Merry Christmas

There have been many adaptations of Charles Dickens 'A Christmas Carol' since it was published in 1843 and here we are over 150 years later and there is a new version out. It has Jim Carrey as Scrooge, with Gary Oldman, Colin Firth and Bob Hoskins helping out on the other characters. The films CGI looks amazing and so I will be taking a little niece and nephew along to watch it over the Christmas period. Although most of us have seen and heard the story many times before I think this version will surpass all others as the quality and attention to detail is amazing. However I do have a love of the versions that have gone before and I will share them with you below. The Disney version, The Jim Henson version and the Alastair Sim's 1951 version which has such a different quality to it and is very magical all in it's own right.

So to all my blog readers, wherever you are this Christmas have a lovely inspirational time.

Questioning Reality

I have been absent for a few weeks on this blog, but although there's been little time to write I've saved the links of things I've come across during my busy time and I now have an abundance of inspirational things to post. I will start with the amazing mind of Leandro Erlich.

As a child most of us would have found a sense of wonderment walking round a funhouse, a fairground of attractions or have even been lucky enough to go to Disneyland or some place similar. The work of Leandro reminds me of that fun experience of testing what you see in front of you, it makes you questions what our reality is. He makes rooms and objects that you normally see from only one perspective look completely different and bizarre from a whole new angle. The Shattering Door is what first brought Leandro's work to my attention as it feels like he has captured a moment in time, a freeze frame where you don't see the aftermath of the door falling into a thousand pieces on the floor. However this then makes you question how the pieces can stay in this frozen state without falling, you wonder what would make enough of an impact to create this, you understand that it must have been considerable so where is the rest of the destruction? However all these thoughts makes you forget the reality and for me it was not until a few minutes later that I remembered that wooden doors don't just shatter, only things more delicate like glass or ceramics do. It is an amazing piece of art which takes you on a journey down a revealing thought process which is more about what you see and what you know to be real. You can actually hear the penny dropping as people start to work it out.

Some of Leandro's other work have a sutler statement attached to them, some are pointing out parts of life which we accept to readily without question, such as The Smoking Room. What if the room was transparent and you could see the smoke contained in the room. Without the walls hiding what's going on it makes you realise what is produced in a room dedicated just for smoking. Or when we look down a staircase we give ourselves a view of the steps below, people already a few floors lower than us decending down the stairs. But what if this was turned vertical on us, it is recognisable but yet we feel our position is in question for the angle we view it from.

This work is genius, Leandro Erlich has a very clever mind and this is my favourite type of art, where I question what I see but then by looking further and closer at the piece the statement being made becomes clear and I then question my own perspective.

Commercial Advert Inspiring Prime Time TV

This is a simple blog from me, just wanted to show a few adverts which I've seen lately and found impressive. Posting them to share and hope they inspire.

Agent Provocateur

Adidas

Keira Knightly- Women's Aid

Brylcreem

Lift- Marc Isaacs

I thought I would tell you about this short film 'Lift' by Marc Isaacs it is great and shows some amazing relationships between the cameraman and the people using the lift on a daily basis. You get to meet some weird and wonderful people all living in one tower block. It made me laugh as I come across these types of people most days around London, for me there's Fred the 80 year old guy who shouts and shouts "Oi..Oi" at you until you say hello back and then he says "what a beautiful day today". I always wonder what the rest of his life must have been like and what makes him sit on that wall everyday. This short film shows you some amazing personalities very similar to Fred, although you'll need to watch it in full to see how the characters change or to learn more about them as the days pass.

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The Mojito Shoe

I've mentioned Julian Hakes and Hakes Associates before in my blog and I probably will keep mentioning him as I find his work stunning and I am in awe of what he creates and continues to create. I am lucky enough to have him as a neighbor and a friend, so I get updates on what he is working on and I see him outside crafting things, holding things up to the light to see a different perspective on a model, I even spent an evening helping him sculpt a bridge in the snow. The pure passion of design is what drives Julian and this clearly results in some amazing creations. Most recently The Mojito Shoe. I have seen this come together over the past few months and it was initially hard to get my head around how it would work without seeing an image. I need not wonder anymore though as Julian has now had the shoe fabricated and photographed. So I thought I would share it with you on the week of it's release. I love the shape and colour, the form is divine but yet it is still functional. I think the only problem I would have is that I think it's too beautiful to wear and think that it should take centre stage mounted on the wall of my living room so I can sit and admire the shapes it casts from different angles.

