one is for the rather wonderfully stupid comment, "Bravo, this brilliant phrase is necessary just by the way". What brilliant phrase? Bravo for what exactly? and why just? Nonsense, I hear you cry. Well it is.

I wanted to do a type-y illustration this time, with lots of fun whimsy lettering. I haven't used victorian etching illustrations (copyright free! ching!) for aaages, not since my recipe book, a la look here, and I forgot how much fun they are! I wasn't entirely sure what the imagery would be for this but the grammar of the sentence just lent itself to upper-class, victorian type speaking, don't you think? So I dug out some very random, very nonsensical etchings and I think it's turned out quite well. I started with just the camel being weighed on the scales and a gramophone, then thought the gramophone speaker thing could look tres random as a ram's horns. Yes. Nonsense abounds! I think I might sneak the odd victorian strangeness into more of my work, I have a couple of books stacked full of these things that I can scan in and use. Hooray amazon.

I wasn't entirely sure of the background, I knew I needed a bit of texture but then it also looked good just plain white. I'm still not sure. I always do more. Maybe I should start doing less is more. But I like more, in general, of stuff. More stuff.

So I've just published the original comment (I keep em locked away until I actually use them).
The original comment was posted for this post right here. Which is a massive coincidence, I've just realised it's the same post I just linked to, with the victorian etchings. I didn't notice until just now. It must be fate! How weird.

You can see the other illustrations in the Nonsensical Spam Project here.

Paperchase: Mockery is Not the Highest Form of Flattery

This story has been all over twitter in the last 24 hours. It's an interesting one, and also quite alarming to the illustration community. It all centres around the accusation of plagiarism; more specifically, Paperchase (or the design studio they buy their design's from) copying an illustrator's original work. The illustrator in question is Hidden Eloise, and it's one of her characters that is a reccuring theme in her work, that seems to have been ripped off. And in my opinion, extremely obviously:

From this guardian article.

Take away all the details and focus on the girl, and she is in exactly the same pose. For god's sake, they haven't even flipped her horizontally (a classic trick which I used to use in college aaalll the time before I knew better) all they've done is added a few hair curls and change the colour of her dress.

When I read about all this, I was quite shocked that Paperchase could behave in this way. As you might now if you read my blog, I love Paperchase and shop there a lot; I always used to think it would amazing if I ever got commissioned to design something for them. Now this has come out it's very worrying. Read Hidden Eloise's blog post for the entire story, but this is the part that surprised me the most:

"...the lawyers ask me astronomical amounts of money to deal with this seriously in the courts and I suspect that is exactly the reason why Paperchase ignores me in the first place.

Since I have written to them, Paperchase made sure to put up even more items for sale with my plagiarised art! I'm sure Paperchase think that there is nothing that can make them stop. Proof is that the albums in the link above are actually freshly listed after the notebooks that I had written them about have apparently sold out!"

It seems that she contacted them with her concern, she got brushed off, couldn't afford lawyers, wrote that blog post, caused a huge stir of outrage against paperchase, and they then released a statement without informing her, which you can read here.

So it's still going on, but it's safe to say that Paperchase has had it's reputation damaged badly and many people, including illustrators, have lost faith in them. It's amusing that they have now joined Twitter themselves, it would seem in a strange attempt to stop the Twitter-storm that happened because of all this while they were absent from that social media. You can now follow them @FromPaperchase. An interesting sidenote that large companies really really need their finger on the pulse of all instant social media like this. It's really not enough to have a facebook page, or even a twitter page that never gets updated. There's no point being 'on' social media if you don't actually utilise it properly. You just look like a band-wagon-jumper-onner. I don't think this couold have been averted if Paperchase were active users of Twitter, but it certainly may not have escalated to be a Trending Topic.

The real question is why Gather No Moss (the design studio Paperchase uses) thought they could get away with blatent plagiarism like this. The beauty of the internet and the almost disease-like ease that information gets spread through social media and blogs etc, means that if an artist/musician/etc gets ripped off, someone will know someone who is following/friends with/linked to the original artist and they will find out. I see it a lot on my twitter stream: tweets saying 'Look at this, do you think this person has ripped off my style'. One of the most recent ones I saw was from Gemma Correll, who is has such a unique and distinguishable style, and is literally everywhere (seriously, that girl gets around, she must have such a business head, she's so in vogue right now), and she tweeted that someone had ripped her off and those designs were selling at Urban Outfitters! They have since dropped the shirts because of the bad publicity - something which Gemma could not have got without the use of twitter and flickr etc. It really can be an invaluable tool. She has withdrawn the image comparing the 2 designs so I can't show it here.

