Friday, 27 November 2009

More from my eclectic collection - Lovely, lovely women

Another from my collection- a real 8x10 photo of Julie Christie Sept 1968 - photographer likely Ron Galella* / during the making of the film, In Search of Gregory  - 1969 (do you suppose that's a real cross-your-heart-bra?)


Lovely Julie Christie... Memorable films with Julie Christie playing excellent roles in that I will always watch again: Farenheit 451, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Go-Between & The Return of the Soldier.  I am not discounting other performances but these are the ones I will always see again.

And while I researched the origins of my real (phowr) photo, I was playing some of my small collection of Francoise Hardy 1960s picture cover EPs & 45s like this gem from the same year as the the JC film, 1969:



To my delight, she does a French version of Leonard Cohen's Suzanne on this record and this is what I'm listening to at the moment:
Comment Te Dire Adieu (love those 3 dancers at the end)

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*yes it's that Ron Galella the pioneer of paparazzo, famous for losing his teeth to Marlon Brando's knuckles & having his car tyres slashed by Elvis Presley's bodyguards.  I did not know anything about the Julie Christie photo when I originally bought it - it had no information with it.   (I can only assume Galella was allowed on film sets at one time before he began following people (my pic is from 1968 & he bothered Brando in 1973)

Wednesday, 25 November 2009

Grimm Days










acrylic paint (except for nun shot - digital eraser) cut & paste - once was a little Grimms Fairy Tales Book.  bits from: National Geographic 1953 (boy & guard & dentures), women's weekly 1950s (hungry bird), internet (dildo), unknown (bubbleman), holy card (nun), Grimm's Fairy Tales (script)
(beavis and butt-head sentiments disguised as art - I may need advice from Daria)

Monday, 23 November 2009

I'm not even an Austin fan but I found this fun just the same - now you have to do the quiz

I got sucked in and did one of the quiz thingies but this one flows on with the book theme below - minus the distended belly commentary - and naturally I would not have put this link here unless I scored Elizabeth Bennet.  I suspect a lot of people end up with her as she's the most modern of Jane Austins gels... But still, hah hah, I scored Elizabeth


I am Elizabeth Bennet!

here's where you go to play the quiz

revisited and in another mood Feb 2011 and I end up being:



Take the Quiz here!

Sunday, 22 November 2009

Read any good books lately?




Not today - the temperature is sitting somewhere around 41C (that's 106F) and in Sydney, that feels like oh, 45. We washed 3 loads of clothes, hung them out and brought them back in a few minutes later - well, that's and exaggeration but you may know what I mean.


So, relaxing and reading a book? I don't think so. Anyway I can't drip all over a book today because I'm currently (still) reading the Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor and if I finish it too quickly, there won't be anymore and the writing is just too good not to savour.



Photograph: When they closed Rozelle Mental Hospital, 1000s of old medical books were taken away to be pulped. Lomo fisheye camera. April 2008

I opened one of those books  at random - here's the result (lovely!) oh and that date - it's 1905, not 2005!:

Thursday, 19 November 2009

I killed Sally

Well, maybe it wasn't Sally - Sally Slug (pronounced Ssthally Ssthhlug with lots of lisping spit please)- but likely one of her relatives, offspring, neighbours - slugs who would potter about our shower & get fat on mould but I haven't seen any for weeks, months even.  That is likely due to the nasty stuff I use to clean the shower & bathtub with - Sally had been a bit slack & too stingy to employ others so I had to do the cleaning.
Slugs in Sydney grow big and the Sally variety, Limax Flavus (clever, hey - I looked it up) is introduced and a particular biggy, growing up to 10cm long - gross to look at too, all sssthloppy and sssthlimy


like this one but way bigger and lots more slimy (photo from Wikimedia under GNU Free Documentation Licence, which I tweaked a little)
So, it was 2am (I'd been sort of working late as the builders next door can't use circular saws at 2am... but for how long!) and I'm tired, about to brush teeth and, in my favourite shoes ever (10 years old and still going) - not only do I step on an unseen slug but I slip about on it a while.  Stepping on a slug has a feeling about it like nothing else.  For one, they are quite solid and two, to propel themselves along, they use volumes of mucus that I suspect goes into overdrive production upon realising imminent death, in this case while death is taking place.
I figured the poor old slug had just come in under the back door to find a cool respite in one of our tree root bound drains after anticipating the heat wave coming this week .
At least death took place on tiles but it still took an effort to clean up and I ended up squirting the bottom of my shoe with carpet cleaner as Sally mucus would not rinse off.

