cliodhna’s wave

Ya’ll have to go vote on this t shirt so I can buy it for Paul. He is always saying ‘It’s good to be the man’ to get a rise out of me and when I saw this shirt and the name of it its just too perfect. Its on another t shirt submission site I found called Design by Humans. I put their link in my blogroll.

What else… I left my camera in the internet cafe, big bummer, I am going to put up a notice for reward to get it back and everyone in the mine is covered in a really strange rash that we reckon is from the water but the doctors keep saying its insect bites and give us medication that doesn’t work. Why is it that doctors don’t listen to people? Its reaaaaaalllllllly itcy. I keep saying we have the mange, like dogs get!

So my threadless submission didn’t get very far. I think I am not hip enough for threadless or else I am not involved enough to get comments. Oh well, not really worried. Would be nice to get a design printed though and get 2000 dollars!

So I took the design I did and made it into an embroidery. I stiched the people up seperately and stuffed them and then stiched them down onto the backround fabric so they stand out. To make the people I patchworked strips of fabric together first and then embroidered the people on top of that and then made them into the dolls ready to get stuffed.

Words in the corner, sky dancing, growing, singing, dancing…

It is good to get back on the sewing machine again. I have one more project on the go and another one sitting in my head ready to leave.

Its funny about what other people think is cool or not cool or marketability. Just read this post today from Florence Forrest. Sometimes I do work which I don’t really value until years later when I look at it and see that it is actually a good piece of art work that I just didn’t think was good enough at the time. Or I understand more about the image and why I did it. I think rather than ‘not being marketable’ I think we are just not ready to expose them. They sit until we recognise their value and recognise the value of who we were at that time. She does the coolest toys too, check them out.

I think sometimes I can get lost in needing to be professional and advance my ‘career’ and forget that the best art comes from the heart in the moment and if we loose that then we have lost our connection to ourselves. Marketability comes when it is ready. Of course actually getting out there and showing the world what you do helps also! Its a balance.

and of course to leave you with,  the usual picture of a beautiful sky!

check these really cute shoes out! I want a pair. I have them in my favourites list and I go and look at them every now and then. It is a site called Fairysteps

She makes them herself. You measure your feet and send her your measurements and she makes them to order. She has certain ones ready to sell. I love the idea of getting shoes made up for me. I want a pair of high leather lace up boots in bright red.

I just showed these to Paul and he hated them! we have very differant tastes in clothes and things. I think they are adorable.

Also for the girly girl working in a mans world I love this site. Oshatoes

Its safety gear and steeltoes shoes but they are for girls! There are pink hard hats and pink safety glasses. So cute. I look around this mine site and I think it would be great to have everybody wear pink hard hats! I shalll take some pictures today of this place for this blog.

What else, oh yes, the puppy turns out to be a girl so she is back being Pala again. Its strange how we treat things differently as to whether they are male or female. I found myself thinking differently about the puppy when I found out she was a girl.

And I sold two purses from my etsy store! surprised I was, I haven’t sold anything from there for ages. I had kinda left it alone. Cool.

xx clio

I got a text message from my brother today that my birthday portrait was up on flickr. Its strange looking at photos of myself but I really like this one. His site is at Flickr his sets are down the side. Some great ones in most interesting and some cool places in places mostly from his trip round the world a few years ago when he was laid off and given consolation prize of lots of money!

He is a really good photographer. he messes around with strange old fashioned cameras and at one stage was using coffee and lemon juice to develop the films. If you ever want portraits done give him a shout. i am constantly asking him when he is going to get an exhibition together or show his work in a cafe or a restaurant for sale. Since Mark has been born there has been nothing but baby photos and photos of mother and baby This one is one of favourites of Mark.

The colour is wonderful. Very subtle.  The next one is my sister with a double exposure. I love the way the  foliage is over her. She would prefer it without the camera around her neck.

And a cool one of a weird skyline developed with coffee..

and an amazing one of our dad looking very wise man of Aran

and I love this one

and of course the artist himself

Five random things I have picked up over the last while.

First is for those of you who either love fabrics or who love words. It’s a list of fabrics from medieval times and their description. For example samite medieval. a rich silk interwoven with gold or silver threads. or vervise medieval blue cloth similar to plunket. At  Rosalie Gilbert you will find it.

Second, 10 Socks, I just love these, I will have to get them for someone. Not that expensive really at the end of the day when you consider that really good socks last for many years instead of two washes. And no matter which ones you lose you will always have a match.

My favourite artist on threadless. Priscilla Wilson. I love her illustrations.

A website about Kefir. An amazing culture drink, along the smae lines as yoghurt but has other miniature organsims just dying to set up in your digestive system and set about repairing/protecting it. It sits in milk/soya milk/almond milk and does its thing and you strain of the liquid drink it and put more into your kefir. Endless fun.

And lastly for the feelgood factor, I am sure most of ye know these cards, having seen them in health food stores and angel/fairy/hanging crystal stores. Doreen Virtues cards. But if you want words of happiness and nice things and fluffy bunnies then go here.

enjoy, x clio

hi, due to an absence of stuff I have done I have been thinking aboout what it was I wanted to write about and then I remembered etsy and all the cool things I have been finding there. Starting with a new ‘hearts me’ which I checked out and loved her pictures. MizzDraconia has a cool photographic style, I love her images.

also a shop called Stargazer29609 who has the most delicious bead work I have seen for a while, she has this necklace here which I love and there is a bracelet I just saw which went on my favourites list also

and still on the bead trail, check this shop out, she has beaded necklaces but she also uses really yummy stones in her stuff. Forbesfarm

I adore Kathannah’s work, she is very witchypoo, all vague and sensitive and wonderfulness

who else.. for sheer wonderfulness of style, johnwgolden, he has a simplicity I find appealing and his work is so full of character, check this crafty fox out

an to stay on an animal theme, I remember the first time I had ever seen a wild boar, I was so excited. It was in the north of spain. Remember Asterix and Obelix? they were always chasing boars to eat them and the boars would always lead them to roman patrols to shake them off and the romans figured the gauls had trained the boars to find the romans. A shop called the bigheadedrobot.

