desire #1

So i've been chatting with some friends. They want to go to Japan at the end of the year. I lived in Japan for 6 months as a teenager and love it. I think to go back now would be a very very good thing to do. I just wish i could save! But if i keep watching movies like lost in translation (im in love the soundtrack which i aquired today)


and the idea that i'll be somewhere like this



then i think i could make it.

heres hoping.

i used to want to be a zoo keeper.

Up until i was 17 i wanted to be a zoo keeper. I even enrolled in a course to do it. But then i stopped. I'm not sure why, but it stopped being my passion. Art became my passion and is now my life. But i still love animals. They just look pretty now.















oh yeah... i love the jezabels

chilledroasted

It's been so beautiful lately. I love this time of the year. Every one's happy because of the Easter holidays, there are the bright blue big open skies of late april and the continual smell of roasted vegetables in the evening. There is a subtle nip of winter during the day and I've had to grab the extra blanket to sleep with at night. We've even had the fire crackling a couple of nights which is always a sign that happy nights by the fire are fast approaching.

I've spent the last couple of days in the city and I've been really loving it. Sydney has such a vibrant and happy feel sometimes. I still love coming home to the mountains and sitting outside looking at the bush sway while i have my breakfast, but I've really loved wandering around the city, just browsing through shops, having good food and being around nice people.

I had a conversation with my teacher at uni who has really helped push my work to the next level. She said that she thinks i should do honours and that I'd do well at it. Which was a really big confidence boost. Just ANOTHER choice for me to pick from as i near the end of my degree.

I went on a spending splurge yesterday and got some new jeans, they are so pretty and make me happy. I also got some magazines and one of my new favorite Cd's, The Middle East's 'I Want That You Are Always Happy'. This song in particular is so damn chilled. Brings everything down to earth and settles all worries. I went for a walk this morning and one of the houses down the road has some horses and i was listening to this and went up and patted and talked with them. If horses liked music, they'd like this song.
Hope you enjoy.




(oh yeah, i also am seriously in love with the artist Tomas Saraceno)

perfection

The Mountain by Terje Sorgjerd (view it in HD full screen)

The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

Ginger+honey marinated tofu with capsicum, asparagus and pomegranate served with Quinoa.

I was bored so i made this dish for lunch. I've been trying to eat what's in season lately so I've put the pomegranate to good use in this quick lunch/dinner. I made this all up in my head and i enjoyed it. Feel free to tweak to your desires/seasonal produce. Hope you enjoy.

1. Brown onion.

2. At the same time boil the Quinoa. This is a grain which tastes like a cross of brown rice and cous cous. Bring the Quinoa to the boil and let simmer for 15 mins.

3. Cook the asparagus but make sure they still have a bit of bite to them

4. Cut the Pomegranate.

5. De-seed the pomegranate. Be careful, it stains.

6. Add chopped capsicum.

7. Add tofu. You could use any type of tofu but this stuff is amazing and has such intense flavours. You could also substitute the tofu for chicken or beef if you desire.


9. Add the pomegranate seeds.

10. Serve on top of the Quinoa with fresh lime and coriander/parsley/thai basil.

sway

Some more art works i've fallen in love with.
I love the way that each of the works has a level of fludity. The plant works move throughout the gallery space and throughout time. And the later Tomas Saraceno works float by as if oblivious to the audience. Beautiful works which i can feel inspiring me and my work.

Henrik Hakansson





tomas saraceno

botanics.

I've just come back from a walk through my backyard bush. I've been going down there every couple of weeks for the past 10 years, and today was the furthest I've gone.



Throughout the week, I had been checking out the website of a new development in the city's downtown. It's called 'central park'. You can check the website out here. There were some really interesting features about the place, but the one which interested me the most is the hanging/vertical gardens which is a collaboration between Jean Nouvel and French artist and botanist Patrick Blanc.

This is what the proposed gardens will look like






and here are some other beautiful vertical gardens I've found on the net






This stuff is really getting me into landscape and architectural design.

Sumptuos Saturday Selections

So, i just got the new Seekae album. It's absolute bliss. It's so calming and chilled and makes me so happy.

This is my favorite song from the album at the moment.



If you enjoy that, check our their http://www.myspace.com/seekaemusic

Here's some other cool things.

Some beautiful photographs by Alexandre Duret.







Nail art by Marcus Levine.

blah blah nice things blah.

I've been a bit busy of late, hence the limited blogging. I've been getting back into art making and it's taking up some of my time. That and the computer played up so it had to go to the shop.

I went to a art opening last night and had a great time. Then this morning, before uni I (stupidly) went for a stroll through the QVB. Let me just say that even though I had NO intention of buying ANYTHING i still managed to walk out with 4 shirts and 2 DVDs and no money left. It's a good thing that I don't have uni next week, because I couldn't even afford the train trip there! But I stand by my love of beautiful things and argue that I NEEDED two of Kevin McCloud's architecture DVDs



and I also NEEDED this shirt, which I changed into straight away.




