taking shape

thank goodness husband's shoulder is feeling better

part of the 10-year plan for the country house is a new and improved (yes, better than the blue room) garden structure in the backyard. for one, the backyard is much bigger than at the old place, so there's much more space to work with. and for another, we learned so much from our last project that we are even clearer now as to what we want and how we want it to look. so down at the bottom of the garden, we're planning a garden house. it will be a long, rather narrow structure, a bit like something diarmuid gavin once made.

bad nighttime picture of inspiring page from diarmuid gavin's outer spaces book.
because i can't wait for proper light.

the building will be made of recycled materials (husband didn't tear down that house up in vildbjerg for nothing) and will serve as a quay of sorts. up to the quay, we are creating a ship made of a hedge. in the midst of it is a picturesque old apple tree and we will also place the grill table we had made. the grill table will have a mast in the middle so that it can be turned to avoid that pesky old smoke in the eyes.

the shape of the ship (ship shape?)
grill table frame is in the middle w/a plastic swimming pool draped over it.
nothing was tidied for the sake of this photo.

last sunday, we tilled up the form of the ship and planted a whole lot of little baby beech trees to begin the hedge. we hadn't gathered quite enough on our trip to the forest, so we're not done, but we got a good start. and it was a lovely afternoon.

the stern of the beech hedge ship

so many sources of inspiration for this...viking ships, viking excavations, my time in the maritime world, garden programs, nature, thinking about the way in which we live in our surroundings and ways of coping with the reality of our rather unpredictable weather. the structure itself will be a chance for husband to practice various old building techniques and a chance to use recycled materials that have loads of soul. strangely, tho' it's not a structure that we NEED, it may be one of the first things completed in this project. but on the other hand, who is to say one doesn't need a retreat and a place to get away from it all. and it will definitely be that.

and i must find a way to incorporate this:

oh how i love this bit of rusty metal.
and how it reminds me somehow of what's important. and substantial. and of what's not.

stay tuned for updates...

and we're back

new york city burning

after a long summer hiatus, kristina and i are back on across ø/öresund, sharing creativity across the sound separating denmark and sweden. we'll be posting highlights from the first roll from our summer film swap. i exposed a roll of expired slide film (oops, those pretenses again) in south dakota (or should i say sabin took most of the photos one evening when we had a bonfire) and then sent the roll to kristina in new york city. then kristina got it cross processed and here is the first of the results.

while of course the entire roll doesn't turn out as well as you might hope, there are some very cool and unexpected effects. kristina's camera rolled the film differently, so not only are they double exposures, but also half frames on top of my originals. i think it's especially effective on this shot of city streets.

be sure to stop by across ø/öresund in the next few days to see more. and do check out the interviews we did of one another. kristina's interview of me and mine of her.

we've got more fun planned over there, so keep checking it out. we'll definitely be getting up to photo fun at blog camp berlin in 10 days.

slipping through my fingers

what is it about mama mia! that just makes you want to cry...i recall the first time i saw it, on a KLM flight to manila. i was happily the only one awake to see me blubbering like a baby. i can't find a proper version of the video on youtube, but here's the best i could find....and tho' sabin is only 9, it still brings tears to my eyes...



and while i'm not sentimental and generally despise sentimentality, how do you hold onto the goodness of right now, treasure it and memorize it and not let it slip through your fingers? if you know how, do tell me...

an interview with maria-thérèse of afiori

i stumbled onto maria-thérèse's etsy shop - afiori - long ago. from there, i was led to her blog (i love how she does all of her posts in both english and swedish). we've been exchanging comments and mails and facebook updates for sometime now and she feels like an old friend, even tho' we've never met in person. i sent her interview questions a few weeks ago and now, at last, i have her answers. i find them to be completely worth the wait and i hope you will too...(the pictures are all hers and many of them are available as different products in her etsy shop)

1. sometimes living a creative life (and not succumbing to mind-numbing corporate hell) is difficult, how do you make it work?

I have always been very creative. It's like this force inside me which can't be stopped. While I've never been in corporate hell, I did go to school and university for many years and also tried to work as a teacher, but I would incorporate creativity in my work and then create things for myself and for friends at night. If you are talking money, I don't find it a lot more difficult being a full-time artist than being the youngest and last employed substitute teacher in times of financial crisis. Starting www.afiori.com is one of the best things I've ever done for myself.

2. what do you do to relax when you get stressed out?

Nothing. I honestly don't know how to relax but I know I have to learn. One thing that helps is to watch action movies. The more explosions, the better. I suppose that when I see someone else being in an extremely stressful situation with explosions and car chases, I feel a little bit relaxed in comparison. Gosh, this sounds sad. Seriously, if someone could teach me how to relax I'd appreciate it.

3. you make the most fantastic photographic collages without using photoshop, can you share a little bit of your secret?

