Category: Uncategorized

What a treat it is to go for total immersion into the deep, meaningful and often witty world of Katsushika Hokusai.  He’s Japan‘s most famous artist and the work he produced, a mere 250 years ago is as visually thrilling today it must have appeared when freshly printed.

The colours in the prints on show at the British Museum are rich and vibrant. Apparently the display will be rotated midway – it runs from 25 May to 13 August – so that none of the rare and fragile works are over exposed to light and none of them suffer from fading.

Of course the most iconic of the images on show is the Great Wave, that spectacular image of a mighty wave rising threateningly above three vulnerable open boats, bearing down on the hapless crew with talon-like terror.  It’s not just a brilliant piece of art, expertly created by an artist who understood the complex processes involved in wood block printing, but it’s a picture with a narrative and drama and great swell of movement.

 

What this magnificent show also reveals is the way Hokusai spent years attempting to capture the movement of the sea.  There are many early versions which contain the key to the masterpiece and also the artist’s fascination with the pure cone of Mount Fuji in the background. His extraordinary composition – use of perspective combined with flat planes and strong foreground images – influenced later painters, especially the Impressionists.

But Hokusai was an artist who clearly loved people.  I would liken him to Hogarth or Rembrandt, both artists who were fascinated by faces and the way emotion can be captured through expression and gesture.  Hokusai draws men, women and children, rich and poor, military and civilian with the same detail, fascination and good humour. His drawings are a joy to stare at, each delicate line revealing some new detail or surprise.  The picture below is of a particularly gruesome operation. I love the concentration on the face of the bespectacled surgeon who presses on with his treatment unbothered by the commotion of people around him, not least, the patient.

I recommend this show for the pure pleasure, good humour, spiritual richness and artistic excellence it offers.  A real treat indeed.

 

If you venture down to Clerkenwell today – 23rd May until 25th May – there will be plenty to see, do and marvel at.  This is the eighth year that Clerkenwell Design Week celebrates this ancient part of London (complete with Medieval street layout, burial ground, prisons, Session House,  churches and crypts) has come to life with a festival of design and invention.

Pink flags flutter on every street and doors of fascinating tucked away, and hidden buildings, as well as showrooms and architectural studios are flung open to welcome curious travellers into a world of design entrepreneurs and experiment. Even the nightclub, Fabric, is open by day and in full illumination, to show designers’ offerings.  The brave can venture into the House of Detention, a former underground prison, complete with small cells and metal doors (thankfully unlocked) where emerging designers show their wares.

At ground level there is much to see too with the Fair’s array of installations. Even the shortest wander around the winding streets – fabulously quiet and traffic free, despite being so close to the City – will ensure you come upon many of them.  I loved the Next Generation Design Pavilion, a glorious curvy wooden staircase/bridge which was designed by Scale Rule in collaboration with GCSE students from London schools.

 Order, by Aldworth James & Bond have found a new way of using Corian by slotting together panels which have the Order of St John motif digitally carved into it.

Double Vision celebrates pattern and form and is made from Hakwood flooring and wall tiles.

 

Up in Spa Fields is the entertaining  BuzziJungle which is pretty much a grown up climbing frame you can lounge in.

 

The Bolt celebrates handcrafted products which are made by Detroit-based manufacturer Shinola.

 

And if you start feeling a little foot sore you can hop into an electric Twizy which will whizz you to your next generation.

The build up is part of the fun. Knowing that something is going to appear in the papers is a huge thrill but it’s when you buy the Observer, open the magazine and actually SEE what has been done… that’s when you realise the enormous power of the media.

I was so lucky to have Papershades featured in the Observer Magazine‘s We Love pages on Sunday.  And the copy said all the right things too – the word is out there: lampshades don’t have to be boring, they can be art!  And there are Papershades workshops for anyone who wants to create an entirely unique paper lampshade.

This amazing publicity has resulted in a cascade of orders for my cheerful, floral Papershades.   Go forth, my paper creations and enjoy a new life in a new place.