The floor resembled the remainder of a visit from Warrant Officer Ripley's friend, Alien
come on Sigourney-Ripley, slugs can be nice
(An hour later and I'm all over the place reading about director Ridley Scott & the casting of the 1979 film, Alien and looking for a photo of the Alien extending her jaws dripping lots of mucus - and that's why blog writing takes so long!)
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Years ago we had a slug plague in our lounge room in a house we lived in; in Erskineville (I should mention our eventually mouldy house in Erskineville).  I told AH that salt kills slugs.  So thinking, like fly spray on a fly, this would quickly eliminate the slugs, she sprinkled salt over about 6 large slugs on the carpet just before going bed.  I did not say how the salt would kill them and the resulting mess, just that it did.  Being a real city kid, they didn't have a lot of suburban bugs, slugs and things to poke sticks at in her part of Berlin growing up, AH had no idea what we would wake to the next day.  The stains are probably still there and the bigoted landlord is probably still ripping off his tenants.




(I stole this photo online from a guy in Wales who keeps many varied and often exotic slugs & snails as pets and posts them on a favourite pets website)

Monday, 2 November 2009

Books unbound

A few months I began mucking around with an old German language dressmaking book - painting over a bit, pulling out a page here & there, wanting to but not feeling collage inspired.
A couple of weeks ago I read of a group show in the US called Altered States where artists get hold of a book, any book & make their own alterations.
A favourite illistrative artist, Shannon Freshwater  was included in this show and I got totally inspired. (when you click on her link scroll down her October 2009 blog to view her book alterations and then hit that arrow button & come back to me)
Sadly, as I've found out in the past, I can't draw for shit (probably why I really like artists who can!).
I retrieved a little UK printing of Grimm's Fairy Tales out from under the desk where I'd kept it for something - to cut up initially rather than stick things into.  I remembered a small pile dated photography magazines destined for the recycle bin & began cutting.
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1. Bits On The Cutting Board #1-
(currently reading Joe Orton's "Head to Toe" a trippy story of parasites on a giant & other hallucinations  - not sure if it shows in the collages.. but what stimulations don't show? - next on the nocturnal reading list is Flannery O'Connor's complete stories - Southern US gothic with splashings of Catholicism)




2. More Bits On The Cutting Board #2
(had a little read of "Teach Yourself Ventriloquism" published 1917 before wondering what I'd get for it on Ebay - may hang on to it and practice putting words in other people's mouths) 







3. In the book - a city streetscape





4. In the book "The Waggish Musician" -
best refer back to reading Joe Orton... but who'd have thought how useful Judy Garland's hand on a microphone could be.  Is Judy worried?  See if you can find her on the cutting board...


I had a chat about my happy scissor distraction with artist Megan Yeo who has suggested we get a group show going for next year - good O, how fun (love to see what Meggs has in mind!) but why did I pick a book with so many pages in it!!!

Got to go,I've just found some old National Geographics - including the 1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II - includes men in fancy red outfits & little children in their best coats - goody.

nice fly

Hover Flies are about - they are a nice little fly that kills evil aphids and flit about the garden being happy sunny little hovery things.
but how long do they mate for???
this pair was out the front as I waved off AH just now... I watched them a while, chatted, pointed them out,  went inside, looked for the little point & shoot camera, came back out the front & they were still there...

so here they are - fucking little flies:

and what a good time they had!
the sun has set but what's the bet they're still out there...