Why thank you! Well, photography is one thing and collage is another. I have always enjoyed working with my hands and with paper. To create this collage, Find Your Wings, I printed out a photograph I had taken of some pink flowers. I painted on the photograph using acrylics, scraped off the paint, printed out a vintage image as a transparency, hand coloured it a bit and stuck it to the paint, added real leaves, painted some more, scraped off paint and scanned it all in when it was finished. Many of my collages are from my own art journals and then I use them as covers for the journals I sell.

When it comes to photography, I had my own darkroom as a child and learnt traditional darkroom techniques, so I tend to think in terms of negatives instead of layers and I prefer the photography part – observing the light, the shadows and the vantage point – to doing too many things afterwards on the computer. There are so many creative ways to take photographs. My main reason for not getting Photoshop was that it's really expensive but now I feel that I'm a bit against it, simply because I wouldn't feel as creative if a programme helped me a lot. I am not saying that Photoshop is bad or that others shouldn't be using it, not at all, but I think it may be easy to become too reliant on Photoshop.

I do use other programmes to alter or merge photographs but very simple – and free - ones. One came with my scanner..! I also like to print out photographs like I said above and physically do things to them.

4. what's your ultimate dream camera (and money is no object)?

It would take huge photographs without noise and it would have an extremely flexible lense. It would be smaller and lighter than the camera I'm using now (which is supposed to be one of the world's smallest digital SLR:s but it's still heavy to carry and handle all day for two small hands); it would focus extremely quickly in auto mode and also never break. Oh, and it would have some sort of shell so you could change the colour of the camera. Maybe it could have wings as well and just fly next to me and at night we could watch violent movies together.

5. where is your favorite vacation destination?

Rome, London, Florence, Paris, a beach in France, my mum's house and having waffles outside my aunt's house on a hill.

6. explain the true meaning of fika.

Fika is a wonderful thing. Here in Sweden, you can ask a friend if they want to go and fika with you. It means you'll meet at a café, have something to drink and a piece of cake, cookies, something sweet to go with the drink and you'll talk and hang out for a while. You can also fika on your own. Fika is both a noun and a verb: fika is the things you are eating and drinking and also the word for what you are doing. Fika is a very important social thing and if someone comes to your house and you don't offer them fika they will think you are a little bit crazy or at least very rude.

7. what's your favorite part about being your own boss?

The world makes more sense to me now. I never really understood why someone else should be telling me what to do anyway.

8. what's hardest about being your own boss?

Let me tell you – my boss is crazy! She makes me work all the time without any vacation. Well, she let me go to Paris a while back but demanded I take nine hundred photographs and talk to galleries while I was there. Sure, she takes me out to fika sometimes and I can sleep until ten in the morning, but she expects me to do everything, even the bookkeeping. Still, I have to say I really like my job.

9. are you a night person or a morning person?

Night.

10. you've been doing a lot of photoshoots lately...is it fun to branch out into portraits or a bit scary?

Can you keep a secret? afiori is also branching out into photo jewellery! There will also be calendars very soon. I've actually done a lot of portrait photography before and think it's a lot of fun, but for some reason didn't think to include it in my business until recently when a bride-to-be asked if I could photograph a wedding. I am only scared of forests filled with murderers and bears. When it comes to work and creativity, I am fearless.

* * *

thank you, maria-thérèse!

this was totally worth waiting for!

so much inspiration here.

you make me want to embrace my creative self and just trust and believe in her.

lighter than air

works by danish artist jane balsgaard

not to go all new agey here, because that's really not me, but i do hereby resolve to have a light, bright week, in which i rise above all the trouble and strife and the chaos (at least the chaos that's not of my own creation). lighter than air i tell you. i'm going to be lighter than air.  i can feel it. and i wish the same for you, where ever you find yourself...

deadly beauty

today was the first time i saw one of these poisonous little numbers in person. it's an amanita muscaria (rød flysvampe in danish). they're popular (fake ones, of course) as a christmas decoration here in denmark. they're deadly charming in their packaging - with pretty white dots on a bright red top - they look a bit like candy. however, we knew better and didn't even touch them, except with the camera lens.

it was, in every way, a glorious weekend - the weather was perfect - still, sunny, crisp. we played cards, walked in the woods, had a great lunch at a café overlooking sailboats in a marina, spent time with artists and laughed and drank sangria and wine with good friends. and all of the frustrations and disappointments of last week faded away into the distance. if they return, i'll have to just stir up a batch of these babies and serve them up.

you can see their shadows wandering off somewhere

i always said, give me habermas and hegel. i want benjamin and kant and nietzsche. and marx, i can't get enough of him.  you can keep camus and voltaire and rousseau and especially derrida (who could understand him anyway?). but now, i'm not so sure...i think i missed something in all that reading. some window onto a special kind of logic. one that would help me greatly right now.

but i'm not going to think about that anymore. i'm just going to have a great weekend. riding off into the sunset.

maybe all the philosopher i need is fastball...

they made up their minds and they started packin'

they left before the sun came up that day.

an exit to eternal summer slackin'

but where were they goin'

without ever knowin' the way....