where I live

So, its sunday morning and we are going to a water park today!! with slides and thermally heated water.. very exciting.

I decided its time for some pictures of where I live, I have been here in Guanajuato for on and off about two and a half years and it is such a sweet little town. Its safe to walk around in and its got wonderful reastaurants and some wonderful bars and a lack of good dancing places (unless of course you like salsa or rave, I like 70ties funk and good popping disco for a fun everynow and then and in general just a good mix of good music. The salsa thing is fun for a while but… I actually bought a cd so me and Paul can practise.

Guanajuato was built on gold and silver from the mines here, which have been mined for centuries. It has been the focal point of various uprisings and rebellions notably the one lead by a man named Hidalgo against the spanish who were taking all the silver and gold out of the country. Of course now its canadian and american companies taking all the mineral and paying the miners terribly, but now its legal.. go figure

I love guanajuatos winding streets and old colonial buildings, it has such a grace to it. It is snnuggled into a valley and the buildings wind their way up the sides of hills and then down the other side.

Good leg muscles from living here, most directions are either up or down. You can’t get lost really, just follow the flow of the hills down and you will end up on the main way that meanders through the town. If in a car and you want to go back you have to follow the circle until you can access an underground tunnel.

The view from our house up the hill. I take the dog for a walk up there most days.

My puppy!

not so little anymore, he is a big slobber monster and loves to bark at passing motorcycles and bicicles. People are scared of him because he is a rotweiller but really he is a big mush. There are a lot of strays here and they are all savvy street dogs wanting to defend their turf, and Cubo of course just wants to play, most of them are ok but there are one or two whose aim is to fight and I drag Cubo away from them both dogs barking furiously at each other with people screaming and scrambling to get out of the way!

A square with two great restaurants on it, a crepe place and to the right and french salad bar, mmmmmm, so good..

Jardin de La Union.. with teatro juarez to the left there, its a beautiful old theatre, all plush and gold and carvings of cherubs and things inside. On the top are statues representing al the arts, painting, music sculpture, etc

I am missing certain pictures, like a view from above and a picture of the purple trees in bloom, they come out every year this time, so pretty. We are in high desert here and the surrounding hills are brown now but come the rainy season in july and august then the thunderstorms come rolling in and the hills turn green and the Nopal cactus starts flowering and other plants I have no names for send forth colour. The cattle and the horses start looking sleeker and in every tiny pool and puddle tadpoles swarm.

Ok I am going to go make some more coffee and some breakfast and then off to swim!!

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Sailing southern seas

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!

my new obsession

I have a new obsession.. it makes me go rummaging through my piles of fabric and hold two of them together and think, and then two more, and ponder, and then oooooooo this looks really cute and if I put this on it too! wow.. super cool

The object of my new craze? the wee tiny change purse. I posted a picture in the previous post of one I did and I have been making two a day since for my etsy shop.  Its since I discovered the utter simplicity of zip insertion.. its like discovering the wheel (or sliced bread) all over again. I love when I open them and there is a differant colour inside. Its like chocolate sweets with raspberry filling.. now there is a concept to apply to a purse

I bought linen with sparkly bits in it yesterday (fabric stores are the new second-hand clothes shops…. don’t get sucked in cliodhna! do you really need this fabric?.. answer? yes, yes, whatever, just buy it and worry about it later) and also some shiny blue satin and some red zips and some dark purple zip. There is a place in India I want to go to where they sell silk. A whole gigantic market full of silks and saris.. drool……

My problem is there are too many things I want to do and not enough time in which to do them and being a very typical gemini I get distracted by the latest pretty shiny thing and flit from idea to idea until my head feels like its going to burst and I get a panicky feeling that I will not get any of them done. Deep breath and one thing at a time.. I have to balance fun things like bags and purses and cute illustrations with exploring what I want to paint or pictures I have that I want to do. I had a realisation last night that I actually wasn’t 100% sure who I am exactly.. I am all these things and sometimes I try to be other than who I am  which confuses the matter again.