Here's how Julian explains the creation of The Mojito Shoe

"One late summer night in the studio I was thinking about the design of shoes in general. I wondered why there was the need for a foot plate in shoes such as high heels. When I look at a foot print on sand it is very clear to see that the main force goes to the heel and ball. With a high heel providing the heel is supported, even by standing on a wooden block the foot naturally ’spans’ the gap naturally, with bones and tendons. The foot has its own inbuilt strength and support so why duplicate this. You would not have a jumper with rigid arms between elbow and wrist. So this raised the question, if the design of a shoe was an evolution of the early sandal and how can new materials and design techniques provide new solution?

So I set to exploring this question in a similar way to how I would design a bridge, examining the forces and looking at the most simple, elegant yet poetic expression of the forces at play within the materials used. With this approach I then set about wrapping my foot in tracing paper, then binding it up in masking tape and then drawings various geometries onto and over the form of my foot. The next stage was rather dangerous as I had to cut the shape off my foot with a scalpel and not damage the pattern or my foot. The design this produced is a single wrapped geometry which starts under the ball of the foot and then over the bridge, then sweeping down below the heel before then twisting back on itself to provide the support for the heel and ankle. This form felt light and airy on the foot. So we called it the ‘Mojito’ as it was rather like a twist of lime skin. The material choice is simple: The shoe is a laminate with Carbon fibre for the core which gives the shoe its spring and strength, leather on the foot side and rubber on the walking wearing side. 3 materials, each doing a specific job."

Mamma Mia!

I'm curious about other people. That's the essence of my acting. I'm interested in what it would be like to be you. ~ Meryl Streep

Normally I write about artists, designers & photographers, mainly trying to explain how fascinated I am by their work and what it is that inspires me. However today is a bit different because I found myself reading an article about someone who I hugely admire and as I am overwhelmingly inspired by her I thought I should blog and remind others about the amazing talent that is Meryl Streep. There is so much to her that it is almost impossible to know where to start, the quality of her work and the way she conducts her life in and out of the media spotlight, she is a true star.

Meryl has a wealth of work in her portfolio and her range of work is so varied. You hear other female actors complaining of the lack of roles for them when they pass 40, but Meryl has proved that this is not the case if you have quality in your work, Helen Mirren is another example of this. However Meryl has a lighter approach to her work which I love and she seems to embrace the challenge of playing a part which is away from her comfort zone. Recently we have seen her in Mamma Mia, not shying away from being in a small budget film and finding herself singing songs from ABBA it was amazing to see Meryl managing to inject so much feeling into her performance. It was funny, moving and light hearted, Meryl was magical and lit up the film.

Then you have her acting in deeper roles such as Sophie's Choice, Kramer vs. Kramer, The Bridges of Madison County and Doubtto name just a few, these types of roles are what have won Meryl most awards. As a leading lady she sometimes out acts her male counter parts and you cannot but find yourself in awe at her versatility and passion. She is the most nominated actor in Oscars history, she been nominated for 15 awards and won 2 and this is where Meryl Streep shows her class as she responds to this statistic by saying “Yes, but I’ve lost it 13 times!”.

There is something real about Meryl Streep which is easy for all of us to connect with. She isn't surgically altered and lifted, hoping to keep back the aging years to maintain a fake youth, in fact she is doing the opposite and embracing her changing looks and the new acting parts that this brings her. She fights for causes she believes in, she has a family life which most of us know hardly anything about as it's not splashed on the front of celebrity magazines. I am amazed to learn as a suffering actor trying to catch a break she ended up sleeping rough in Green Park in London underneath The Ritz hotel and making a promise to herself to one day stay there, then at the age of 28 Meryl took a year away from acting to be with her 1st husband John Cazale as he died of bone cancer. Then Meryl married sculptor Don Gummer and took time out from her career to have 4 children, this would keep most people busy enough but Meryl was so passionate about acting and on hearing about the role of Sophie Zawistowska in Sophie's Choice she got on her hands and knees and literally begged director Alan J. Pakula for the part. She is remarkable and I think what is most inspirational about her is that she loves her profession and purely for the love of acting and not the media hype or the glitz and glamour that so many actors head to Hollywood for. Meryl Streep is a true icon both on and off the camera and I will remain mesmerised by her talent for years to come.

