Magical Animals

Kiki Smith

Watercolour, Aquatint, etching 

2000

This is an illustration upon the theme of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The abundance of animals and winged creatures and the originality of their depiction is captivating. The way they seem to crawl through the water in the direction Alice. This creates a strong sense of direction, narrative and motion as if soon they will crawl their way out of the picture! The animals have been drawn in a way that produces a scratchy appearance indicative of experimental mark making. Each creature is highly stylised, drawn with artistic license producing a set of novel and strange creatures. The animals seem puppet like as if attached to strings, they seem to float in the water (particularly Alice) in a theatrical way each with a persona and character. I love this work, its beautiful, in my embroidered wall hanging (current project) I want to have lots of creatures, but selectively chosen for their magical woodland appeal! 

Feathers for Birds

This is a projection of feathers that I made a few years ago that displayed the different types of feathers I had found! Birds are multifarious and I need some ideas for a woodland scene I am embroidering. There are plenty to chose from but its making the right selection! I have so far a large tawny owl and some drawings for animals but need some birds to inhabit a large Oak tree made of corduroy fabric! I think I might go for a walk and see what lingers in old hollow Oaks!...

Have you ever seen a evil ginger bread man!

Inspiration from Liberty

For Christmas my parents gave me a Singer sewing machine! I have never had my own before and now the possibilities of projects are endless. I am going to start off small with making cushions and then move to altering clothes (some of my finds that are not the right size) from the charity and finally (once I have got the hang of the machine) quilting! I am very excited but need to pace myself but Liberty once had a display of quilts - I will look at this for inspiration! :)

Have you ever seen a Swan lay an egg!?

At a beautiful place called Roath Park in Cardiff I saw a swan lay an egg! Crazy stuff but rather beautiful and like magic! This is the photograph to remind me...planet earth is special and I am glad only the queen can eat these birds (i doubt she ever has)!

Vegan Treats at "BoroughMarket" and "Food for thought!"

As a Vegan I am always on the look out for treats and eye candy that also appeals to my belly! I love veggie restaurants and markets that cater for us! Borough Market (near Tate Modern) and Food for thought! in covent garden are brilliant places I am a regular at! these are some of the wonderful things I have made and bought!

A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me!

This song is wonderful and intelligent - if only the torries understood songs like this! Hope for the advent of appreciation for meaningful and beautiful music, a day when songs like this gain prestige and accolade from an even larger audience!

I took part in the Student protests last year and continue to partake in events that oppose cuts in education. We all must be given the same amount of time and opportunity as human beings to develop our selves and if that means letting the land lay fallow in order to produce a greater harvest in years to come then so be it! Why are we forced to rush! Many have felt pressured to go to Uni before the fee rise and quite simply thats not what education is about! But if you don't rush you will get left behind? So it's either face high fees or not go at all, rather than be stuck with tuition fee's of £27,000 (thats not including the student loan). Education is about learning how to be a better person it is as essential as food and water! We do not live in a democracy if people are systematically excluded from education because they cannot afford to pay fee's, it's the stuff of fiction of dystopian novels like 1984, Fahrenheit 451...Now even the methods of expanding the mind is a worldwide commodity as opposed to equally accessible and attainable - shame on them!

Letters from home

I am very fortunate in that I have very many lovely people in my life and they always send me lovely things via Royal Mail! My mother, Charlie and others made Uni friends very jealous when they saw my pigeon hole at Uni always contained a little something if not a giant parcel from home! Often my mum would send me a box filled with sweeties, socks, jewellery, books - all sorts of things! They made the distance between us that bit smaller (and often my clothes that bit tighter). Here is just one of the letters I received from Charlie! (the front = address, back = house)

Embroidery

A fascination with thread started during my foundation course - it is just like drawing but instead of lead with thread! I am self-taught so if I can do it anyone can just get a hoop, cotton, needle and thread and get stitching! I love birds and started with some small woodland types - I don't even know what stitch I am doing so cannot really impart any knowledge on the tech side of things ... but like when I child picks up a pencil and then has develop hand/eye co-ordination i think its the same with sewing! Just have a go - yes of course their are experts out their but how much fun can they be having when they know it all ...

On the theme of places

I was leafing through the photo's on my computer and found an image of my work space in the studio of my art foundation. It was a little haven where I could be away with the fairies as much as I liked (sometimes until security kicked me out) it contained all my favourite things and pieces such as what I was working for current projects and previous. I drew on the wall a giant 'Tear Here' sign (something which always fascinates me on packets of things - sometimes a miniature pair of scissors accompanies it) which compartmentalized current and old work, never really worked ... oh atemporality!

You have to get a blog...

It was my dear friend Charlie-Rose who got me to finally make a blog. When people ask us how long we have been friends we can honestly say since birth... our mothers have been friends since they were 4 years old, the rest is history! No matter how crazy our lives get, Charlie is a constant in my life, we might not see each other for 6 months but as soon as we have seen each other it's as if no time has ever passed between us! So in that respect I would like to dedicate this blog to - atemporality - so no matter how much time has elapsed I will blog about it, as its never too late to say how wonderful something really is!

Christmas in the 'Diff

Whenever I come home there is always an air of excitement, for its an opportunity to see all the people and visit all the places i love (and miss) when in London. There is something about my little room in my mums house that is nest like and feels just like home :) when I am there my world slows down,  it's  calmer and peaceful than almost every other place I could be!

Zone 1 to 2

The second year of London life involved moving away from the much cherished Duchy halls to a lovely little Flat in North London. I now can see that this is when I actually started to appreciate London for all its craziness and intrigue. I now had to use public transport (i do like the tubes though they don't do much for the uncoordinated) and plan my days around the Uni library. But the relative silence and darkness of the suburbs means at the end the day I can rest and relax, as opposed to ear plugs and migraines experienced on the Strand.

The flat is rather higgledy-piggledy with rooms here there and on different levels (rather hobit hole esque) but I love it - Halls are for Hamsters and Houses/Flats are for humans!!!!

Halls on the Strand ... yes like monopoly

The first little place I had in London was my little room in Duchy House. It was about as central as you could get for this chilled out Cardiffian who had not even heard of Pret let alone lived above one. The night buses rattled my ancient (Victorian) window panes and the crazy antics on one of the busiest streets in the capital were the source of much amusement if not bemusement! The Lady of Shallot poster was given to me by a fellow art historian with the intents and purposes of protecting my modesty. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and you have to be 19 crazy and not precious about sleep to live on the Strand. If you can handle protests and parades, being next door to Uni (Somerset House) in central London wasn't bad ... 

Imaginary City

I live my life between two cities... London and Cardiff, cities that have different attributes yet both are wonderful places to live. In my mind however, these two cities collide to form a city with a geography of the best shops, food places and amenities. So from the off-set I want to highlight this entity, this fictitious place without a fixed locality, a place irrespective of distance and travel and finally the residual bond between my imagination and the real geography of my favourite places.

The problem arises when I am in London and realise that on my day off I want to go to ...oh wait .... thats in Cardiff :( and when I am suggesting places to meet friends in Cardiff and think of the perfect place ... but shit ... thats in London! Yet in my mind they were actually rather close! You can see the difficulty. So I have decided to blog about all my favourite things and places but from the comfort of the imaginary city of 'Londiff' where all the best places are just a tube/bus ride away. Kind of like nylon accept no synthetic materials please...