Archives for category: Art

Everything is back to normal. The conference is over and my friend Avril has gone back home to Australia. The picture shows Avril next the poster with our star, Lizzie. We had brilliant feedback about the film from the people who watched it at the conference. Personally, I know more about Lipoedema now than I ever wanted to know :), but I guess this is why I like to get involved in such projects.

Most people were surprised that we did the film without funding. Avril and I had talked about whether we should seek funding for the project in the beginning, but it was in the too hard basket for both of us, particularly as we were working in different countries. I myself have no experience with funding agencies and I believe seeking funding would have slowed the whole thing down and made the process more cumbersome.

Would I do it again? Most certainly! Though I would rethink my view on seeking funding first…

Here is a little treat for my blog followers. Only when you have the link can you watch this film, as it is unlisted on Youtube. It is a test of my shadow puppets for the film “Fat Legs & all“. Unfortunately, these original shadow puppets didn’t find the approval of the other parties involved and I had to modify them a little. I wanted to show the sponge puppets in a savage world. But I was told that for the sponges it is not so much a feeling of living in a hostile world, but rather one of seeking approval and understanding, as they are just ignored or made fun of.

I have to admit, I was a shadow puppet! Many people are surprised that neither of us who made the film suffer from Lipoedema ourselves. For me it was a “mea culpa” project. When Avril described to me what a Lipoedema sufferer might look like, I immediately remembered my best friend at Uni. For me personally body shape is of little importance. I side with my “No body” Dedes. What counts is what is in the head. However, my mate at Uni managed to aggravate me when we were out eating. She ate so little and pushed her food around her plate for ages.  Basically she ate very conscientiously and next to her I appeared like a caveman’s wife. I just gulped down what there was to eat. I always wondered what this was all about, as I ate far more, but was in much better shape. No, that’s not quite right… when sitting down, my friend looked like a real lady, but under the table it was a different story (the dress code at a baroque court would have suited her very well). And I admit it now, that I occasionally thought “If I were that unshapely, I would do something about it”.

After we finished our studies, our ways parted and I have long lost contact, but Avril’s description of the lipoedema figure brought back memories of all the good times I had with my friend.

 

Today is premiere day for my sponge puppet film. I will write more about it in the next few posts. Here just briefly what it is all about.

For this film I have teamed up with Avril Lunken, an lymphoedema occupational therapist from Melbourne and her daughter Tilly, a playwright in London. We thought the neutral medium of puppetry would be ideal to highlight this little-known condition which can make the lives of many women who suffer from it miserable. Lipoedema, is a condition where abnormal fatty deposits accumulate in the butt and legs but not the feet. Sometimes known as “painful fat syndrome,” women who have lipoedema often believe (or are told) they are simply over-weight but find that no amount of exercise or diet reduces the fatty deposits. Their legs and thighs are out of proportion with the rest of their body. This condition affects women only and manifests itself usually after puberty, child birth or menopause.

Imagine how soul-destroying it must be, when the only advice your doctor gives you is to loose weight, but you know too well you have already tried every diet under the sun. He then goes on to paint the bleakest picture what will happen if you don’t heed his advice…

With our film we want to reduce the prejudice towards those with the condition and instigate more research into the subject. During the next three days, Avril is presenting a poster at the 10th Australasian Lymphology Association (ALA) Conference here in Auckland. The film can be accessed by the participants of the conference via a QR code on the poster.

Life would become so much easier for sufferers, if only more people knew it is a medical condition and not a weakness of the will.

Please watch the film and share their story!

A big, fat Thank You!   Dietlind

fundraising

Today I am quite down. I slept very poorly after yesterday. The interview didn’t go as I expected and I have the feeling I didn’t handle my latest project very well. Now that it is finished and I have had a bit of a breather, I realise that I was once again steaming ahead on a totally different track from all the others involved. Ah well, I guess that is the reason why I will stay a poor artist forever. In the meantime I have placed my busking penguin permanently in the corner of our staircase, hoping he will collect some change. Surprisingly he has… all those loose coins are from when we do the washing. Of course the corner of our steps is not a very public place so there is not much traffic for donations. Wrong decision again! Maybe I should place him at the garden gate, next to the letter box. But then, we live in suburbia… I don’t think it will make much of a difference.

happy man

Life is pretty frantic at the moment. On Thursday the sponge puppet film will be released. Finally I am all set, the poster is printed… But you know how it is, in the end there are always a million things to attend to.  This afternoon, a reporter comes round to interview me about the story… On a different note, the photographer of Artstation must have been really taken by Court Jester, as he immediately posted a picture on their facebook page . Obviously Court Jester did a good job, he made the puppeteer laugh really hard.