But aside from wearing the nice clothes and knowing that I'll have something nice to come home to watch, I also had a very 'nice' vibe about the day. It was a beautiful autumn day and I had an enjoyable art theory class and had a very nice train trip home reading a biography about John Muir. He was a 18th century naturalist/conservationist who was a major part in initiating massive conservation for America's wilderness. The biography is mainly extracts from his journals and public writings, and the way that he writes is so beautiful and heartfelt that it just sings untainted natural happiness.



And just to make the day so very very 'nice' when i wasn't reading on the train, I was staring at the clouds listening to this beautiful piece of music from an incredibly beautiful film - A Single Man.

the soundtrack

It seems an odd genre to enjoy, but I've found a great respect for film soundtracks. The relationship between image and soundtrack is so unbelievably crucial to a film's success.



All three of these films films (all from roughly the same time period - '86 for The Mission, '85 for Out of Africa and '93 for The Piano) are all successful stories, but their soundtrack stands out as an incredible monument created for the cinematic composer.



They might not be as in-your-face as more contemporary films, but it is their subtly and consistent themes which make them powerful. I've noticed that a lot of films these days may have a 'theme' song, but it isn't used throughout the film. Mostly the soundtracks of today are a mash of loud electronically produced noises. However, that being said, there are some brilliant modern film soundtracks.



The brilliance of these 3 movies and songs is their themes have the ability to get tweaked in different ways to suit the situation of the film. ANYWAY!!! I'll stop my rambling. You might not enjoy them, and that's fine, but I just felt like sharing.

Touchwood

Trust the Japanese to come up with something this cool.



Here's the original version of the song the ball makes if you're wondering.

a cacophony of [insert noun/verb]

I think I need to shake things up. I'm feeling stale and like I'm stuck in a rut. I think, after I finish uni this year, I'm going to really step outside my comfort zone. Today, however, I realised how unbelievably crucial music is to my life. I woke up today way too early to say good-bye to my brother who's going to Canada for 6 weeks. I then tossed and turned in bed till i finally fell back asleep. This was the beginning of my super-annoying-feeling-in-stomach day. I tried to find something to listen to on the way to uni but couldn't find ANYTHING! I have 9302 songs on my ipod which is 1217 albums and 1016 artists. Of all of that music, there was nothing to match my mood. Anyway, you probably don't care about this but I feel it helpful to myself to rant.

I haven't really been on the net much lately so I'm a bit out of touch with inspirations and such. But here's some art, and music I've been surrounding myself with in attempt to lighten, and figure out, my mood.

Janet Laurence is an artist I'm falling in love with. Here's some of my favorites of hers.







Of all of my music the one genre i found comfort in today was African blues and roots. In particular this one song always makes me calm and happy.


I'm also finding some calmness in Trentemoller. I saw them/him live at Peat's Ridge festival over New Years and bought the Cd's as soon as i got back. Here's one of my favorites to chill out to.



I've also re-fallen back in love with Hubble's space photographs.

feeling limitless.

I went to Uni today. Had a good class. Then it was 1pm. In the city. With nothing planned for the afternoon or evening. It was a brilliant realisation. There is nothing like the feeling of having no commitments. I was in a happy mood and was feeling confident.

My friend from Uni, Lina, said she wanted to see the movie Limitless (trailer below). We lazily made our way to the movies and because Lina used to work there we got free tickets. The movie was brilliant! Loved it! It was just what i was feeling. Eddie (played by Bradley Cooper) is offered a pill by a incredibly confident ex-brother-in-law. The basis of the pill (and the movie) is that we only use 20% of our brains; this pill connects the Brain's circuits too 100% functionality. It is a brilliant idea and it's scary to think that this could well be possible with today's pharmaceutical advancements. There are some extraordinary cinematic tricks director Neil Burger uses to show the power of the drug. Of course, as in any Hollywood made film, there are people after the main character. Naturally of course, who wouldn't be after a drug which enables the user to remember EVERYTHING that they've seen, heard or experienced and use it in the dilemma at hand!!




This film is very hard to fault and I found the chic, luxuriant lifestyle enviable. It was like a GQ magazine in cinema form. I noticed some subtle allusions to power obsessed artists (the Rothko paintings in particular). These brought me to the conclusion of a focused director who is obsessed with detail. Ironic, considering the films drug brings about an unnatural level of focus an attention (a subtle film technique perhaps?).
I found myself walking the streets after coming out of this movie with a strange amount of confidence. The city looked enticing and vibrant. I could see detail everywhere. Lina and I then went to Chinatown and had some beautiful Japanese food. We wandered around Kinokuniya bookshop and i drooled over the delectable architecture books, the landscape design books, the art books and found myself drifting from Lina and spent over a hour looking through the entire shop. If it wasn't for her needing to go to work and my acknowledgement that the sun was setting, I could have stayed there all night.

Anyway, I found a calm spot on the train ride home where I could loose myself in my current book, Seven Ancient Wonders by Matthew Reilly. It's pretty bad but enjoyable. Far fetched from the first page, the book is an Indiana Jones-Ancient-Myths-of-end-of-the-world-prophecy-lost-for-2000years-until now kinda book. Trashy but good to space out too.

I was listening to was some random chilout/lounge CD i found from the public library. This is a remix of Bob Marley's Classic Sun is Shining by ReUnited. Enjoy.