Plagiarism is always going to happen. It's horrible but it will. All art is inspired by other art - and you can have influences, obviously. But where is the line between influences/inspiration and direct copying? How do you develop your own style without being too influenced? Massimo Vignelli, the legendary modernist designer says:

"A personal style is like a handwriting - it happens as the byproduct of our way
of seeing things, enriched by the experiences of everything around us."

This is something I try to live by and I think sums it up perfectly. Just like the person you are as a whole has been shaped by everything that has happened to you in your life, so your art should be a complete mix and personal interpretation of everything youve ever seen, watched, drawn or made. Influences are fine. Directly copying an artist you like (or envy) is not. In this case, mockery is not the highest form of flattery.

So what happens if you don't copy another's style as a whole, but use copyrighted elements in your work? This is a continuously raging debate, especially within the field of collage; even I cut up fashion mags etc for personal work and technically, that's not allowed. That photograph is copyright owed by the photographer and you don't have permission to re-use it in commercial work. But so many do. Collage by nature is an assemblage of recycled imagery. A massive grey area. But let's look at the recent Shepherd Fairey debacle, which is still rumbling on:

Taken from this post at the AOI blog, read it.

In this case, the original photographer is suing Fairey for use of this photograph (left) without permission for his election poster (right). It's a massively famous image but now it has this complicated law case around it. The whole case is detailed better here. You can see the source material clearly is this photograph, and as the AOI say:

"At the AOI, we frequently get asked these sort of questions. If I use a
photograph as source material, then am I violating copyright? The answer is YES everytime. Even if you treat the photo, distort it and
colourise it as Fairey has then you can still get significantly stung a few
years down the line."

So, to sum it all up, copyright is super tricky. The best thing to do is, if you know you are copying someone's style/elements of work, just don't do it. Especially in this age of instant internet. You will get found out it seems. I wish loads of luck to Hidden Eloise and hope it gets sorted out. It's just sad it's come to this and Paperchase have worked with a company that obviously plagiarises. Perhaps in their defense they were completely oblivious, perhaps it's Gather No Moss we should be angry at. But really, who knows. It just shouldn't have happened in the first place.

New Work: Editorial Illustration

This was a piece I did for an article I found in The Times, written by Giles Coren called 'You've never heard of Paddington Basin, the little sink from darkest Peru?'.

The article has a few different tangents to it, but the one I focussed on was the trouble Giles is having with his new resolution - B.O.O.M, or Back Off On Meat when eating out at restaurants, especially when having Dim Sum at a restaurant in the newly developed Paddington Basin. Hence the title of the article - the original illustration was a take on that title, with Paddington etc, but I wanted to steer away from that and do something more food related. So I just did a spread of dim sum with a nice bit of Pak Choi as the main focus - relating to what the article says about trying to order lots more vegetables.

It's not my favourite piece I've ever done, I think the colours are too pastel-y and it's just not that visually interesting. Here's it superimposed into the original article for context:


I've realised I need to do a lot more editorials for my portfolio, as that's the area I'm trying to get work in. So I've been scouring newspapers and magazines etc for interesting articles to illustrate. It helps if I get someone else to cut out the original illustration (which was actually commissioned for the article) so that I'm not influenced by it. So it's not a dig at the original illustrator, thinking that I can do better than what they did etc, it's just a lot easier if I take existing articles and create an illustration for them - it's the only thing I can do until I get real commissions to fill my portfolio.

So I'm aiming to do one or two new pieces today :)

Van Doesburg & The International Avant Garde - Exhibition Review

During my regualar London shenanigans I always make a point to visit an exhibition or two. As soon as I heard about Van Doesburg & The International Avant Garde at the Tate Modern, I knew I had to go. That period of art history (early 20th century, up to second world war) is my favourite; so many interesting art movements evolving into one another. For example, Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, and Futurism. World War I brought an end to a lot of this but indicated the beginning of a number of anti-art movements, such as Dada, and later Surrealism. Groups sprung up in mid Europe like de Stijl and Bauhaus, who were much more multi-disciplinary, and who developed new ideas about the interrelation of the arts, architecture, design, and art education. Here's a wikipedia list of art movements and groups around this era, it's easier to have them all listed like that.

