Coolness Captured

You may know Agatha Ruiz de la Prada as a clothes designer but did you know her design work can be found on mobile phones, rugs, lipsticks, lighters and notebooks? I saw an article on her home and wow is it bright, fresh and full of colour. Makes me want to go and throw bright paint all over our white boring walls! Maybe I will.

Grafitti and street artist, Banksey has taken over the Bristol City Museum. I just had to show a collection of just some of the work featured. I just love his humour and the way no image is sacred.

There has been a great deal of talk on other blogs about peoples tattoos, so I thought I’d show a collection of photos of my favourite member of the Spice Girls, Mel C.

This doesn’t show all of her tats, but most of them. Wasn’t she just a beautiful butch?

Mavens of the contemporary art world gathered in London’s Brick Lane to peddle their wares at the biennial Vauxhall Art Car Boot Fair on Sunday. Artists such as Peter Blake, Gavin Turk and Bob and Roberta Smith did a roaring trade in conceptual works, prints and even autographs, with buyers undeterred by the lofty price tags.

Check out the Glitter Ball Car designed by Pam Hogg. Now that I would love!

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A couple of interesting shots in Rome. I thought the Wedding door decoration was quite unique.

I had to scan this from a magazine so the quality isn’t that good, but the idea is. What a great way to make a boring wall look cool. Spend some time trawling the junk shops for a load of cheap frames, especially ones with baroque scrolls, and paint them all in the same colour and fill with cool pictures that are subtly themed by colour or imagery. Hang them on the wall in clusters.

You can buy the Antix multi-frame from the Conran Shop but at a one hundred and fifty pounds, it is a bit pricey.

Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture. Kusama has experienced hallucinations and severe obsessive thoughts since childhood, often of a suicidal nature. She claims that as a small child she suffered severe physical abuse by her father.

Early in Kusama’s career, she began covering surfaces (walls, floors, canvases, and later, household objects and naked assistants) with the polka dots that would become a trademark of her work. The vast fields of polka dots, or “infinity nets,” as she called them, were taken directly from her hallucinations.

Today she lives, by choice, in a mental hospital in Tokyo, where she has continued to produce work since the mid-1970s. Her studio is a short distance from the hospital. “If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago,” Kusama is often quoted as saying.

I always think it’s amazing when someone can find an outlet for their insanity and use it in a creative way. It’s incredible what you can get away with in the name of art. I love her work and can relate to the polka dot obsession.