I love this womans work also, KatherineDunn, this link is to her website, but she has an etsy store also. Its another fox. she draws a lot of animals. Her drawing style is so free. I am inspired to get out my messiest charcoals and oil pastels.

alright, reckon thats a lot to be going on with! cool stuff everywhere to be ferreted out and discovered!! happy happy joy joy……

My other project which I have been doodling away on is a submission for threadless, the t-shirt company I have been going on about recently. I am getting the hang of photoshop, just discovering how I can make it do what I want it to do and also, what does it do best. I like the clean lines I can get, it suits my style.

A close up of the boat and the birds…

What else.. I have been discovering new music recently, I am finding what can only be described as noise. I love it, when it doesn’t have any reason or beat to it but layers of texture. The newest one which I downloaded without listening and then go lost in it for an hour is called the Disintegration Loops by William Basinski, he was transferring electronic loops from analogue to digital and the tapes were very old and decaying as he transferred them. “The music was dying as I listened to it”. They are wonderfully calm and spacey.

Another group called Godspeed You Black Emperor and the album is called ‘Lift Your skinny fists to heaven’ another ambling through soundscape and random samplings.

For one last one along the same vein, Amon Tobin’s Chaos theory has a beat but at the same time is pure noise.

Cool stuff all, I don’t know how to put a sample on this blog so you are going to have to imagine it!

Crow makes a wish and brings it to the sea.
It is a wish for companionship or for knowledge, he can’t quite decide.
But it is a definite wish for something
and so he takes a piece of sky, he takes a piece of the skies love for the sea,
and he drops it into the waves.
The sea swallows it in a rustle of sand and his wish is gone.
He waits by the shore hoping in his heart for a friend
and in his mind for the answers to the questions he asks himself constantly

This was a story I wrote a few years ago, its doesn’t really go anywhere but I still like it. There is more to come. Blue baby arrives and grows wings but I think I will let it tell itself instead of trying to guess where its going. I am having fun painting them.

I found a blog I thought I had lost its called the Mud Girls Blog and it is a collective of women who build cob houses and straw bale houses and I was enchanted at the pictures of the sweetest house I have ever seen

check it out!

This is the inside and there are more photos on the blog. Its beautiful, round corners and little hidden things. It is a gnome house, (do you ever notice the way some people are gnomes or elves or something but just don’t come from the same place the rest of us do? I know a woman in Galway and she has come straight out of the limestone of the burren).

Their home site is here if you want to read about cob building and ovens.

Now for something on the other end of the spectrum but still in harmony with our environment and still beautiful have a look at this building

It cleans the air and its wonderful to look at. Read the post about it. Its a cool site, called the Green Geek

Remedios Varo

after yesterdays vagueness I figured I had better get some facts together. I found a few great sites with a catalogue of womens artist through the ages. There are a lot of them, it changed when life drawing form male models was introduced and the Academias were established in the eighteenth century but they still found a way around it. Here are two links..

Wikipedia good facts and narrative history and links to the artists by period

Women Artists from medieval times

some of my favourite artists are Remedios Varos, I love the strangeness of her images, Icould spend all day staring at them. Georgia O Keefe, how could anyone not love her flowers and cactii and desertscapes. Aileen Johnston who does the most incredible embroideries. I also love all the strange toys and odd creatures I am finding in etsy, I have posted about some of them here before.

Here is a link just for the girls! 

ok, I am off to paint and break a few rules!

…back from the big smoke to the (relative) smallness and countryiness of Guanajuato. Mexico city is an amazing place. Full of everything. We wandered round museums and down streets and up buildings. The picture above is a street, but see how it undulates? from the earthquake in 1985 (wikipedia) the streets curve into the distance. Mexico city is basically built on a lake bed so subsidence is a problem. There is a pendulum in the cathedral which shows the movement of the building over the last few hundred years or so and it topples slightly to the right and then to the left!

It is full of art this city, the Palacio de Bellas artes is incredible and there are art museums all over the place. Little places are hidden inside courtyards. We stumbled into a building and found a sculpture exhibition. What was interesting was that there was braille beside the description. They were beautiful to look at, heavy shiny metal, big faces and full round bodies, but also when I started trying to feel them with my eyes closed wonderful to touch aswell. I don’t have the name of the artist, whoops! didn’t even think of getting it, just looking and wandering.

also a lot of art along the paths. I love these guys.

And, finally we got a new Huichole painting. I love the Huichole art work. They have websites selling their work and galleries all over mexico. I like the market in Mexico city because it’s actually them selling their work. Puerto Vallarta is terrible, the traders have these huge stores selling the ‘best’ of the art but really all they want is to get you into a timeshare interview. We were being offered paintings for free if we would only come and listen to their pitch (hell on earth as far as I am concerned, you might get something for free but I could not listen to the hard sell for three hours) and it made me wonder how much money the artists actually got for their work from these guys.

Isn’t it beautiful?Not sure what it means, there was no story written on the back. Its night time, and the man is a shaman and those animals are probably his spirit guides, and then I thought maybe he is a shapeshifter, just from the alternating dog and human footprints. Your guess is as good as mine!

Ok! time to do some work, have to see if photoshop has decided to start behaving itself again after I told it to repair itself, xx clio