I've already mentioned Futurism in a previous post, of which I never got to see the exhibition, which made me sad but I wasn't near London at that time.

A few years later, De Stijl (The Style) sprang up, of which Van Doesburg was the leading creator of. This is what the exhibition focused on, as well as Dada, which is my personal favourite art movement ever. Anti-art movement really. More on that in a bit.

Theo van Doesburg was one of the leading figures in the development of geometric abstraction. He wanted to establish a visual vocabulary of elementary geometrical forms which were understandable by everyone and could be adapted to any art form or dicipline; graphic design, architecture, art, anything. He was an artist in his own right but also edited and designed the magazine for the movement, also called De Stijl. He was the original creative social networker; transmitting ideas for a diverse network of artists who shared his same ideals, promoting them, collaborating with them, learning from and influencing them.

The exhibition follows the evolution of De Stijl and Doesburg's work, from his early influences right through to his death. He was influenced by Wassily KAndinsky to experiment with abstraction, sharing his belief that abstraction directly embodied the spiritual qualities that were fundamental to all works of art.

The term Neo-Plasticism has come to define the new approach to art associated with De Stijl, characterised by horizontal and vertical lines harmonised in geometric equilibrium, with a limited palette of primary colours. If this kind of art isn't your thing, the first few rooms will seem a bit repetitive to you. There are so many variations of each piece, different compositions, experiments, as the movement found it's feet and more artists got involved. In the beginning, the abstract pieces were always founded in reality; the pieces were interpretations of real things. For example, here is 'The Card Players' by Doesburg, 1917:

And here is the geometric interpretation of the same name:

You can kind of vaguely see the forms, but the shapes are so basic now that it barely comes across. The only hint is the title.

As you walk through the exhibition the pieces get more and more abstract and more basic, so that any footing in 'real objects' is lost. Some of the artists disagreed than abstraction should be rooted in reality at all, like Piet Mondrian, who though that the works should just be metaphorical representations of the harmony of the world. Others believed that anchoring the image in external reality was important, avoiding the pitfall of decoration for decoration's sake.

Room 5 got really interesting for me. This was a collection of De Stijl typography, leading on to exhibits of the original De Stijl magazine itself. In 1919 Van Doesburg designed a new typographic alphabet; as well as bringing modernist design into mass culture, he wanted to provide an appropriate form for writing about and promoting all of the artistic disciplines within De Stijl.

P22 De Stijl

Cover of De Stijl journal, 1917.

An inside spread, with poetry; represented visually by different type treatments. This is similar to what the Futurists did, and later Concrete Poetry. The exhibition has quite a few original surving De Stijl's, I loved it. So fascinating, seeing the actual journal and the articles, art and writing inside. It's just like a modern day black and white zine really; only with far more cultural weight as this was the only way art like this could be spread around, and the movement could grow. These days, things are instant and art is accessible anywhere. Twitter, blogs, just the internet as a whole, is how artists connect now. In them days, Van Doesburg was the social network. He got these people together and used his contacts to promote the art.

Copy of the De Stijl manifest, the rules of the art movement.

Example of a poster, the text is designed to be read simultaneously as the words cut through each other; they were experimenting with the visual representations of time and how to show it in design and art.

If you're a graphic designer or a design student or just someone who loves type like me, this section of the exhibition is worth it alone. Old school typography, before computers, is so rich and somehow so tactile. You can see the tipp-ex where they've corrected letterforms and the images is almost a collage as they've arranged the text several times before sticking it down to create a poster/advert, whatever they were doing. Many of the De Stijl members were practioning commercial designers and designed theatre posters, product labels and adverts. It's all there, and it's fascinating.

It then moves on to Dada & Constructivism. Here's what wikipedia says about Dada. It's my favourite movement because of the complete absurdity, nonsense of it, and yet it has this twisted logic, this feeling that it makes complete sense and understands the almost pointless endeavor of creating art/beautiful things, such as life can be seen as a pointless endeavour, ultimately. Deep stuff, but I find it fascinating.