Controversial Hitler AIDS Awarness Advert

The release of the new Regenbogen e.V. Hitler AIDS Awareness adverts, AIDS Is A Mass Murderer, have caused some controversy amongst several AIDS & HIV charities. They are pretty shocking and will be screened in Germany next week during AIDS Awareness Week and the advertising agency Das Committee have said "the shock value of the advert is designed to scare people into safe sex...the campaign is designed to shake people up, to bring the topic of Aids back to the centre stage, and reverse the trend of unprotected intercourse". However UK charity The Terrence Higgins Trust says "It is concerned the advert could be 'insensitive', by stigmatising people with the condition". Both are fair comments I however feel that anything that is shocking enough to make people talk about a disease that has in recent years become less of a media focus is always worthwhile. I remember when you couldn't walk down the street without seeing a poster or open a newspaper without reading an advert not so much now-a-days. There is also another generation who are now having sex and were not around or were too young when the world initially stood up and recognised the disease. I remember the media was engulfed with statistics about Aids related deaths almost 30 million have died from the disease worldwide.I remember learning that Freddy Mercury died with the disease and thetribute concert which had so many musical icons all campaigning to bring about an awareness of Aids was all part of my education of the devestating effects of AIDS, there is a younger generation that missed out on all this.

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The World Through A Lens

Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face - the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited; and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man. - Edward Steichen

I went to see The Press Photographer's Year 2009 exhibition last week. It was an amazing collection of photographs that have been taken over the past year and then published in newspapers & magazines around the world. While they are typically presented to us in a small printed format the true detail is so much more compelling when seen in a larger size under lighting. It is then that you see the beauty of the moments that were captured some showing the finer details maybe of lines in a face, the joy of adventure, emotions of those suffering life and death right next to each other. Journalism is without doubt one of the strongest tools in our modern society but a written paragraph can be received by the reader in many ways, edited to mean a millions things which is one reason why I love photographic journalism as I find it has an unquestionable strength in image, it can literally say a thousand words and is rarely doubted.

In recent weeks I have been looking at The Boston Globes 'Big Picture' website, it has some of the most amazing photo journalistic images. It is impossible to be everywhere in the world at the same time, to be watching every global event as it happens, so to be able to see some of it through the lens of a photographer is amazing. Seeing their photographs opens up different worlds to us, taking us outside our comfort zones, it is engaging and such a great thing for us to have access to.

Recent fires in California, Los Angeles have had a devastating effect of the lives of the people that live there. Through the TV news reports I now have an understanding of the impact that these fires were having, but other than stating facts the TV news did little to show me the true emotional devastation that was happening. It wasn't until I saw these photos Wildfires in Southern Californiathat I really understood the sense of helplessness that people were feeling as their homes were being destroyed, how devastating these ravaging fires were to the landscape of the towns, how close the fires actually came to the people and what it must be like for a firefighter to walk towards these towering infernos to trying and bring them under control.

At the same time around the other side of the world voting had begun in Afghanistan and on the same website they showed such mesmerizing images which were captured during one of the most highly charged and emotional times in the countries recent history Ballots, bullets and bombs in Afghanistan. To capture these moments as they happened is a skill, to show what it's like to be there to get inside the lives of those voting, in the homes of those fighting and to get a sense of the fight for a democratic right to vote that people were prepared to risk their life to achieve is masterful. Photographs show so much of the human impact created by war and also in a way that the news on TV just can't, it is that split second freeze frame that captures the true emotion. I have an increasing admiration for photographic journalists, I am realising more and more that the photographers put themselves in increasingly dangerous situations, leave family and loved ones to head to foreign worlds, feeling threatened and scared, feeling drained of emotion after seeing so much devastation. I am however so grateful of the sacrifice they make so they are able to capture these images which are so important in helping to spread the news of events happening around the world and to make these captured moments available globally for all of us to see and to understand. They are as powerful as a man who holds a gun, as the politician making a speech, as nature unleashing it's might and as citizens fighting for freedom.

