Happy Crimble Season

Happy holiday season all! It's been wonderful here in Huddersfield, despite it being, you know, Huddersfield. (The Hudd is ok I suppose. I just have home town ennui.) Kaia is here, Garon is here, it's an American invasion of super-fun.

I found these super-seasonal photographs on my computer. I took them years and years ago in town, and Greenhead Park. Huddersfield is admittedly rather nice when covered in snow. Hey, where is the snow this year?

What I Have Learned in School

As some of you may have gathered, I have spent much of this last semester, especially the last few weeks, being hyper-stressed about my final year dissertation. It was such a pain in the arse, I can't even tell you. Said dissertation is now handed in, thank fuck for that, so now I can have my life back; I can get some sleep, talk to people, and have a diet that consists of more than toast and jaffa cakes.

Before I finally stop thinking about my dissertation for - how long? Six months? Is half a year enough to exorcise the vengeful spirit of one's dissertation? I though I would see if I had any useful information to pass on. My dissertation was about the short stories of Ursula K. Le Guin - author of The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, the Earthsea books, and coming to you from Portland Oregon (like all the best things in life). Here are my top five favourite Le Guin short stories:


5. 'The Building', from Changing Planes (2004)

"Empty rooms, empty corridors, miles of corridors, endlessly similar stairways, ramps, courtyards, roof terraces, delicate towers, vistas of roof beyond roof, tower beyond tower, dome beyond dome to the far distance; high rooms lighted by great lacework windows or only by the dim, greenish, mottled translucency of windowpanes of stone; corridors that lead to other corridors, other rooms, stairs, ramps, courtyards, corridors..."


4. 'Intracom', from The Compass Rose (1982)

"You're a fantastically good captain, for a woman."


3. 'She Unnames Them', from Buffalo Gals, And Other Animal Presences (1988)

"The insects parted with their names in vast clouds and swarms of ephemeral syllables buzzing and stinging and humming and flitting and crawling and tunneling away."


2. 'Paradises Lost', from The Birthday of the World (2004)

"AFTER THIS THERE ARE NO MORE HEADINGS, FOR THE WORLD IS CHANGED, NAMES CHANGE, TIME IS NOT MEASURED AS IT WAS, AND THE WIND BLOWS EVERYTHING AWAY."


1. 'The New Atlantis', from The Compass Rose (1982)

"When we break through the bright circle into life, the water will break and stream white down the white sides of the towers, and run down the steep streets back into the sea. The water will glitter in dark hair, on the eyelids of dark eyes, and dry to a thin white film of salt."


(Every one of these stories is absolutely worth reading, even if I happen to be sick to the back teeth of them.)

Shiny

Oho, I think you're going to like these. Featuring some fantastic WPA-style design, these five posters have just been released by someone or other. If you're a fan of Serenity/Firefly, then you'll get the references; if you aren't, why not? That's some good viewing right there.

Visit Historic Serenity Valley National Park: Birthplace of Unity

Experience Persephone: Gateway to the 'Verse

Visit Tranquil Miranda

Londinium: The Past, Present and Future of Humanity

Experience the Beauty of Sihnon

See America

A small selection of the fantastic WPA National Park Posters, produced during the mid-1930s or so. The Works Project Administration, one of those New Deal things, apparently produced about 35,000 posters to promote various all-American things and get people enthusiastic about the economy again. (Is this all right? I'm more or less making this up; I don't know history.) Only two thousand posters survive now because they're so fragile.


The WPA churned out a whole bunch of posters to produce America's National Parks, of which only about 14 survive, with two 'See America' prints for the United States Travel Bureau also. The artists are unknown. I, of course, had to track down images of all of these, and I found 14 including the 'See America' ones, which is annoying. Where are the missing two?! I was sorely tempted to put up all 14, but that seems a bit excessive, so I've uploaded the parks I've been to, and a couple of other favourites. I think they all use 8 colours because of the newly-invented 8-colour serigraph technique - correct me if I'm wrong, or if you count more than 8 colours...

Yosemite National Park, California


Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho


Glacier National Park, Montana


Zion National Park, Utah

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado

Sequoia National Park, California

These last two - Mesa Verde and Sequoia - are contemporary versions produced along the same WPA pattern. They aren't bad, but still nowhere near the originals. They aren't as subtle or detailed, and the colours are rather garish. (Picky...)


I have a few of these up on my wall, by the way. I picked up postcards of the Grand Tetons, the Grand Canyon, the 'See America' above (showing Arches National Park, Utah), Petrified Forest National Monument, and Yosemite while I was visiting the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest in Arizona. I love 'em.

Over-expensive Print Crazy

Oh Suse, your timing is amazing. NOT. For weeks I've been meaning to post about this artwork showing in Norwich, and now I notice that the exhibition finishes today. I had been hoping that the free publicity for the show which my blog could give might persuade the owners of the gallery to let me have some modest little print in return, for free instead of for literally tens or hundreds of English pounds. Alas, it is too late, and I am certain that said plan for a freebie would have worked beautifully.