From Excerpts of Tristan Tzara's Dada Manifesto (1918): "As Dada marches it continuously destroys, not in extension but in itself. From all these disgusts, may I add, it draws no conclusion, no pride, no benefit. It has even stopped combating anything, in the realization that it's no use, that all this doesn't matter. What interests a Dadaist is his own mode of life. But here we approach the great secret.

Dada is a state of mind. That is why it transforms itself according to races and events. Dada applies itself to everything, and yet it is nothing, it is the point where the yes and the no and all the opposites meet, not solemnly in the castles of human philosophies, but very simply at street corners, like dogs and grasshoppers.

Like everything in life, Dada is useless.

Dada is without pretension, as life should be.

Perhaps you will understand me better when I tell you that Dada is a virgin microbe that penetrates with the insistence of air into all the spaces that reason has not been able to fill with words or conventions."

For Van Doesburg, there was an underlying unity between the anarchic Dada movement and the more ordered aesthetic of De Stijl. They disagreed with the means of how they produced their art, but he had great respect for their ideas. He published issues of the Dadaist review Mecano.

Dada art was random, unstructured, meaningless and based a lot on collage and lettering. My kind of thing.




The exhibition also explains about Van Doesburg's connection to the Bauhaus, which was growing in strength at the same time. He wanted a teaching position there but was rejected; so he set up a rival teaching school, however it was less successful. Later, the Bauhaus came to recognise his ideas and De Stijl's importance was confirmed in 1925, when it published writings by Oud, Mondrian and Doesburg.

As I mentioned before, of you're not a fan of cold, sterile, rigid lines and regimented primary colours then you won't like most of the artworks taht illustrate the theories behind De Stijl. I spent over an hour in the exhibition but I did begin to grow tired of the squares and lines. I definitely prefer the theories of the movement more than the physical produces of the artists in the movement. The architecture has more depth to it; I'm not much of an architecture fan (rather, my 2D brain doesn't really get it, but I appreciate it, on some levels) but if you are, or an actual real-life architect yourself, I'm sure it's tres exciting. I didn't come out of the exhibition feeling incredibly inspired to change my art practice to abstraction or anything, but I did come out with a profound understanding of how all these movements and artists worked together, who influenced who, and ultimately, where modern graphic design started and the importance of these pre-war movements.

Counter-Composition VI 1925

The last room of the exhibition included later works, including ones that broke the original horizontal/vertical rules, like the one above. It was amusingly refreshing to suddenly see diagonal lines. Honestly.

I recommend seeing it. There are so many works on display, and the actual artifacts like the De Stijl journal and Dada works are really interesting. It's a challenging exhibition; don't expect to go seeing pretty things and feel uplifted as you leave. It's very sterile, cold, and exact. Theoretical art is never that beautiful, but it's important.

Other reviews of the exhibition:

Telegraph Review, 1st Feb 2010

Times Review, 7th feb 2010

Guardian Review, 1st Feb 2010

All of the images used have been gleaned off google and encyclopedia sites, copyrights remain with the owners, I'm using them for sake of discussion and analysis.

New Work: 'I Fear The Distraction' Art & Fear Submission

This piece of work was created last week specifically for a submission for Underground Art School's Magazine. Issue 5's theme is Art & Fear and they wanted a focus on hand-drawn typography for this issue. "The two topics seem to go hand in hand. Create, draw, or design us your favorite quotes, lyrics, and positive affirmations that inspire you to move past the fear toward creativity. What are your creative fears? What worries you?"

This is an entirely hand-rendered piece, nothing done in Photoshop except tweak the contrast a bit. It is all rendered in HB and 4B pencil, with a hand drawn version of Adobe Caslon Pro, including ligatures.

I've just discovered ligatures and what they're actually for. I thought they were just typographic decoration. Designers showing off. Not so. "Ligatures usually replace consecutive characters sharing common components and are part of a more general class of glyphs called "contextual forms" where the specific shape of a letter depends on context such as surrounding letters or proximity to the end of a line." So there. And of course, the ampersand is a ligature; of et. Now everything in the world makes sense. There are all sorts of rules too, here's an article that looks at 18th Century ligatures, for all you history people.