To Infinity And Beyond

Learning about Space at school was captivating, I think part of this is a realisation that the world which we felt that was so large was in fact a tiny speck within the Universe. We are not one of 10 or 20 planets, 1,000 or even one of a million...in fact we are one of an unlimited and unknown number of planets that exist. This is hard for us to comprehend and the idea that we have only discovered such a small percentage of what is actually out there is mind blowing. Although most of us have a curious fascination about life beyond our planet few of us ever develop this into our careers and continue this discovery, however I am grateful for those that do. Recently we just celebrated the 40th anniversary of the day man stepped foot on the Moon, which was an amazing feat of space science. However since this moment so many more experiments and and investigations have led to new discoveries of Space and although none of them involve stepping foot on another planet we have found new corners of the universe which we didn't know existed, planets appearing in our solar system, black holes & milkways and so much more, the continuing investigations are fascinating.

I thought I would let you know about this link I found on NASA's website, Astronomy Picture of the Day. Each day a new photograph/ image/ video is put up with an explination from professional Astronomers and each day the next image is even more enthralling than the one before. Some of the images seem so unreal as if they were created for a movie screen rather than are the result of a natural occurrence. Also it seems bizarre that some of these images are of stars that no longer exist or of events that occurred thousands of years before we were even born but the images took this long to reach us even with the speed of light because they are so far away. The whole concept is mind blowing and even though I am no longer at school I am still as curious and equally as captivated by the images I see coming from Space and I feel the same excitement I had as a kid by what i see.

This shows brilliantly how the sky changes as the earth revolves

SN 1006 Supernova:- Over 7,000 light years away from Earth

The Sun, Solar Prominence

The Moon, Jupiter and Venus over Los Angeles

Morning Glory Clouds Over Australia

Mars San Dunes acting like liquid

The Planets & Solar Eclipse over The Great Wall, China

Faces Of Evil

"The world is not threatened by evil people but by those who allow evil things to happen.”

Albert Einstein

The Face of Evil exhibition and book by Hans Weishäupl raises some interesting points of discussion and the video above shows how scary it is to see these faces again, for a moment when you see them moving you fear that they have come back to life and back to terrorise once more. History has given us an ability to understand the regimes of terror carried out by the person behind these faces and even more scarily some of these faces aren't from the past but are still in a position of power. However what Hans raises is an awareness that these faces are those of someone, who similar to you and I, has skin, flesh, eyes to see, ears to hear, blood and a heart needed to keep the blood flowing through their veins. However most of us would also like to distance ourselves from any similarity to The Faces of Evil and would like to have no association with people who created such hideous crimes against humanity we prefer to give them a notoriety for their crimes and a place in history that we can learn from and hold them as an example of how warped a human can become. So the question being raised is how is it that we let someone of such evil rise to a position of power to inflict such atrocities and how have we still not learnt from the past but allow this to happen again and again. As Hans says "Whilst everyone joins in to say "Never again!” after a reign of terror has ended, history shows that new tyrants can be allowed to rise to power again and again, in all parts of the world." This exhibition makes us question the role we play in this, are we maybe in some way to blame for allowing such people to rise to power? Maybe we have at some time been supporters of such evil until this evil morphed into something we lost control of?

The World Beneath The Waters Surface

Fact 1: 80% of the earth's surface is water

Fact 2: The deepest part of the ocean, Marianas Trench is 6.9 miles deep

'The Oceans' by Robert Barton

There is a magical mysterious world beneath sea level and one which the majority of us will only see in photographs or on TV footage. There are those who scuba dive with a passion, my housemate being one and she explained to me that although they have an interest in sea life and in part seeing the seals or pretty fish swimming around what makes a dive more interesting are the objects which have sunk and rock formations that occur only underwater it all helps to create an underwater playground for divers. It is interesting then to see that artist Jason Taylor has used this environment to create a great installation on the sea bed in Grenada, West Indies. These sculptures are forever changing as they become shaped with tidal movement and other sea life attaching themselves to the surface. Set against the natural underwater landscape the shapes stand out yet the material they are made from, rusting and transforming, makes them blend it as if they have been naturally formed there and sat at the bottom of the sea since the beginning of time.

o be underwater takes many pieces of equipment, dive suits, fins, masks and most importantly the oxygen tank and regulators, it's not natural for humans to be underwater for more than a minute or two. So artist Leandro Erlich has created a great installation The Swimming Pool which simply makes you question how the people beneath the water can be there. You look closer and can see them in dry clothes, they move quickly and they remain there for longer than a few minutes without coming up for a breath of air. It is a great installation that questions a humans ability to remain underwater and how unnatural an environment it is for us. It puts you in a position where you can feel what it like to be dry whilst being able to look up through the water and to experience all this without a need to hold your breath.