I’ll shut up now.

 

I saw this play on press night and reviewed it for Carn’s Theatre Passion.

An absolutely charming musical with characters you really care about

If you’ve ever wondered what goes on in an author’s mind when a story is being written, the delightful new musical, Paper Hearts, gives you a glimpse.

Young Atticus Smith is a writer who is easily distracted from his work as a shop assistant in a chaotic bookstore by the lure of his typewriter and the fictional world he has created. As Atticus types, the characters appear to us, playing out their drama set during the Bolshevik revolution in Russia where love, loss, trust and betrayal are the emotions which fuel the story.

Paper Hearts, devised and written by Liam O’Rafferty, wowed audiences in Edinburgh during the 2016 Festival and the musical has been expanded by producer Denise Koch for its transfer to the Gatehouse Theatre in Highgate. The story unfolds at a cracking pace. We soon understand that Atticus, excellently played by Adam Small, is in an unsuccessful relationship with Alex, a sparky Sinead Wall, who also plays the lead heroine in the book he is writing.

His amiable boss, Norman, an expressive Matthew Atkins, drops the bombshell that the bookshop is going broke and he’s selling it to Literally Books, an online retailer which also happens to be owned by Atticus’s estranged father, the mercurial Roger.

To complicate the story, Atticus meets the feisty and literary Lilly Sprockett, played with panache by Gabriella Margulies, and falls in love with her over a kind of ‘bookathon’ – who can show off their knowledge of the most authors, books or characters – only to find that she is the new manager of the bookshop and has been having an affair with his father.

Director Tania Azevedo cleverly flips the scenes seamlessly from the contemporary love story to the fictional story as the revolutionary characters come to terms with their circumstances and the bookshop rom com gallops towards a satisfying resolution. You can’t help rooting for each set of characters with equal passion and concern.

All of the action is ably supported by an on-stage band, held tightly together by Daniel Jarvis, Musical Director, as the highly talented ensemble bass, cello, violin percussion and guitar appear as characters from the story and provide pacey and entertaining support for the contemporary players. The singing is excellent and the final number, Paper Hearts, is particularly strong and has been imaginatively choreographed by Lindsay McAllister.

‘To write a story is to give away your heart’, says Norman to Atticus. The able cast and team of Paper Hearts have given their hearts to this production and it is a joy to watch.

 

 

 

Immersive exhibitions seem to be all the rage but the V&A really do know how to put on a show and The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains is a cracker.  With the earphones on, you push through the heavy doors to this show and enter a world of psychedelia, alternative culture and amazing musical originality.

When I was young I didn’t really ‘get’ Pink Floyd. I think I was too distracted by the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel and the lure of pop music on the radio.  But clearly I was missing the evolution of highly conceptual and adventurous contemporary composition.

The new show at the V&A mingles exhibits of instruments with lyrics scrawled on paper, paintings, photographs, animation and artefacts from their sensational shows.  It’s 50 years since Pink Floyd gave their first ground-breaking concert at Queen Elizabeth Hall on the SouthBank.  As the show’s curator, Victoria Broackes, explained at the press preview, this band was not content with just standing on the stage and making music, they wanted to create an experience which combined music, theatre, design and performance.  I feel rather sorry I never got to experience any of these early shows.

The earphones know exactly where you are in the exhibition so it’s possible to listen to the constant soundtrack of their music and also the interviews.  I was fascinated to hear about the band’s ‘noodling’, the expression they used for their improvised music making.  This evolved through the imaginative and exploratory use of the new technology which was being developed at the time – synthesizers, filters, oscillators and using their instruments unconventionally, such as the  ‘backwards guitar’, to create futuristic sounds which came to define the 1970s.

I went into the show a curious spectator and emerged as a fully devoted Pink Floyd fan. The show is on until 1 October.

 

Last week’s Papershades workshop was both hugely enjoyable and very productive.  We had a mixture of intent and serendipity going on with the four designs of paper lampshade. Oh, and there was cake too, natch.