Being that I never had any formal typography learnin's during Uni, I didn't know any of this. I am intrigued.

The quote is something I made up, addressing the worries that a lot of freelance artists/designers have when starting up; I need a 'real job' to tide me over before I start making a lot of money from what I do, but I don't want this job to take up so much of my time that I can't create/design when I want to. It's a common thing. I feel it a lot. It's easy to say, oh just do your illustration in the evening/night, but I don't want to do the thing I love at night. It's draining and tiring and above all, I want to spend my working time working on things that I love doing, not in a shop. Etc. The intended slight illegibility of the piece is supposed to evoke the frustration that this situation causes.

The whole idea was inspired by an interview I read in the current issue of Grafik magazine, with Project Projects, where they discuss a similar thing.

I'd quite like to turn it into a screenprint eventually. That'd look ace I reckon. Just need to get near to a screenprinting bed. I can't believe I lost my uni ID - can't use the facilities now :( Major lame.

I hope it makes it into the Issue anyway, I'm pleased with how it turned out; it was a labour of love and took a while, but I love doing hand drawn type and it was a departure from a lot of my work.

Selfridges Museum Of Small Things Review

On friday I popped into London for the day, and one of the things I did was visit Selfridge's M.O.S.T exhibition, as I promised I would.

The first thing I'll say is that it was dark. Very dark. All the walls were black, some covered with fake black leaves (a strange decision) and there was no set direction in which you walked around the exhibition, which I sort of liked but sort of felt a bit disconcerting, with the darkness. Maybe that was the point; to encourage you to look harder and find the small things. Here's a scan of my map anyway, and you'll see what I mean:

So you went in any one of a number of different ways and wandered round in no particular direction. It wasn't busy when I was there (being the first day of opening) so that was nice, I could take my time. Here are the pieces in the exhibition that I liked best. There were lots more but I felt these were worth taking pictures of. However grainy and un-flashed because it was so dark and the glass was reflective.


The first piece I got to was this projection on the wall, called Eternal Turmoil by McFaul. It's supposed to represent Nature and it's destructive force, all animals being created to feed each other, and plagues, disease etc being created to destroy things, including humans. I thought it was quite ethereal, the subject matter didn't come across instantly but it was interesting to watch. The top image is the white projection which flickered with things like butterflies, skulls etc, and in the centre was a red russian matryoshka doll. Pretty.


This piece I really liked; it was an interactive piece called Consumer Sacrifice by Adam Hayes where you chose one object/thing that you had lost or would like to lose, and put it through a shredder in the wall, intending to liberate you from that object or that loss. It was also a reference to the consumer-driven society that led us to the recession, and letting go of the things that got us where we are now. I like that. The postcard-sized illustrations were simple pen drawings of things like "Home", "Happy Hour", "Fake" etc, like you can see in the image. I chose to shred Happy Hour because it was a cocktail and I miss drinking cocktails with my friends - I've lost out on that since moving home to where my friends are not.

This was called Tibetan Idol-16 by Gonkar Gyatso, who founded the Tibetan Art Gallery. I just liked this one because it was made up of loads of tiny kitsch stickers.

This Bird's Nest Headdress is by Shaun Leane and Philip Treacy for Alexander McQueen for Swarovski Runway Rocks (quite a mouthful...) and is pretty spesh. The birds nest is solid silver, the eggs have over 4000 swarovski crystals in a lovely duck egg blue (of course) and it's all been oxidised to give the impression of an antique. It was quite mesmerising. The wings are real feathers, giving the impression they are mothering the precious eggs.

You had to sick your head in a tiny cupboard type thing to see this. It's Porporpeius by Ben Newman, who is apparently a little known water deity with severe drug use and a failed suicide attempt. Oh dear. Ben's work is ace, check it out. Really visual and arresting.

