The Drawing Board

This Sunday, at The Picture House in Exeter:

 

I'm still on my "online hiatus" this week, but wanted to pop in briefly to post the flyer above, for the premier of the new fairy tale film by the Chagford Filmmaking Group. We'll all be there (our daughter played the dragon in the film, and Howard's mum worked on costumes)...and perhaps we'll see some of you who live in the West Country at the premier too...?

I'll be back on this blog on Wednesday, May 2nd. In the meantime, a few quick recommendations, if you haven't come across these items already:

New Portrait of Janey Morris; Molly Crabapple's Week in Hell; "Dear Daughter" by Mur Lafferty; "Girls Who Read" by Mark Grist, and Axel, the thatcher's dog.

Tilly sends her regards.

Click on the picture for a larger version, in which you can see the bluebells....

Paper Play

Another quick post to pass on another recommendation, this one from  Chandra Cerchione-Peltier, who reminded me of the gorgeous, folkloric work being done by the English "paper artist" Su Blackwell. (Credit where credit's due: I first learned about Blackwell through Carl V., in the "Book Week" series he ran on his Stainless Steel Droppings blog. Thanks, Carl!)

”I often work within the realm of fairy-tales and folk-lore," writes Blackwell. "I began making a series of book-sculpture, cutting-out images from old books to create three-dimensional dioramas, and displaying them inside wooden boxes. For the cut-out illustrations, I tend to lean towards young-girl characters, placing them in haunting, fragile settings, expressing the vulnerability of childhood, while also conveying a sense of childhood anxiety and wonder. There is a quiet melancholy in the work, depicted in the material used, and choice of subtle colour.”

Visit the artist's website to see her utterly amazing dioramas and installations. (Even the work she does as an art director for commercial clients is magical.) She's also got a terrific blog, and an online shop, so please go look at all these marvels....

Blackwell's paper trees remind of an animation I absolute love created by my young friend Carmen Bromfield Mason: "How Much Do You Know?" (about stories, language, and the effect of the media's focus on bad and shocking news on our culture). Carmen is an animation student, and she made this exquisite little film when she was just sixteen. You can see it by visiting Carmen's blog, and then scrolling down the page until you reach the videos.

Tune for a Monday Morning

My friend Helen Mason, an ex-dancer turned designer in London, sent me a link to the lovely dance animation above: "Thought of You," created by Ryan Woodward. The music, serendipitously, is by The Weepies, whose cheerful smooching-and-dancing-in-the- streets video I posted as last week's Monday tune. This one is in a very different vein: it is a beautiful evocation (through music and animation both) of what it's like to lose someone you love. Please visit Ryan Woodward's Conte Animated website to see more of his graceful figurative works and experimental animations.

I'm back in the office, in a shaky and slow kind of way, and not yet entirely over the flu...but there's no sick pay for the self-employed so I'm back to work anyway (ah, the glamorous writing life) -- armed with tissues, ginger-and-lemon tea, paracetamal, and a trusty hot water bottle. Somehow in-between coughs and wheezes the mail will get answered and Work Will Get Done.

I have a few recommendations to pass on this morning:

First, there's a fascinating interview with the French illustrator Didier Graffet over on Howard's John Barleycorn blog this week. It's part of the "Around the table with...." series of chats that Howard and his comics-partner, Rex, are running every third Friday. The table in question is our kitchen table...so as you read the interview, imagine the smells of woodsmoke, croissants, Devon blackberry jam, milky English tea and strong Italian coffee...with Tilly lying under the table looking up at Didier in adoration. (She definitely had a little canine crush.)

Didier is one of the most highly regarded book illustrators in France today; and a visit to his website will quickly show you why. He's perhaps best known for his Jules Verne art, which ranges from paintings and drawings to a model of The Nautilus (Captain Nemo's submarine), the plans for which are pictured below. Didier stayed with us in early December, braving the icy Dartmoor weather to attend the opening of the "Sir Lanval" exhibition, to which he'd contributed beautiful work. If you'd like to see more of Didier's art, it's been collected into a handsome volume titled Mondes et Voyages -- available here through Amazon France, and well worth tracking down.

Second, my good friend Miriam Boy, a jewellery designer here on Dartmoor,  has a lovely new website up which she's calling silverandmoor. You may remember the picture of Miriam's atmospheric workshop  from the "On Your Desk" photo series last month. Her jewellery is gorgeous, and she takes commissions, so please go over and have a look.

And here's one last recommendaton for you, tied in with the mention of Jules Verne above : "The Sultan's Elephant" (below), a little film I first learned about from my friend Danielle Barlow. Those of you who follow Danielle's rich treasury of a blog, Notes from the Rookery, will have seen this one already...but nevermind, it's an astonishing video and worth watching again.

Created by the Royal de Luxe street theatre company of France, "La visite du sultan des Indes sur son éléphant à voyager dans le temps" ("Visit From The Sultan Of The Indies On His Time-Travelling Elephant") was commissioned to celebrate the centenary of Jules Vernes' death. The elephant debuted in Nantes and Amiens in 2005, then traveled to various locations around the world. In the film below, the elephant and his companion take a stroll through London back in 2006. (How in the world did I miss it at the time?) Magical art like this fills the world with wonder, and just makes me glad to be alive.

You can find more pictures and more information on the Royal de Luxe website, and on the Sultan's Elephant in London website. Also check out the Machines of the Ilse of Nantes website for more cool stuff. They just do these things better in France.

Miwa Matreyek in Motion

 

 

Above: A Miwa Matreyek performance in Oxford, filmed for the TED Talks series. It's a beautiful piece -- and becomes truly amazing about one third of the way in, so stick with it.

Here's the description: "Miwa Matreyek creates performances where real shapes and virtual images trade places, amid layers of animation, video and live bodies. Using animation, projections and her own moving shadow, Miwa Matreyek performs a gorgeous, meditative piece about inner and outer discovery. With music from Anna Oxygen, Mirah, Caroline Lufkin and Mileece."

The link comes from William Todd-Jones (thanks, Todd!), who creates this kind of cutting-edge performance work himself ("The Virtual Cellist," for example) and ought to have a TED Talk of his own. Are there any TED execs out there listening...?

Today's poem is "Instructions" by Neil Gaiman, which was first published in A Wolf at the Door, co-edited by me and Ellen Datlow (more info here), and which has now been turned into a beautiful, magical children's picture book illustrated by Charles Vess. I love this.

You can listen to Neil read the poem in the lovely video above, or you can read it here, in the poetry archives of The Journal of Mythic Arts.

"Salad Days" is the latest in a series of fabulous creations by my favorite young animator, Carmen Bromfield Mason. (If you missed my previous post about her work, her YouTube page is here. I particularly recommend "How Much Do You Know" to all you book lovers out there.)

I'm pleased to report that these fine little films, created at Chelsea College of Art & Design in London, have earned the artist a place in the prestigious animation program at Bournemouth University. Good news indeed!