Imogen found geometric wallpaper to snip up and create a very pared down, cool design which works brilliantly as a lampshade – and matches her bedroom curtains.

Liz loves things to be accurate but, while channelling Matisse, sort of ‘let go’ and produced a very colourful and exciting design.

Lucy had no idea what she was going to make but combined all kinds of collage techniques in one template and produced a fabulous lampshade.

Lily wanted to make a lampshade which would go with a lamp stand she inherited from her grandmother. The lampshade needed to include pale green and cream but not be too literal. The result was a very original, decorative but cool lampshade design which works perfectly with the antique stand.

And we did indeed eat cake to fuel the three hour enterprise!

Chris Ofili has just unveiled his first tapestry – The Caged Bird’s Song – at the National Gallery. It’s on show in the Sunley Room until the end of August before it takes up the place it was commissioned for at the Clothworkers Company hall in the City of London.

It took nearly three years for the tapestry to be created by the expert weavers at Dovecot, the weaving studio in Edinburgh. They were challenged by Ofili to ‘weave water’.  And they have somehow, miraculously, conjured the effect of water in wool, translating a series of charming watercolour works into an entirely different medium but retaining the spirit of the original.  You can see where the pigment has puddled and darkened at the edges, there’s a glorious fluidity to the piece.

The tapestry is a triptych – one large piece flanked by two smaller ones. The central image conjures a feeling of luxurious romance as a couple relax by a pool with a waterfall tumbling down nearby and the horizon of the blue sea beyond.  A mysterious ‘cocktail waiter’ pours a green tincture into the woman’s glass and it bubbles up.

The tapestry is complemented by an exhibition of watercolour sketches showing the evolution of the work.  Visitors to the Sunley Room will feel entirely immersed in the work because the room has been entirely painted in monochrome images of mythical and contemporary ‘demigods’.  It’s a charming show.

What a joy it was to have Lucy and Davina as my latest Papershades ‘students’.  Both came with pretty good ideas of what they’d like to produce, and both wanted lamp shades for their bedrooms. So we looked at examples of wallpaper and curtains and got going.

Of course, the wonderful thing about a Papershades workshop is the element of serendipity.  You can be heading in one direction and then something catches your eye…. and your off on another route.  Well, both Lucy and Davina created the most amazing lampshades which will work brilliantly with the existing decor.  It was fun to see some birds snipped from wrapping paper appear in Lucy’s and Davina could not resist the allure of the retro fashion drawings which were incorporated into a variety of blue tissue and old wallpaper.  Gorgeous. Well done you two!  And there was Papershades CAKE, of course!

 

 

Take one photograph of glorious fields of tulips taken during a recent holiday in Amsterdam, come to a Papershades workshop and… yes, the result is a fabulous paper lampshade which captures a very special experience.

It’s wonderful when my ‘students’ come with an idea in mind, and so rewarding to see the idea brought to life.  After a bit of background, some gentle instruction and a good rummage through my box of colourful tissue paper there was no stopping Liz. She snipped up greens, blues and yellows for the leaves and selected zingy reds, pinks and purples for the tulips.  Once the template was finished I printed the design onto five sheets of Papershades paper and – dee dah – an amazing lampshade was produced!

 

Diana has a background in interior design and loved flipping through the old wallpaper sample books which Sally Bourne Interiors kindly save up for me.  She snipped her way through several designs, combining them very cleverly within the Papershades template.  The result was a symphony in blue!

Catherine was very drawn to the geometric designs of Persian carpets and ancient wallhangings which she cut out from Hali magazine.  The template resembled the look of Moroccan bazaar with a wonderful blending of colours.

Three women produced three such different designs but they all reflected their personality in some way.  I find it so fascinating to watch the way ideas find form and the results, when they are printed and constructed into Papershades, are just so satisfying.  To come to a Papershades workshop please check out the website, get in touch and fix a date. I look forward to seeing you – there will be cake!