Archives for posts with tag: mood
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Where is the sign post?

September 18, 2012 //
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Last night I went to an exhibition opening of my students. I was impressed. This is one of the things I enjoy most about teaching, seeing individuals developing in their art. They are by no means all young kids. In photography we have a lot of mature students. Unfortunately I have the ungrateful task of teaching digital imaging. Generally, the younger ones just do it, the older ones say “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it”… but at one stage (and I can usually wait for it) they come up to me with a big wide smile all over their face and say something like “I am proud of myself, I have done so much on the computer”. The best of course is when they say “I love digital now!” I can’t take the credit for this, though. It doesn’t have much to do with my teaching, but with them gaining confidence in an area they never would have thought they could excel in. Good on you!

After the event I was hurled towards the opposite end of human emotions. I bumped into a friend, a very talented musician, who is currently drifting down the path towards middle age. I love him to bits. He really has something going for him, but he doesn’t know yet what, and he is increasingly running out of patience. He told me, and I repeat verbatim: “I don’t like what the world has on offer at the moment.”

Oh dear! What a puppet moment!

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Categories Art, Life, Photography, Relationships

As time goes by

September 13, 2012 //
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I use my art to dissect ideas that float around my head. It relaxes me tremendously and helps to solve any difficult issues I have to deal with.

When I was at school, my doodling habits drove my teachers absolutely bonkers. I never finished a period with any sort of usable notes and therefore couldn’t revise at home. In the end I got kicked out of school because my English and French weren’t up to scratch…  Ah well, as time goes by… I wish my English teacher could hear me now.

I am still doodling when I am in meetings, some habits never die! Funnily enough, I can take in conversations much better when I do this. I am pretty sure all the other doodlers out there will agree :)

 

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Categories Art, Fun, Life

Puzzle

September 12, 2012 //
4

It takes twenty-one days of hard work to form a good habit. Why does it only take three to slip back into bad ones?

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Categories Art, Digital art, Life, Social Network

Parallel world

September 9, 2012 //
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Introducing Ms SM today. She is the fourth one of the installation puppets. I don’t know her real name. It might be Sue or Sophie Miller or even Steven, who knows. I don’t know what she looks like without her mask, but I hear she is an accountant in a big corporation and pretty dull to talk to. She just hides her real self from her colleagues by fading into the background during the day. A precaution that makes her own life more bearable. “Normal” people wouldn’t understand. Being her is difficult enough, even without all the ridicule and bullying. It can’t be easy to live two lives. Of course her web friends understand… she feels safer there than in “reality”.

Originally this puppet was supposed to be  Witch Version 2. Only when she was completed did she reveal her real identity. She was virtually begging me to be allowed to become Ms SM.

To link it back to yesterday’s post: Is she living a lie?

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Categories Art, Hand Puppets, Life

Wooley head

September 2, 2012 //
2

I can not remember ever having been so void of thoughts as I am at the moment. All I can think of is what shall I cook for dinner to feed the troops and I desperately need to clean the house, it’s spring. But absolutely no thoughts beyond the chores. This sort of freaks me out.  Particularly as I normally don’t think about daily stuff at all, it just seems to happen on the fly. For a week now my head is packed tightly into cotton wool. I wonder when the cloud will lift.

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Categories Art, Photography

Crash landing

August 30, 2012 //
4

There comes a time, when one has to admit defeat:  It might come as a surprise, but I am not Super woman! :)

It’s strange how life goes in waves. When you are on a high, you seem to be invincible. Everything runs smoothly and is exciting. Then all of a sudden one area turns to shit, then another one and another. Before you know it you are in an avalanche and you can’t do anything about it. In slow motion you see your head approaching the concrete floor.

The beauty about getting older is that you know you will be getting up from the floor again. You only have to bide your time! Though it doesn’t make it any easier while you are on the floor, does it?

Ah, well, at the moment I am well below par, the stress of recent weeks has well and truly finished me off for now. But I have made some plans. The weekend after next I have an appointment with my puppets. I feel a lot of new characters coming on.

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Categories Art, Photography

What’s in a box?

August 20, 2012 //
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Two weeks ago I learned that I am a finalist in the Wallace Art Awards this year. It took a week for it to sink in, but now I am really savouring the moment. For a New Zealand artist it is not dissimilar to winning lotto.

They give you two and a half weeks to get the artwork to the exhibition space and I can assure you, you need every minute of it. My artwork is an installation made up of 30 individual pieces and this has to be packed in a way that prevents if from getting damaged in transport. Of course it has to be easily packed and unpacked as well as it might be included in a travelling exhibition.

The box ended up being an artwork in itself, but it is finally finished. Originally I had bought a bag of off-cut foam and I wanted to stuff everything in the empty box we had built to size. For a night I sat on the floor packing and unpacking the box, scratching my head and getting increasingly frustrated. Nobody would have been able to make sense of all the bits and pieces, if they indeed found everything hidden between the pieces of foam. Some of the parts are very small. So the choice was either to write a hundred page manual or continue on the design of the box to make it more accessible and tidy. Everyday there was a little addition to the box and finally after two weeks we are finished, just in time to send it off.

Does anybody ever have a deadline with some time to spare? Certainly not me.

So tonight I will be packing it again and this time it will be a breeze.

 

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Categories Art, Life, Photography

Sign of spring

August 12, 2012 //
2

I am sitting here before I have my breakfast trying to figure out what to write today. The sun is a pale disc behind a thick layer of clouds again, but at least one has the notion of its existence and… the rain has stopped. Last night it was pouring down again and I wondered if we will need to use the ark we have parked in our front yard some time soon. It’s not quite ready yet for the water though.

First I wanted to put up an image of a snowed-under barn in Germany, but then I thought over there it’s summer now and they don’t want to be reminded that they are slowly sliding towards the cold part of the year. It’s better to find a more inspiring image reminding me that next summer will come for certain.

So here is my little sign of spring I took last weekend. I think the little ones must have done something naughty: Papa Swan scratches his beak and Mama Swan looks at them very disapprovingly. (I just can’t stop interpreting animal expressions as human. Sorry!)

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Categories Art, Life, Photography

Winter blues

August 11, 2012 //
2

Oh, this winter is starting to get to me. It is raining, raining, raining. Alright, this is not quite true. In the morning when I make breakfast it looks like a really nice day, but by the time I’ve finished the clouds are back and it is raining again. The light is dull and grey.

I come from a cold winter country, with thick layers of snow, but I was never this cold in Germany. The houses there are well insulated. In New Zealand insulation is just starting to become more widespread. Old men walk down the road in the middle of winter in shorts and gum boots. Okay, the temperatures are generally above freezing point in Auckland, but they must be measuring it in wind-still corners. There is nothing between here and Antarctica and blasts from the South can freeze the proverbial off a brass monkey.

Thankfully the worst of winter lasts only a month or so. So it should be over soon. My magnolia tree already has buds, the first sign of spring. Hurrah.

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Categories Art, Life, Photography

Feeling of smallness

August 2, 2012 //
0

The last image was about feeling small and unimportant, in the sense of having absolutely no impact on the big wide world – of being incapable of making an impression. This smallness of being is the connection to today’s photograph.

In the light of a beautiful sunset the feeling of smallness is awe!

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Categories Art, Life, Photography
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