Watching paint dry...

Last year for my birthday I received a whole box of various art supplies, including an easel and a set of acrylic paint, which I never used before. I actually asked for that myself, inspired by a then recent trip to France, where every corner of the most distant mountain village was cramped with art (both good and bad). Then my upbringing (read perfectionism) took over and the box remained untouched for a year... I was absolutely sure my first attempts at drawing would be pathetic. 

It's been more then ten years since I finished art school and maybe just a little less, since I've done something better than wobbly sketching for design class. The eternal mantra of 'either do it well or don't even bother' has ruined many good moments of my life, caused so much procrastination, and canceled so many potentially great projects, I can't even begin to describe. 

But then, I started doing a bit more photography...and writing...and going to exhibitions to review. And I realised that perfectionism has very little place there. I took a few trips to the IMMA and thought - why they hell not? It's recession and everyone with nothing better to do seems to be an artist. Surely, I can contribute a bit more poop to the sea of bad art I've witnessed. Even stick people can be high art if you have a right concept and write a long paragraph using words like 'existentialism', 'gender' and 'self-reflection'. To hell with my art school past with demands of technique, realistic figures and complex colours. I've discovered the world of mark making, glossy magazine collages, and wacky installations. 

With all that sarcasm, I do think it's great to actually be able to let go, not expecting amazing results and not being afraid of harsh criticism (because Irish people are nice and don't say bad things). I won't carry my creations to a gallery but after a year of watching my paints dry in the box, it's just great to actually DO something. 

Yeah, it's not what I had in my head. It's wonky and kind of cheesy. Being a sucker for Gustav Klimt I even put (oh no) shiny golden copper on it. Sparkles! But I'm cutting myself some slack for trying the technique I’ve never learned after so many years of not drawing and for not writing a big post on how this picture is a self-reflection on my femininity in the discourse of modern existentialism. It's just a pretty girl with long hair (which is my other fetish after cello music :) 

Sketch

And here is a great video on Good Taste and why we think we suck at creative stuff:

http://www.boreme.com/posting.php?id=30383

On Cello – why look for a lover if you have it?

Le Violon d'Ingres by Man Ray, 1924

Cello. 

Ceh-ll-oh, with a deep O in the end dropping down from the soft L. Such a rounded and sensual word, like the instrument itself.

A few weeks ago, in my friend’s darkroom, while I watch him bathe a piece of light in his folded palms over the paper, in the vampirish red tint of the lamp, we discover that we both love cello music. He plays his friend’s CD, some instrumental Irish band. We sigh at the unexplainable and unspeakable attraction it has over us, more nodding in some kind of understanding then really talking about it.

I forget that episode. Until recently, while I wander the streets of Dublin in search of killed time and some books, in Tower Records (why do the Irish pronounce it like Tara records?), cello music finds me again. Music stores always play music after all. But this one creeps into my brain until I realise what instrument catches my ear. It’s another Irish band, 3epkano, with an album called At Land, as I find out later. Here is how my cello fetish suddenly begins.

Obsessions actually don’t start out of the blue. There is ground work done long before; it usually goes unnoticed, until one day life leads you to a moment, small things come together, memories, smells, dreams. It takes something trivial to trigger it and, here you go, it hits you like a…ehmm…cello?

I always thought percussion to be my favourite kind of instrument. Bellydance background and all that. I always liked drummers over guitarists and definitely over piano players. I still do. Drums resonate somewhere in the very core of your body and it’s the best way to learn pure dance rhythm. It’s primal, free, beating like a runner’s heart, a soundtrack to the beginning of life. Cello, however, is a completely different story.

It’s like a love affair at fifty. Like dating an older man who has seen life.

Or like a woman…

Cello is the most humanly shaped instrument. I’ve heard its sound is closest to human voice. No matter whether a woman or a man plays it, there’s nothing more sensual in the pose, the full embrace, the slightly tilted head, the closed eyes, the tender grip on the neck of the curvy polished wood. Why look for a lover if you have a cello?