Each Grain Of Sand

This is quite amazing and something I had to put up to share with you. This was on the Ukrainian TV show Україна має талант similar to Britain's got Talent. This was the work of the 2009 winner Kseniya Simonova and her amazing abilities in creating sand drawings to music. The one below is a great example of what she creates, it is telling the story of love and war during The Patriotic War which most of us would know as World War 2.

She tells the story starting at the beginning of the war with a radio announcement about Germany invading the Soviet Union, through to the end of the war and returning to a new life back home. The Ukraine was one of the most devastated countries from the WW2 conflict with 1 in 4 Ukrainians dying during the fighting and a total loss of nearly 8 million Ukrainians with some of these losses coming from the jewish being taken to death camps. The country was left in ruins and Ksenyia was depicting a story which was really touching showing a small part of life within the Ukraine created stunningly to a mix of old and modern songs. At the end she signs off in Russian 'With us, in our hearts'.

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For A Limited Time Only

Beauty is only temporary, but your mind lasts you a lifetime.

Alicia Machado

There is an amazing corner of London within Kensington Gardens and what makes this space more exciting than most is that the space changes for a few months every summer. The Serpentine Gallery is a public gallery space where unlike many places around London entry is free. The emphasis is not only on the art and installations you go to visit but about the environment you visit them within.

Back in 2000 the space was first transformed by Zaha Hadid. She transformed the area by creating a suspended roof pavilion making 600sq metres of outside space for displaying art and which thousands came to visit. I think there was also something compelling about this being a temporary structure, you only had a limited amount of time to see it in, asThe Guardian says "briefly brilliant..."

Zaha Hadid 2007

Since then the Serpentine Gallery has commissioned a different architect to design a structure for the summer months. There are no budget restrictions and the only parameters the architect(s) are made to design within are that they have to take their inspiration from the name given by the gallery director. What follows is then 6 months of hectic design, construction and finding sponsorship to pay for it. Also part of the criteria to be considered is that you must never have had a building completed in the UK before. So this shocks me to think that architects such as Zaha Hadid, Kjetil Thorsen,Frank Ghery, Rem Koolhaas and artist Olafur Eliasson could apply. Thank god there are schemes like this around, it's unbelievable that architects of such caliber at the time of application and even some still to this day had never had a work commissioned for UK soil.

Daniel Libeskind 2001

Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen 2007

Frank Ghery 2008

This month the most recent design was unveiled. It is cost affective for today's economic climate, simple but stunning. When the sun is out it will reflect and create illusions of light from the mirrored surfaces which will be mesmerising. The design was submitted and produced by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of Tokyo-based architecture firm SANAA and some have described the structure as 'a stealth bomber-like pavilion' or a 'delicate floating pool of water'.

What has become clear is that within this simple space so much can be created. The designs from the past 9 years have been incomparable to each other and the uniqueness of each is the main reason why the pavilion is always a success. The structures are stunning and amazingly interactive, my only wish is that they would remain more permanent but then I think that would defeat the reason for why they exist in the first place and the temporay nature of the structures is what helps creates such beauty in form.

Vorsprung durch Technik~ Advantage through Technology

Ever wondered where the name Audi comes from? My research has lead me to find out that Audi is a German company and part of the Volkswagen Group, the name Audi is based on a latin translation of the founder August Horch's surname which means 'to hear'. Horch started the company back in 1909 and here we are in 2009 and the company is still going strong with a great reputation and the interlinking 4 circle logo recognisable around the world.