The exhibition was showing the prints of Anja Percival, and it was running at the Saint Giles Street Gallery here in Norwich. (that's at 51 St Giles Street. Just check out the free publicity! You could at least give me a free pen or something!) Just gorgeous prints of street scenes, moody interiors, cityscapes with misty lighting effects. I really would like to know exactly how Percival did a lot of her prints. The colouring especially was very well done, and my one print class' worth of expertise didn't get me nearly close to working that out, or the layering, or the embossing, or much else really. So here's a few images pulled from Percival's website, enjoy:

Window light IV, etching and collograph, 2007

Window light IIIcolour, etching, 2006

Cafe Light VIII2, etching and monoprint, 2006

Urban light 1, etching, 2006

Wall light, etching and collograph, 2003

Station Light X, etching, 2007

I'm going to have a look out for what they're showing in the St. Giles Street Gallery next. Hopefully it'll be something good. These private galleries, the more expensive ones anyway, often have interesting artwork in them. And just because you are a scruffy student who could never afford a single thing in them doesn't mean you don't have the right to go in and wear out their carpets.

Slightly Mysterious Artist

So here we have Eduard Wiiralt, 1898-1954, another print artist and fellow of Aino Bach, so I am told. Born in Russia of Estonian parents, he studied in the Pallas Art School, and produced woodcuts, etchings, linocuts and book illustrations. He generally drew people with a kind of bizarre surrealist style which I'm not a big fan of, but his illustrations of animals I like.

Berber Girl With Camel

Mystery Artist

These prints below are all the work of Aino Bach. I have no idea who this dude is. I can't remember where or how I came across his work. I don't even know if it's a dude or not; Aino could be a girl's name. All I know is that he/she is Estonian. I can't find anything out about this person on the internet, or not in a language that I can read at least. Annoying: the internet fails me. Rather nice prints though:







That last vase one is my favourite I think. Can anyone find anything else out about Aino Bach? I'm stuck. Artistic mystery! Exciting, ha?

Rose City of My Heart

Well I have just come back from 10 completely wonderful days in Portland Oregon, possibly THE BEST CITY EVER CREATED. Seriously, I love that place. A lot. Right now I'm too jetlagged to write much about what I got up to, but I feel like putting up a few pictures that remind me of PDX.




All of these pictures are from Red Bat Press, a Portland-based company that sells cards and whatnot. Kaia sent me a postcard of the Steel Bridge print (6th down, below) a week or two ago, and I liked it very much. (Acquired from Powell's, or what?) So look out for their stuff; it's all woodblock, letterpress and watercolour here. Aah, the Portland bridges! The mighty Willamette! This set of simple yet effective bridges here makes me very happy. I think their version of the Fremont Bridge is my favourite, with that delightful shade of green. Sad they don't have the Sellwood bridge; Kaia tells me it's going to collapse imminently, so that's exciting.










The Ross Island Bridge is the one I'm used to taking into the city by bus or car. You get such a great view of the city from it! Goddammit, I miss Portland already. Again.

Terry Moore, SIP Issues 51-53

Aah, Strangers in Paradise. Terry Moore's 90-issue, 14-years-long continuing comic about three emotional people, their lives and loves, and the mafia, for some reason. The final issue, no.90, came out earlier this year. Pretty big deal, spending all your creative energies for so long writing and drawing a comic about the same characters, and then ending it. Poor old Terry; I wonder what he's doing now?

I was rather fond of Strangers in Paradise. The day-to-day interactions between the characters were pretty funny, and sweet and convincing, even if the crime underworld and endless romantic drama storylines could be pretty hard to take. And the artwork was just amazing. For some reason I was reminded today of the series of three art nouveau inspired covers below. Pretty amazing I think, and I especially like how the two main characters, Katchoo and Francine, don't quite fit into the style, despite looking very moody and winsome. (I know, right? "Katchoo". Bizarre name; she's the blonde.) Nicely elegant and dramatic, but pretty funny at the same time - least that's how I find it; especially that last one.

My Maiden Voyage, Vol.3 Issue 51.

What I Dream, Vol.3 Issue 52

What I Got, Vol.3 Issue 53.

Moore's covers are often especially good, when not being completely over-the-top and emo, so I might post some more in the future.

The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street / 84 Charing Cross Road

What a felicitous year when one can read not one, but TWO epistolary memoirs of correspondence to and from London bookshops! If anyone knows of any more of these, please let me know. Three makes a genre! (And I do love finding a genre the existence of which I never previously suspected - like when we came across the surprisingly large 'lesbian mystery' section at Powell's.) So both of these are made up of letters between a bookshop owner and a friend/customer, and one is awesome and one is rather dull.

The awesome one is 84 Charing Cross Road, in case you were wondering. The American author, Helene Hanff, has a decades-long correspondence with the staff of a London second-hand bookshop, which begins with her ordering obscure books and blossoms into charming friendship. It is just about the sweetest book I've ever read. Helene Hanff is so friendly eccentric American, and the bookshop people are so English and restrained but obviously lovely, and the passage of years through the letters has such subtle pathos. I love it, and love it all the more because it's a real-life correspondence. My favourite is when Hanff starts sending food packages to her English friends during rationing, and everyone politely and over-effusively thanks her for the real eggs etc.

