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A family friend?

April 11, 2012 //
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Last night a friend told me a story about a “family friend”. I can’t remember the actual story, but I suddenly wondered what constitutes a family friend.

I always understood it as someone who knows Mum, Dad, the kids and maybe Granny as well, basically some one who is accepted into the the closer family circle. However last night it occured to me that a family friend might be someone nobody takes responsibility for – and while he is always around, nobody can recall how he actually became a friend. So, it is not really a friend of mum’s or a mate of dad’s, or Ganny’s for that matter. Of course kids call anyone their friend…

With this new interpretation,  I will call Socialite a family friend.

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Categories Art, craft, Hand Puppets

Being watched

April 10, 2012 //
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This is one of my more obscure works.

I am not good at taking images of people. I still believe, I am stealing something from them, particularly if they are not aware of the image being taken. And if they know, I am always in a hurry. When I go out to take images I usually come home with a good collection of tree photos. They have a soul as well, but they stand still.

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Categories Art, Photography

Socialite

April 10, 2012 //
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This character was originally called Vanity, but I have renamed her Socialite.

In conversation, she is the one constantly looking around to see whether there is a more important person in sight. If somebody shows up on the horizon, she drops you like a hot potato.  On the other hand, she is very worried about what other people might think of her. As an indication of this trait the back of her head shows other people’s faces.

Working on this puppet, and of course thinking of the upcoming book launch, I had an epiphany about what irks me with “social networks”. It is the terminology… For me social networks it is a contradiction in terms.

Network has a very strong business connotation. This might be my second language interpretation here, but any marketing 101 book tells you, you must network to be successful. I went to a business network meeting once, to see what it is all about. In my opinion it was the saddest affair I have ever been to. The people had their intentions plastered all over their foreheads and yes, fair enough, that was the purpose of the meeting. But I found it tremendously off-putting.

Therefore I resist using the word “network” in relation to my friends. In my opinion it excludes altruism, which I consider necessary for relaxed interaction between people.

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Categories Art, Book Launch, craft, Hand Puppets

Not beautiful

April 5, 2012 //
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Not a beautiful postcard

This was the first of my postcard series I did 5 years ago. The photograph of the wall of a partially demolished house triggered that project then. Postcards are pretty much a dying breed.

Thinking about it now, it is not too dissimilar to writing a blog. I sent one postcard every week and had to come up with an idea, print it and find some words to go with it. A bit of a slower pace though.

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Categories Art, Digital art, Photography

Forgot Detail

April 5, 2012 //
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Devil and Detail

Devil is into Detail

Got a bit side tracked lately – back to the Dedes.

There are a couple of puppets missing on the Cast page. Detail is one of them. I want to make good for this ommission now.

Hermit’s other friends pretend to love Detail, but be aware…. she is a difficult one. If you don’t pay her enough attention, it will be very obvious to the entire world. You of course, my friend, will be the last one to find out.

The other trait I dislike about Detail is her hunger for more and more information before she can make up her mind. Can she ever decide? She never seems to get all her facts together. Maybe Procrastinator would be her dream partner (but I haven’t started working on him yet).

She is of course a fantastic worker. Give her a job, and she will finish it brilliantly.

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Categories Art, Book Launch, Hand Puppets

Tradition

April 4, 2012 //
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sorbische Ostereier These are my mother’s ornamented Easter eggs. They have tradition in the part of Germany where she grew up. An area close to the Polish border in the Eastern part of the country… therefore very inaccessible before the Wall came down, and now very inaccessible for me, as I live on the other side of the world.

I have never seen Easter eggs as beautiful as these. Last year I finally had the chance to photograph them. For me they are laden with stories and emotions about a quiescent, but scary country.

Some people are still keeping up the tradition. I found this page about the craft of the Easter Eggs.

 

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Categories Art, Photography

Memory lane

April 4, 2012 //
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bottle prop A good friend of mine gave me this minature bottle as a prop for the puppet show at the book launch. Pig likes it’s tipple – now that sounds like an old lady, I should say it like it  is – Pig likes to booze!

It is quite funny, my friend is a New Zealander, but she bought this bottle a good thirty, fourty years ago on her OE. And it says on the side of the bottle Produce of Germany. She bought it at a time when I didn’t even know New Zealand existed. The alcohol has long evaporated out of the bottle through the unbroken seal. When we talked about the puppet show she immediately thought of the bottle as the right prop for Pig and digged it out. I wonder what kind of memories she has, when she looks at the bottle.

It is amazing what people keep as mementos. I have a box full “useless” stuff. I started to photograph the items, as each of them conjures up lost friends and time past. I am not lamenting the loss by any means, I just know that every person along my tracks has added to who I am now.

That is what I really wanted to say yesterday about the hammer: we look at the same thing, but we interpret it differently depending on our previous experiences. For me that is the reason why people can never see things quite the same way.

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Categories Art, Book Launch, Hand Puppets, Self-publishing

It’s a hammer

April 3, 2012 //
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Art contemplation is a little bit like a hammer. We know what it is, but what we make of it depends on how we use it. Destroy or create!

Two people look at the same image and can have a totally different experience.

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Categories Art, Photography

Modern Man

April 2, 2012 //
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Modern Man

This is one of my favourites. For me, there is so much symbolism in it and of course I know the person depicted. Therefore I don’t think this work can ever have the same meaning for anybody else. I believe the viewer will find their own meaning in it, hence I don’t like to explain…

However, with this image I will describe how I technically put things together.

The original title of the work is: “Kaiser, König, Bettelmann” (engl. “Emperor, King, Pauper”). Broadly speaking, my intention is to show that any person can be (or should be allowed to be) any of these characters at times. Hopefully they will be well balanced. For a wider audience I would call it “Modern Man”. Now I really mean MAN, not mankind.

In all three parts of the triptych I used the same four photographs to create the background. Those four images are symbolic on their own

1) a close-up of stone wall and wooden door with flaky paint
2) a window looking from the inside out
3) a frayed lace curtain
4) an iron observation tower in the woods of on an Eastern German island.

The four images were combined to support the person’s poses (strong, balanced and weak).

It all developed from the balanced person’s photograph, which was a simple holiday snapshot and the other two people shots were taken to match what I had started.

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Categories Art, Digital art, Photography

World on edge

March 29, 2012 //
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World on edge

Often, I take random pics while I am a passenger in a car, bus or train. I call this type photography  “drive by shooting.”

From those random pics, I started to create a series called  “World on edge“. But this project has slowed down as well since the puppets took over. Normally the first image in a series is totally random. But once I have created one I am happy with, I go out to take images to match the first one.

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Categories Art, Digital art, Photography
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