Day of Adventures

I'm posting this on the train from Svendborg to Odense, both in Denmark. One of the unis where I teach has a meeting twice a year with good food, better company and fun times nestled nicely among (in)formal chat about the uni, this meeting takes place in the maritime town of Svendborg and I've been there a couple of times now.

Oddly enough, this is the town in Denmark that most reminds me of London - it's a sensibility to the past, a certain reluctance to tear down and build new and it therefore offers up a nice bit of psychogeography. It also helps that the place is heavy on maritime symbols, mermaids, anchors, waves cut in wood abound. I have a troubled realationship with my old Nikon D70 and since most of my memory for the camera has either died or been hidden by my son, I currently have the capacity of four photos on one of the silly 16Mb cards that came free with something at one point or another, but here's half of what I snapped:



Soon it's Odense, birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen - I'm not really a big fan of his depressing fairy tales, but I am partial to his paper cuts. I will choose my four shots carefully - or possibly get a new card.

Last one...

Luckily, rosehip season is upon us and after a bit of annoying cleaning of these itchy...things... The stash to last us a year is in the cupboard. Right now elderberry capers are soaking up salt and soon it's time for blackberries. Need to get into mushrooms and shoreland foraging next. It's a brilliant thing to do. Somehow, it's connected to my creative work and somehow it's not. We scavenge/salvage a lot of building materials from the street, not only because it's free, but because of the soul these pre-loved bits of furniture possess.

Scavenging and foraging are pretty similar, spotting something useful as you walk, but foraging is knowledge based, scavenging for design projects is open and, well, creative. There's no creative thinking involved in foraging, there's no creative thinking involved in boiling jam, you follow a formula and it's a nice break.

Also, it tastes quite good.

the streets of Aarhus
It's no secret that I miss the art, design and inspiration of London and that Aarhus is lacking edge. I've ranted about crap galleries before and it made me very happy that Art Snob has now shut. On Sunday, however, Aarhus showed itself from its good side and gave me this:



First is a page from a porn mag, made harmless with plasters. This made me smile, the porn is disarmed but in a slight off putting way.

Second is a couple of Lego 19s added to already too many, turning it into a Paul Hardcastle song. I read about the guy doing these and the article mentioned that he repaired buildings with Lego, i figured it was just another rip-off artist, ripping off Jan Vormann but his house numbers are good. Why do so many Danes think we don't google the same stuff they do or look in the same Die Gestalten books?

Anyway, last image is an ornamental Jack White, I do love this model kit urge to accurize your house's ornaments, crap as it may look.

Actually, that's not all we found, we found one of these little unmanned shops you usually only find in the countryside too, we bought a metal fish-mould and an old tin that used to be the home of some ice cream that went under the name Tripoli, but more about them later.

Studio tour: The stuff around us
We have finished (well, we still need to make a movie) our "Spirits of the Forest" project, school's out, so no more teaching and most clients are away on holiday so let me use the time to show you round the place, you see, we moved about 4-5 months ago and sadly the new place didn't allow for a separate studio so we've engaged in a strict Not-too-much-stuff regime as the boundary between work and living has been blurred. This doesn't mean minimalist Scandinavian living like in the mags - objects feed our brains, so here are some objects that made the cut:



Don't be fooled, the clipboard look neat here, but the truth is that the photo was taken RIGHT after they got up in that old magazine rack. Also, we have more than one magazine but one is allowed in the rack at a time - at the time it was an issue of the always mind blowing Raw Vision. Right now, there are two issues of It's Nice That (3+4), Latest issue of CUT, an old Lodown, a print sample of a parenting mag and The Guardian from June 11th (We miss The Guardian so Chris of Garudio Studiage with whom I used to teach at Central Saint Martins sent us a copy back in June - If you want to send us a copy of The Guardian in exchange for anything bar our souls, please get in touch.

The candle was Mr. Mio's christening candle - a German tradition. The standard ones were pretty awful in that religious way so we made our own.

The glasses were from an optician that closed shop, they're carved in wood and the hands are from an old glove factory, someone I shared studio with once got them for a project.



Ah, the odd mix of light switches and plug sockets from different eras , the fake Pikachu one and the feather one are pretty random, the tache one was in our old studio too.



Art we like.
Some from friends, some from former students, some from former versions of ourselves, some are just nice, like the Letraset sheet there are a few things that ought to be there that aren't.



Wallpaper archeology.
I stripped of some of the newer layers of wallpaper - probably in impulse stemming from my childhood. On that wall are a couple of jumping jacks Annabelle made and a big green F that I found in a town called Ebeltoft which sounds a bit like someone the Moomins might know.



A mirror that still hasn't been put up reflects Annabelle working on something by the window that hosted The Sage, The Basil, The Rosemaries, Helen's Tomato, Pale Dill, Father Thyme, Dead Hot Chili Papas and a toner cartridge waiting to be sent to the recycling place.

That's it, I need to design some stickers for a secret club now. And you need to scoot over to that same club to join the mailing list, we have good things coming. Including stickers.