I want to touch everything she makes

Joana Vasconcelos

www.joanavasconselos.com

battered bible

littlewhitehead, a collective of artists from Glasgow - you can probably tell from the deep fried antique book and the huddle of neds in the corner. I like it, especially since my first encounter was at the Saatchi Gallery in the midst of sloan-ville, about as far away from maryhill as you are likely to get.

"Within our work there is a strong connection between the reality that surrounds us and some kind of escapism to a made-up world"

yes yes yes I like it I like it.

www.littlewhitehead.com

it got so hot in florence

the bicycles began to melt.

turista

an accident

the cabinieri weren't paying attention and I almost walked right through the blood without realising.

on the road

autoroute
autostrade
autobahn
motorway

family portrait

Alan Ginsberg

"The parts that embarrass you the most are usually the most interesting poetically, are usually the most naked of all, the rawest, the goofiest, the most strangest and most eccentric and at the same time, most representative, most universal . . . That was something I learned from Kerouac, which was that spontaneous writing could be embarrassing . . . The cure for that is to write things down which you will not publish and which you won't show people. To write secretly . . . so you can actually be free to say anything you want . . . You really have to make a resolution to write just for yourself . . . in the sense of not writing to impress yourself, but just writing what your self is saying."


came across this in The Gift by Lewis Hyde. Francesca loaned me the book and it's really interesting but quite hard work at times, I skipped half of the chapter on ursury, I'll come back to it later, maybe.

floating boats and paper cranes

Installation for Falmouth foundation exhibition.

Not sure how well it translates into photographs.

Back in Glasgow

Now I can get to the internet whenever I like, so hopefully will be keeping this more up to date..

Woke up this morning to find a crate of my old children's books at the bottom of the stairs. There are some lovely ones, I don't think I'll ever get tired of them - so I've taken them back up to my room, which is already far to full of stuff. But to be honest I'd rather have a room full of books than bags ( which need to be taken to the charity shops - must remind myself).
One of my favourites that I had forgotten about was Where the Forest Meets the Sea by Jeannie Baker. It's illustrated with collage that she made using natural rain forest materials, clay, paper, and paint. I wish I had known about this when I was doing my own collages a few weeks ago, but might try it out again this summer. I think Lara would like her stuff maybe? (If you're reading this Lara - you should look her up) It's just a really interesting way of creating collage, it looks almost like it has been made using photoshop, but it's all done by hand.

Looking back, a lot of those books had lots of animal pictures in them, and stories from all over the world. Maybe that's why I'm still interested in that kind of thing. Escpecially the ones from Canada - when we were little we travelled to Vancouver quite a few times, every time we came back with a bunch of children's books from Kids Books on Broadway (It's still there, I would LOVE a job). Probably why I 'm still so interested, I read so many books about Canada and First Nation's stories as a child that they almost became part of me by osmosis. Blah.

Anyway - here are some of my attempts from last month. The paper object in each of them was a mock-up of a sculpture I was going to make for the last part of foundation. It failed spectacularly, but resulted in the installation I ended up with, and these collages:

canada

stealing

Stumbled on this quote and turns out Jarmusch is the writer/director of one of my favourite films, Coffee and Cigarettes. Actually I might see if I can find it somewhere, it would be good to watch it again. Talking of dvd's I've been looking for a version of "Man of Aran" - the documentary/"cinematic gem" filmed in the Aran Isles off the coast of Ireland in the 1930's, with a soundtrack by British Sea Power. I can't seem to find it in any record shops in Glasgow, but I hate ordering things off the internet. Actually Janey has a copy - is it possible to burn dvd's to your computer? It must be.