The other book is a selection of letters between Heywood Hill, owner of the 10 Curzon Street bookshop, and author and society gal Nancy Mitford. My parents' generation apparently knows all about Nancy Mitford and her crowd, (Dad: "Oh you know, the Mitford gels!" Me: "Nope, still no idea.") In fact, this book was a gift from my aunt and uncle, who are also big into the Mitford social set; it was that 20s 'Bright Young Thing' group, including Evelyn Waugh etc. Anyway, this book is all in-jokes, veiled references to mutual friends, laments over the difficulties of finding a decent servant these days, pretending to be poor whilst blatantly rolling in it, and finding oneself to be screamingly funny on all occasions. I had no idea what they were talking about, and had no inkling as to why I would want to find out. This lot are absolutely not the Algonquin Round Table, and Dorothy Parker would have been about 800 times funnier. Made me want to go read 'Vile Bodies' again, because a satirical novel about the Bright Young Things would make them seem a lot more interesting than reading these letters about them.

Susie is Overcome With Excitement

EIGHT DAYS!!! Eight days!!!!!!! Eight days til I fly to Portland, and you can tell I'm excited because usually I'm very strict about over-using exclamation marks. I cannot believe it's about a week until I take that fab sixteen hour flight to Oregon.

'Course, I have a paper to write before then, and let's not even talk about my dissertation. This paper I speak of is due in the day before I fly, and I've just come up with a subject for it after a good deal of dithering over an area which was an interesting thing to write a paper on, but not enough to do with race or violence for the class (the class is called 'Race and Violence'). Went in to talk to my class tutor today, he seemed to like my idea:

Teacher: "Yes, that seems like a good topic for your paper. I bet you came to ask for an extension too, yes?"
Me (blithely): "Oh no, no extension for me!"
Teacher: "...are you sure?"

He's right, I don't have much time to write this stupid essay. I never learn. Well, much consoled by the fact that in eight days I will see Kai Baby Kai, buy a book or two in Powell's, see if Garon's muscles have gotten any bigger, have some bubble tea, all sorts of fun Portland things. Argh, I wish I was there right now. But for the longest time it seemed like my visit was months away, and now it's eight days! Hurrah!!!

The Revolution Will Not Be Amplified

...is the name of a music blog based in good old Norwich. Tim lent me a copy of it a few weeks back, and I wrote off to them asking if they need any artistic input. (Which they did, it was pretty text-heavy.) Below are a couple of covers I worked out, and which I doubt they will use; I haven't heard back from editor dude. Oh well, at least they were fun to put together. I feel a bit creatively starved if I don't do any art along with my literature stuff. Oh my tortured inner artistic soul!

I am so into the zine aesthetic lately. Or at least my idea of the zine aesthetic, which is probably totally wrong, because I foolishly missed out on the vibrant Portland zine culture. I sensed its presence, and promptly decided I had no time and it was too cool for me. Anyhow, I have a feeling zines involve a lot of collage and photocopying and messy text and lectroset. Do correct me if I'm wrong. The first cover below is a reworking of a Russian propaganda poster, with all the political text replaced with pretty flowers. I actually used virtually the same design for my Dad's birthday card, but figured it was worth repeating; I don't suppose my Dad would mind, if he ever found out. The second was supposed to involve a rip-off of the Jackpot Records logo, but got steadily less rip-off-y. Probably a good thing, I'm breaching enough copyright as it is (hello, this entire blog).

The myspace page for The Revolution Will Not Be Amplified is here. It's a darn good zine actually, they seem to know their shit.

Huuuungreeeee...

Dude, I really need to go food shopping. I know that when I get back to the house, my section of the fridge will yield some parmesan, a carton of borderline dodgy yogurt, three eggs, and half a pack of ravioli. That ain't healthy eating, yo. So tomorrow, or maybe the day after, I am going on an Epic Food Shop. This will be the image of my kitchen after I have made the most amazing trip to a supermarket there has ever been:

"I've got some fucking jaffa cakes in my coat pocket!"

Actually yes, that is true, I do have some Jaffa Cakes. What else do I need? I have cereal and Jaffa goodness. That's pretty much what I live on anyway. Bugger food shopping!

Chris Ware For The New Yorker

I have to say, I know that Chris Ware is great and intellectual and critically acclaimed, a shining beacon for the legitimacy of the graphic novel form, but I find him a bit creepy. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth is just fucking depressing, and his drawings have such an undercurrent of creep that I'm not really enjoying myself at all. I mean, I like stories of quiet, desperate lives as much as the next girl, as long as they stop short of actually making me want to top myself, while at the same time thoroughly freaking me out.

Having said that, Quimby the Mouse is pretty cool, as long as it keeps basic and retro and I don't start to feel sorry for the poor cat (cat's head?). His covers are also amazingly designed, all 50s and intricate. And I do like these four alternate covers for the New Yorker from 2006:

That first one especially, the colours are just beautiful. I suspect they're all part of a bitingly cynical commentary on the modern Thanksgiving, and most of the imagery is about loneliness and alienation. I choose to ignore this.