I only heard live cello once, at a boring college quartet concert. But the shivering caress it gave me that day is like nothing else. Goosebumps isn’t really the word for it.

There is nothing simple about it, from the look to the sound it makes. It’s so sophisticated, twisted with the flow from caressing velvet to mournful hoarse whisper it suffocated and makes you claw at your heart for release. If my heart has strings I know what they sound like. I feel the hands pluck them, feel the bow slide across the core of my body somewhere close to spine and cause it to tremble like a hollow tree. All I can do is breathe out a silent moan for the music my body cannot express fully in movement, not in song.

Cello is like the first touch of the stranger’s body, emotional and never satisfying enough to sate fully. It’s like watching smoke twist and glide from a blown candle, how long before it’s gone? It’s torturous, tantalising, soothing, loving and killing.

In dancing, the best way to express the music is to let it flow through your body, become an instrument yourself, feel the musician ‘play’ as if on you, not echoing but ‘making’ music with your body. Let the ups and downs become moves, let the silence become your expressions, the rushing rhythm become your abandon.

With cello, I give up. I start and stop in the middle, embarrassed by perfection of this voice, louder then mine every will be, telling a story so ancient I can’t comprehend it. My awkward gestures are late, running after the twisting smoke of the music, never really gripping it.

I stop instead, eyes closed and let the cello take me into the darker places where I can myself become a curved polished hollow wood in the tight hug of a skilled musician. I can lean back and let two pale hands open my core and extract all that sombre sweetness I can’t myself express.

It’s late at night and as I breathe along the spaces between the sounds cello makes, I slip into a dreamless state of sleep.

Here are two beautiful tribal fusion dancers who express cello so well, even if in different ways. 

Mira Betz at Tribal Alchemy 2009

April Rose solo at 3rd Coast Tribal 2011

On a street of Dublin, a French bakery and photography

Moore street is like a different country plunged into the middle of Dublin. You turn from O'Connell street, with its nice shops, clean pavement and English speech into the wilderness of foreign everything - faces, tongues, smells and looks. Markets are open, streets smell of fish, people are black or asian, women are pretty and exotic, and the air is filled with a mixture of curry, baked bread and police sirens. Here, people actually look at you. I feel both in and out of place here with my oriental looks and western mentality. Funny, how quickly we forget what we look like to other people (irrespective of expensive phones, shoes and clothes).

This place is nothing like a French bakery you would imagine. It's more of a shop selling bread with some tables inside. It's warm here, the owner knows everyone and chats to everyone (female that is), the kitchen behind the window is open and smells travel in. Nothing of your clean normal restaurant. Through the window I see the whole bakery... Here is a guy decorating a cake with chocolate paste. He puts some of it in a cup and hands it to a girl with smiling dark eyes. She licks the spoon, happy, and stand next to him watching the work. It's a picture from a grandmother's kitchen. So informal, cosy, relaxed in that way bordering on familiarity. This is all a glimpse of real people living real life in a city of concrete, modern, unemotional Dublin.

photo found on
 http://knowfuture.wordpress.com/2007/08/17/dublin-street-art-involuntary-witness/

After looking at the photo exhibitions (both in galleries and on the streets), I'm shocked by one thing - there are almost no portraits there. Very few of children, some old men but no women - a typical subject. One photographer shoots nudes that look like dead naked bodies thrown into the landscape; tall, blond, cold and quite unemotionally asexual. Only one Spanish girl (later we discover we went to college together) has four photos that breathe some female life.

Maybe it is the weather. The sun doesn't shine here much after all, outside or inside.


(On a different note, here are the three photographers that really impressed me at the People's Photo Exhibition on the rails of St. Stephen's Green park)

http://lucialux.carbonmade.com/ - Lucia and her 'red ladies'

http://www.margaretmorrissey.com/gallery.html - Margaret Morrissey and her foggy landscapes

http://www.redbubble.com/people/ger208k/portfolio/recent - Gerard McGrath and his unforgettable birds

And since we are on the topic of photography (b/w too), this one video completely blew my mind...style, camerawork, song....

WOODKID - IRON