In the meantime, I continue stabbing wool tuffs to turn them into little sculptures. This one here is called Keith, as a tribute Keith Haring.  If he had felted, I am pretty sure his figures would have looked somewhat like this.

baby elephant

I discovered a new stress-relief activity, or I should say, my friend Cath introduced me to it. She showed me the process of dry felting on Monday. Basically, you stab a pile of raw wool with a special needle. In this process the strands of wool get tangled and compress and you can shape the wool into anything you like by just continuously stabbing and adding more wool. You have to watch your fingers though, the needle is pretty sharp. So no watching TV while doing it. But it does release tension :).

This little elephant is my second sculpture. The first one turned out to be a foal-dog-kid sort of animal. Don’t ask me why my mind was set on creating a “White Elephant”, but I think he turned out well. A vistior to my studio this morning immediately had to hug the little thing. She spotted it straight away, despite my usual mess and the elepnant only being 7cm high.

Last Saturday we had another Dede Workshop where we created an impromptu film. Impromputu in the sense that the people who attended had to come up with a story. The only hint they have are the puppets I select prior to the participants arriving. No Devil this time! He is on his well-deserved holiday. Instead we had a pretty classic Punch & Judy cast, bar Punch and Judy. Without Devil it took the participants a while to come up with the story, but once they started acting it out, the storyline got fast and furious. If you can’t follow it entirely… don’t worry, you can trust me, there was a happy ending. Nasty Cool Cat has been imprisoned by Bobby the policeman and King and Chamber Maid live to this day.

Unlike the previous films, this one needed a little explanation at the beginning. My friend Cath and I are now wondering if we should adapt the story for a live puppet show.

Hope you enjoy it.

cow and cushions

I had to go and get my picture taken for the next brochure of the community art school where I am having a puppetry workshop. To make it easier for me, I thought I take two puppets along to help. It went all okay, except that I’d rather had the pics of the puppets published, than my own mug. Anyway when the job was done, we were walking down the road, when Cash Cow all of a sudden stopped and screamed. She had discovered these cushions in the window of a shop. I think she will have nightmares tonight.

Today was the big day of the inaugural scarecrow competition at the Beach Haven Community Garden. All I can say: it was such a wonderful event. We had 15 scarecrows in the running, many of them created by groups, rather than individuals. And yes, I thought, judging scarecrows would be easy peasy… No it wasn’t. In the end I had a list of points they had to fulfill, such as being scary, withstanding weather, making noise… Looking great, wasn’t good enough, as they all did.

We were totally overwhelmed by the participation. We had 290 votes by the end of the day and I got a bit nervous, as the one I had selected for my Artist’s Choice Award, was also looking to be winning the People’s Choice Award. In the end a different one turned out to be the people’s darling. One I wouldn’t have chosen, even though it looked scary, it was made of cardboard and the first big deluge (not uncommon in Auckland) would see to it.

Here some impressions of the day.

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byaleaf

I don’t know if I have already mentioned, that I have been assigned to judge the inaugural scarecrow competition at the community garden here in Beach Haven tomorrow. This will be a very busy day for me. I have to go to the garden to look at all the entries, then I have to come back home to run a Dede workshop and back to the garden to announce the winner.

The community garden is relatively new and as it is with such groups, money is an always short. So, I decided to reinvigorate one of my favourite prizes I awarded at many occasions while still studying. Take one bayleaf, spray paint with metalic gold (donated by the artschool) and put in a nice looking but cheap frame from the bargain bin. I wanted to have a leaf in gold, silver and bronze. Unfortunately there were only cans in gold, silver and red. Never mind, red is a nice colour too. The local chocolate shop has also donated four boxes of chocolates. I hope the scarecrows will be happy and the weather gods are favourable.