Its ok to be confused, worried, intense, self absorbed, shy, retiring, reclusive, and also at the same time be outgoing cheerful, happy, flighty, slightly batty. Maybe thats where the conflict comes in, my art has two sides, one more serious when I paint and try to reveal truths and explore meaning and then the other side where its just fun and hey little silver fishes and embroidered hearts look great on red felt..

tuesday

its tuesday.. reminds me of Popeyes friend.. can’t remember his name.. “i’ll gladly pay you tuesday” hey that would be a good slogan for a t-shirt. I am a bit obsessed with slogans for T-shirts at the mo.. heres one I made up

I don’t give a fork about spooning

and another

I am really a child-eating reptilian bent on galactic domination (david ike inspired that one)

The first one is getting a better response, though I would definitely wear the second one. Threadless is my new toy until I find another.

I have been messing with oil paints and changed my way of painting with them. I think I have actually gone backwards a little to when I first started painting with oils and I was messy and used the paint straight onto the canvas with swirls and lines and patterns. I got more refined in the meantime and was using layers and small brushes and the proper proportion of oil to spirits and all that and now I have come full circle back to straight from the tube onto the surface. So much fun! Here is a painting I did recently. Paul asked me to do one with lots of hands and it was easter to the two combined in my head to a spring growing picture

What else, I got some more funky mexican oil cloth and am starting to make some wee change purses with it. I have for sale on my etsy shop. 8 dollars each which is approx 5 euro. I was very pleased with myself though, I have finally conquered the dreaded zip insertion, its actually very simple, if anyone wants to know I could post about it, with pictures. I have been putting this off for years! always using some other way of closing my bags but now!!! aha! took me two tries.. you should see the first purse I made. It works but the seams are all over the place. here is the front of one of them. I love this fabric.

Ok, I have a list of things I want to accomplish today. I am going to buy knitting needles and some more zips, paint a picture, make two more purses, do some more photoshop work on a design, learn to scuba dive (I wish) and …….

x clio

easter sunday

good sunday everyone,

I wrote to a friend recently saying how great it was that the old symbols survive in spite of everything. Religions come and go but rabbits and the moon and birth and fertility keep getting celebrated. Easter according to one source is the old pagan goddess of fertility ‘Eostre’and easter is always celebrated on the first full moon after the spring equinox. I googled it a few days ago and came across a whole load of christian sites saying “easter is pagan” and admonishing us to quit with the fluffy bunny rabbits and eggs and concentrate on the ‘real’ meaning. As usual they don’t want anyone having fun….

What else.. Ooo.. threadless are having a sale, all their t shirts are 9 and 12 dollars. They are selling out fast and the sale is only till wednesday so get in there and have a look. I have bought about five shirts for various birthdays and a few for me (with an email to my sister telling her to choose one because the last time she ordered some I tried them all on and stole one!)(it was my birthday, she said I could… after I was wearing it and gave her the whole puppy dog treatment, pleeeeeease?) The picture above is called the battle of E5 and I got it for my brother and for Paul. The one below is for me called Victor Terrintop.

I actually sold two things from my etsy store! I was about to give up on it. Thing is I had a brainwave about three weeks ago when I realised from a feng shui perspective that I was sleeping with my feet facing the toilet so I was flushing everything I did down the drain so I moved the bed around (paul thought I was mad but helped me move the bed) and its incredible what moving furniture can do to a room. Our room is twice the size now and I love the new perspective. I makes a new room out of it and I wonder why it didn’t occur to me to do it ages ago. I am now posting things on etsy again. Thing is its an great place but there are something like 3 million people selling on etsy so advertising is necessary. You have to post things frequently so you are near the top of the search pages in there but also I need to start do some advertising myself. Have to think about that now…..

ok, off to find coffee and think, there is no coffee in the house and the cafe doesn’t open till ten. have to wait…

happy easter however you want to celebrate it! but could you imagine easter without the chocolate eggs? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

Blue Baby

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

The first time I came across an artist working with these concepts and I think he was amongst the first to think about it was Hundertwasser. An austrian artist, he said we have three layers, our own bodies, our immediate surroundings (homes) and the layer of society (streets, public spaces) and each layer had to be thought about and treated with care.

This is one of my favourite buildings of his…

along with a design for a hotel which from above just looks like green hills but the buildings are sloped and curved and the grass continues over the roofs. He wanted to bring nature into the buildings and trees grow out of roofs and windows and lines curve and twist. Reminds me of Guadi’s buildings in Barcelona.

He was an incredible artist too, on my top list of favourites

…and to continue

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!

Silence

so I have been thinking. I think we women need to reclaim our space. The feminists were right! I have been thinking about art and galleries and history and what is accepted by the establishment.