To mark a successful 100 years Audi commissioned artist Gerry Judah to design and build a sculpture to be displayed at Goodwood and revealed at the Goodwood Festival of Speed 2009. The sculpture shows so much movement and gives a great impression of speed as you wonder how fast the cars must be going to propel themselves into the sky. Sculpturer Judah explains “the sculpture had to have a celebratory theme and it also had to encompass the qualities of the Audi brand: sporty, prestigious and progressive". It's not a complex sculpture with a deep meaning it is what it is, but it is also a bold statement from Audi clearly showing that what was important to August Horch 100 years ago is still what remains at the heart of the business in 2009.

Gone For Lunch

I haven't posted many blogs recently because my mind has been far from the creative world. I have had a contractual job in the suited and booted world of finance for a few weeks. Meeting clients and brokering deals is a side of the world I don't often see, I also admit it's not a side I want to go back to that often either but it's interesting to observe. It helps me understand that without the trading side of the city the rest cannot revolve, it's a good perspective to see the working world from and something I can draw on, not only for skills but for the self reflection it gives me so i can see what I want to achieve. Although to switch between that world and my creative side is hard, at the end of the day I was so perplexed by the world I had been in all I wanted to do was switch off. So now I am back designing again and I thought I would search for others who are able to do more than one thing in their working day, who have more than one focus in their career and also have an ability to switch from one world to another whilst having an impact on both.

My investigations start with Leonardo da Vinci. One of the most influential artists of the past millennium but also a Botanist, Musician, Writer, Mathematician, Engineer and Anatomist, to name but a few. Mainly known to most of us for painting the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, but while we admire this work what you may not know is that he also conceptualised a helicopter before there was the technology to build one, he came up with an idea which later became solar power, he devised a calculator and outlined a theory of plate tectonics. It is perhaps what he was developing aside from the paintings that may have had most impact on us without us even realising. Without Leonardo da Vinci's ability to traverse these worlds imagine how much we may have lost out on.

Lewis Carroll, author of 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' but also a Mathematician, Logician, Photographer and Anglican Deacon. We all grew-up knowing Alice in Wonderland, through Lewis Carroll's writings he created a magical world with a mad hatter, cheshire cat and magical cake which made you grow & shrink, he brought us an unusual world of fantasy which is enchanting. Yet this same man was also a talented mathematician who was educated at Oxford University and for most of his life held a Mathematical Lectureship at the college. He brought us fiction but also at the other end of the spectrum he was calculating theories based on fact.

My investigations brought me to modern day and I admit that I was slightly taken aback to learn that Brian May known to most as a musician from Queen is also an Astrophysicist. Famous for being lead guitarist with Queen and writing songs such as 'We Will Rock You' and 'Bohemian Rhapody' in the past decade he has also graduated from Imperial College London with his Ph.D in Astrophysics . He is co author of Bang!- The Complete History of the Universe with Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott. These worlds couldn't be further apart yet he found passion in both to be able to have an impact.

Trying to find inspiration from someone of similar age to me I came across Serena Williams who is a huge success on the tennis courts and recently won the Ladies Singles title at Wimbledon, as well as many other tournaments over recent years. So I amazed to learn that Serena not only focuses her time on tennis but also fashion design and acting. I am aware that her dominance on the tennis court has helped in opening up other avenues for her to work within but this was created through her hard work and dedication to the sport and so these opportunities are, I feel, just reward for so much commitment. To achieve so much within the tennis profession takes alot of determination and time on the practice courts, so what I find inspirational is that whilst doing this she still finds extra time to be involved in setting up her own clothing range Aneres and is actively involved in designing the clothes for the range. Additionally she has appeared in character on ER and Law & Order as she looks to further extend her career. She is similar to George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Jamie Oliver and others in the world of celebrity who are using their position to do so many other things, striving out into other businesses, fighting causes and and are now becoming known to us for more than what initially brought them to the medias attention in the first place.

I have named only a few people above, but those I have written about all have a similar trait which I find inspirational. They aren't happy with what falls in front of them but that they have a desire to strive out and achieve more. That they have an inquisitive nature to find out more and they realise that they don't have to limit themselves to being just one thing. They pushed the boundaries and if one doors shut they have already opened many more and continue to experience and grow from a variety of different influences and I hope to draw inspiration from this the next time I move away from the world of design.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson