I just want to take a moment out to say...

I love you Stephanie, and I'm so proud of you and everything you have done . I believe in you, I know that you are, and will continue to be, great. You're the light of my life, the apple of my eye, and I will be by your side, through thick and thin, now and always. x

Wonderful Ribcage with Heart Valentine card from Less than Three's Etsy store.

Emma Hack Body Painting

Emma's website here.

Robert Schmid

"The paintings are acrylic on paper. They describe the processing of information from memory, sight, and sound in a non linear composition."

Robert Schmid

I spotted these stunning paintings at the wonderful Dear Ada.

Eric Staller - Light Drawings

In the late 70's I created photographs: long time-exposures done at night in New York City.
While the camera was positioned on a tripod, with the lens opened for several minutes, I moved through urban spaces with a variety of light sources. These were exhibited and published world-wide. Cibachrome prints of these images are available through me.

My second favourite thing, next to books, is lighting. I have been working for a lighting design company for five months now. I always loved lighting design, and I had a funny feeling that I would end up working in the field. Now that I am, I am totally enthralled. My new series of paintings will be simple studies of lights. Hopefully I will get round to starting on them soon. I will put some of the drawings in my Etsy store soon.

J Carpenter

I love these emboridery and text pieces by J Carpenter. Have a nice weekend!

Mia Pearlman

MAELSTROM is a giant multilevel mobile, 12 feet in diameter and 11 feet high, with 6 independently rotating (360°) layers of cut paper. An upside-down whirlpool, it echoes both the East River currents and the cloud formations visible through the windows.

I wish I could see Mia Pearlman's work in person. I wish a lot of things actually...

Andrew Scott Ross

Rocks and Rocks and Rocks is a mix of drawings and ephemeral sculptures, based on the institutionalization of human imagination used in forming culture and its institutions. This work is an attempt to reanimate the past to show different perspectives on antiquity and the flexibility of historical outcomes.

Nothing much to report today, I'm afraid. I'm still very busy at work and thinking about the paintings that I'm desperate to find the time to start on... sigh... I don't know when that will be. To make matters worse, I can't stop thinking about the box chocolate, peanuts, and raisins sitting by my desk. I. Will. Not. Eat. All. Of. Those.

Mary Temple

I am completely inspired by Mary Temple's work, particularly the Paper Rooms series. Just to clarify, the shadows are painted. Aren't they beautiful?

I have been given the afternoon off work so I can go and enjoy the inauguration festivities. I can't wait! Have fun everyone!

Noriko Ambe

Sorry I wasn't around much last week. I have been so so busy at work and, to my despair, haven't had any time to post. Anyway, I'm back with a real corker - these magical paper pieces by Noriko Ambe.

I also have lots of work in the pipeline, and I'm desperate to start painting again. The trouble is, the only space I have at the moment is in my bedroom, and we all know that bedroom + oil paint = a big fat mess, and everytime I get up to start working, it puts me off. Soon we will be moving into our own place, and I am going to insist upon a second bedroom to use as a studio. We'll see if that makes a difference to the amount of work I produce. Hm...

P.S. - Thank you for the places to see in NYC suggestions. Please keep 'em coming.

New York - Philadelphia - Washington DC

Brooklyn Rooftops Skyline Shadow Box by Pepper Sprouts


I AM GOING TO NEW YORK!!! Steph has to go home to NY to take some kind of bar related exam (don't ask me!) and we decided that I would go too. I am so excited! We're going to spend a day or two with her family and then drive to Philadelphia and then Washington DC to visit some beloved friends. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give me some tips of places to go and things to see in NYC. I'm not interested in big art galleries and things... I want to see the real city - the cute shops, cafes, and backstreets. OH, and cupcake places. I'm eagerly awaiting your recommendations.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Between Two Women

I am a member of a film rental service which posts films to my house for me to watch and then post back. It's a pretty rubbish service as I hardly ever receive the titles at the top of my priority list and frequently receive films which I don't remember putting on there. I watched one of these lucky (or not so lucky)-dip films last night, set in the late 1950's called Between Two Women, which is definitely the worst film I've ever seen, with the worst music, worst acting, worst story and everything else. It did, however, have the most fabulous wallpaper in every single scene. The layers and layers of delicious patterns and colours have sparked in me a love for all things 1950's.

Stuart Mugridge

Plane - The Birmingham Series of books explores various notions of the space of a book. Using a simple aeroplane motif suspended between the pages of the book representing the flight of imagination, Plane describes the creative space present in a book.

Volume - The Birmingham Series of books explores various notions of the space of a book.

Between its covers and title pages Volume contains a pocket with a fold-out net or plan. The net is a scaled-down representation of the three-dimensional space between the pages. It is the physical space, or volume, that the book inhabits.

Enter a Cloud -Enter a Cloud is inspired by a poem of the same name by the late St Ives-based poet WS Graham. In his poem Graham uses the passage of the cloud across a clear blue West Penwith sky to describe a moment in time and a sense of place.

In my version of Enter a Cloud the cloud motif moves incrementally across the double-page spread from left to right above a horizon line.

On the title page the 'horizon line' is seen to be a scale of minutes, and so for each page turned the cloud moves in time as well as space to represent the chronological space of the book.

Corner- This bookwork uses the simple folio fold as an environment for sculptural investigation. Through the four cards (so far) in the set the fold becomes a space to cower in or to watch from as well as a corner to peek around and an edge to climb.

I remember seeing Stuart's work at the British Library during my MA. I fell in love with the simplicity of the work, and the self-referential methods he uses to deal with book structures. I couldn't help posting the descriptions of his recent work, which are taken directly from his website.

This really takes the biscuit!

I came across the amazing Creature Mag today -

Creaturemag is an artist run ONLINE arts and culture magazine released sporadically... Creature encourages free thought/speech and enjoys receiving “stuff” that both inspires and displays an inventive application of the artists creativity. We are a magazine of folk sensibilities, we aim to develop and sustain a talented community of creative people... Basically we want to see talent, of the raw kind, primal and instinctive, where creation is a necessity. We want to be pleasured by something you took pleasure in creating, for in the simplest of terms it is self gratification that drives each of us to create. So succumb to the urge and discover the creature within... we don't bite, unless you are food!

I got a bargain!

Rob Ryan does magic. Armed with a pair of scissors and an imagination informed by legends, he has transformed a stack of paper into a fable about a lonesome young man looking for meaning in his life. He wanders through page after page of intricately fashioned paper cut-outs, searching for his soulmate in a landscape of leaves, flowers and fountains in this beautifully designed art book.

Hello everyone, i hope you all had a lovely Christmas and new year. I had a nice peaceful time and I'm back at work now, reluctantly.

I had a browse around the charity shops over the holidays and bought every book I fancied. At the last minute, when I thought I had gone through all of them with a fine toothed comb, I found, tucked away in a corner, Rob Ryan's book This is for You for £1.50! I am thrilled because I love Rob Ryan's work and recently saw a show of his in Brighton where I was so sad to have to leave without any of the lovely items there were to buy. I was also the lucky Christmas recipient of lots of beautiful zines which Stephanie bought for me from Etsy - more about those later.

I was also given some money from my parents which I am using to go with Steph to visit her family and some friends in New York and Washington DC in March. I am a lucky girl!

Take a look at Rob Ryan's Etsy shop here, blog here, and website here.