I am talking about our silence, our willingness to accept outer conditions of beauty and artfullness that come from an intellectual level. The mind (our own mind). The mind puts conditions and wants meaning and thought and wants to control.  I remember being in art collage looking through the history books and the vast majority were men. Now I know this is old news and I was angry then but I recently had a realisation that women let them do this. The men set up establishments that they considered very important and set up rules of painting and how to’s and what not to’s and said that anything that wasn’t accepted by them was not good art. (i know I am sweeping the whole of history with a very big brush here) and the thing is we believed them! we women started to try to be like them to get into the establishments they set up. Think about an alternative history where women respected their own womenhood and supported each other. Look at native american tribes or aboriginal tribes where the men and the women each have rich separate connections and rituals that honour and value the validity of being male and being female as well as connecting as a whole tribe.

If european history had had that how different would it be now?  It also took men to break  out of the rules at the end of the 19th century with Van Gogh and Gaughain and Monet and Picasso and all the groundbreakers from that time and yes there were women then too but where are they now? why are they not household names known by everyone?

I know whoever is reading this might be thinking this is a bit of a rant but this was a big revelation to me. As Paul asked me last night, (after he was contemplating ants and they didn’t even know he was there) what is so big I can’t even see it. So on a personal level  how have I been trying to fit with a male view of art and self expression, without even realising it.

There are women out there following their own path and I wish them all the good luck and energy in the world because it is hard. Looking at Ireland right now and there seems to be a fashion for intellectual art that ‘means’ something. When it is good they are meaningful and insightful and I love seeing them and pondering them but there is the other side too that we must honour and maybe it is time to create it ourselves. People have the buying power, women have the buying power!

I love the women artists I am finding on the web, and all the quilting and stitching shows, especially in the states are totally inspiring. They have gone past the functionality of the humble quilt to a piece of art work that shines with power. I love when I find beauty and true self expression whether it be male or female. because that what it comes down to, if we deny the female it doesn’t matter what sex we are, we are only living half a life.  Its so important for us women to speak out and be vocal and make our lives how we want it, for ourselves first but also if the women are silent then the whole community is only living half a life.

The female is fluid and limitless, creating new life, bringing forth, breaking boundries and overflowing the old. She is death because to create something new you have to say goodbye to the old. She is darkness because the seed needs darkness to germanate before bursting forth in new life. She is light because light flows everywhere. She nutures and guides and holds and encourages with no reservations, no rules apply, nothing is to little to be passed over.

The male is structure and buildings and solidity, the male brings forth the dreams and the creativity of the female and gives it form. Shapes it with tools and thinks up new ways of forming and controlling substances to hold the creation of the female. Builds buildings, creates laws,  sees limits, names things, puts order on chaos,

The male is lost in the pure fluidity and surging of life of the female and the female cannot function in the pure laws and structure of the male. We are all male and female, it is our job to balance the two.

ok, hope any of this makes sense. I know its a bit of a ramble. It makes sense in me but sort of in a round soft shape that is hard to put words on. It is a feeling of freedom for me, a sense of a whole other place that is there to be explored that I really didn’t value before. A place that is very open and welcoming and warm. Women have to find this place first because we are closer to it and then when we honour it and honour ourselves and each other then it doesn’t matter what the ‘establishment’ wants, we have our own place of power.

x clio

mexico city

…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

from earth to sky

so its thursday morning (i am fairly 100% positive) and I am going to mexico city tomorrow morning with Paul for the week-end. He has never been there before, despite having lived here for two and a half years. Mexico city is a full-on place. It has everything, museums, shops, incredible art galleries, pollution, dirt, poverty but above all it has people, around 20 million of them, all packed into a circular valley, overflowing the edges with slums and shanty towns.

So to the title of this blog, I was intruduced to the Hubble site by Paul ages ago, he loves it. Its photos from the universe taken by the hubble telescope. They are incredible images. Have a look if you have never seen them before.

Kinda puts everything into perspective. Makes me think of when I am flying at night and I can see the traceries of city lights below me on the ground. They always look so beautiful and delicate and like some alien language or landing codes being sent out into the universe for all to see  ‘land here! good rates on hotels, residing locals friendly and welcoming’. I can forget that down amongst those lights is a big messy mush of emotions and needs and wants and love and goodness and anger and dirt and beauty and anything you can think of.  Sometimes it makes me want to hang above it all just looking at the pretty twinkling things and daydreaming vague idealisms.