This was my favourite piece in the exhibition. It's by Adam Dant and called 'Donald Parsnips Directory of Products, 1995'. All the products illustrated originally appeared within the pages of the cultish Donald Parsnips Daily Journal 1995-99; Donald Parsnip is a creation of Dant's, and the pamphlet was handed out by him in the streets during that time. It's great, all these boxes and jars and packets of things called things like 'lisping and stumbling liquid for lamps' and 'at least 60% of this product is less than 40%'. Nonsensical products which I just love; you know how I love the idea od anything nonsensical. It was in a little room with a mirror and the walls and ceiling were just covered with these tiny illustrations. Really nice. I stayed in there for a while staring at everything.

This was a huge revolving ball/balloon type thing in the middle of the exhibition. You can't see the scale but I came up to less than halfway up it. It was called Homeless Dictator by Kinpro and didn't have any info about it. Can't really see how it fits into the 'small objects' theme, but then maybe its a juxtaposition. It's fun though.

Around the walls, which were all mirrors in this centre space, are animations by Michael Aubtin Madadi, which are lovely. Hand drawn, sad, with no dialogue, just music and hand drawn text. Things like the brief relationship between a battery and a toy are looked at. Really moving. Definitely worth putting the headphones on for and watching all of them.


These spheres of badges were cool. There's something about badges layered and layered on top of each other; really tactile, you want to touch them. I did anyway. They are called Pick Me Stick Me Lick Me by Paul Bower, who does crazy funny little characters, really nice fun work, of which some are featured on the badges. He's represented by Pocko, who helped to arrange the exhibition .More on that in a bit.


These were cool as well. Called Beyond The Sky, Beyond The Forest by Momo, which are actually little pieces of jewellry. It was tiiiny, you had to look into the cloud cut out shapes and you could see all the animal jewellry on cotton wool clouds. 'They are more like 3D illustration or wearable miniature scultpures rather than what is called jewellry". I loved them, so tiny, really kitsch, and definitely from strange fairy tales mixed with with reality and fantasy. It was fun to peer into the tiny windows.

I like small things.

All in all it was very interesting to see all these made and found objects, and elements of illustration intertwined. As I said, it was in association with Pocko, an agency/collective/publishing company that champions up and coming artists and illustrators. Here's a bit from their site:

"Pocko was founded in 1999 in London by Nicola Schwartz. Thanks to original ideas and projects it has rapidly become an internationally known company working with contemporary artists and with forward thinking brands.

Pocko’s first ground-breaking initiative was the Pocko Collection, a series of pocket size books composed by different artists which were forerunners of combining publishing with brand communication and which received an overwhelming worldwide recognition by the press and consumers alike.

Pocko’s gift has been in its ability to identify young undiscovered talents and to jointly develop, in a team format, highly original and exciting projects ranging from exhibitions to publishing programs, from unconventional marketing strategies to communication and advertising campaigns.

Pocko has so far succeeded in the complex task of identifying with the clients, their specific objectives and needs while developing brand experiences ranging from communication to product development."

Have a look round the site, it's interesting. Like it says, they also publish artist books and the such, some of which were on sale at Selfridges. Some from Daisy De Villeneuve (a personal favourite), and one I saw which made me look, called 'Dear Thank You Yours Sincerely'. It made me look because I had this exact idea the other day and couldn't believe it's already been done. Humph. "This book is a collection of 77 letters received by the artist in reply to his incessant applications over a period of three years. From these most prosaic documents a kind of bittersweet poetry emerges, a sustained and repetitive meditation on the politics and the poetics of rejection."

I thought of doing this myself because I'm starting to build up quite a collection of 'thanks but no thanks' emails from people I'm contacting about my work and placements I'm applying for, and I thought it would be interesting to collate them all together as I move forward with my illustration career. But it's been done! Oh well. Great minds. Here's the Daisy De Villeneuve one.

The nice thing about the darkness of the exhibition was it was a nice calming refuge from the madness of Selfridges. I felt a little overwhelmed as I came back out into the store and became bombarded with all the nice things there. A strange feeling; I usually love being bombarded with pretty things, being the consumer that I am, but it was strange. Somehow I managed to not buy anything. My bank account thanked me. It's not a good idea to buy stuff when you don't have a job.

I'd recommend you give it a visit; an interesting and eclectic exhibition with some fun and interesting artists. Well worth a look if you're popping in to Selfridges for a cupcake or three (Lola's are doing their Hazelnut for Haiti cupcake, 100% of proceeds go to Haiti relief fund).