Link I Up

Here are some pictures of what my Edward Said exhibition looked like and here is a link to the E.S website. Please excuse.....well, everything about it. 

I was young! I was naive! I thought I was cool! I have run out of excuses!

Anyway, enjoy the retro pictures.

I made all of my business cards from old tube tickets. I hand painted, sprayed, drew and wrote on all of them. You can see them just by my left elbow there. 

Trying to explain to the tube guy at Westbourne Park why I wanted them was a reet laugh and I will remember that conversation fondly.

Prison Dolls

As my next project cooks (slowly) in the oven, I thought it would be nice to have a touch of reminiscing going on, all up in this here joint. So please find, below, my collection of Prison Dolls. 

Each doll represents it's real life (fictional) owner and the idea being that the doll would go off and have all the adventurous fun whilst leaving the bad guys safely locked up inside to rot like the bad, bad men they are. 

I am not really sure where the idea for this came from but I think I was watching a lot of Shawshank and Green mile at the time so that may have had something to do with it.

I designed and screen printed the patterns on to very course cotton, researched the shit out of Criminals, Victorian and turn of the century prison wear. I then started the arduous task of designing and working out how the hell to make these things. It was all a case of trial and error as I had no books to tell me how to do anything and the internet, even in 2006, wasn't very forth coming with information. The whole on-line crafts movement hadn't really kicked off by then or at least it was still in it's very infancy. I don't even think Facebook was an actual "thing" at that point either. Scary how things move so fast.

I had to make very concise templates and made things in sections to be attached all at the end. All in all, it took me about 4 months to make them all, give or take a cutla weeks or so.

Alfie the gangster

Cane (tall) and Abel (small) the con men

Abacus the fraudulent Accountant

Anoushka the Russian spy

Bert the Burglar

You will have to excuse the crumpled background on these pictures. It would seem that constructing dolls from my imaginarium is easier then putting a hot plate to cloth. Tut tut.

Edward Said

Oh my days! I have been incredibly lax with my posting and have given myself a proper hand slap for it. 

The below picture is of Edward Said, the first ever doll I made way back in 2003. He was part of a merchandising concept which involved the doll, a book and a website. I will have to remember the URL for the website and link it in, although it is all pretty cringe and naive. 

The idea behind Edward was that he was a young lad, living in London, not really knowing what he wanted to do with his life and finding out that he was, actually, a super human calculating machine and had a brain like no other. 

Yeah. Deep.

I had just moved back to London after 8 years and was having a HUGE love affair with it and E.S is really a manifestation of that. Actually, a lot of work around this time was about London; it's Architecture, it's people, it's history. I spent a lot of time at the Museum of London, hanging around the canals and East London like a proper fan kid. Good times.

I made Edward from some quickly written instructions from a mate and he is dressed in mini versions of my favourite jeans and jumper. Although he is the most badly made doll, he has special sentimental value as he is the first. 

P.S: I will get some images of the book and my sketch books up as soon as possible. x

Oldies but alrighties

Here are some things I made a while ago. The embroidery took forever but was well worth it. Your guess is as good as mine as to what's going on in there. I am with out a clue.

The orange thing was made after I woke up in the middle of the night and thought there was a Giraffe in my room but, thankfully there wasn't. That would have been weird and slightly worrying. No, as it turned out, it was a shadow of my coats and whatnot hanging on my door. The grey thing is a....... and the white, robot thing is a.......

Bird

This is by no means a finished product. Think of it, if you will, as a blue print for a much finer, sophisticated structure.

 I think the materials used here are pretty obvious and If they're not, get some new eyes.

Voodoo tale

This was made using some twigs, sewing thread, some string and coarse linen. The head piece at the back is hand embroidered around some, yep, twigs. 

The idea came to me whilst watching a Knights Tale. I know, I know. But I was tired (i.e vulnerable) and alone. Actually, if I hadn't of watched it I wouldn't have come up with this crazy voodoo guy. So that's that. I made it in a night. Fortunately I had the idea early on, so I got to watch a Ledger classic whilst winding some string around a twig. 

Best. Night. Ever.

Soft Finger Friends

Here are two Finger Friends I made on Wednesday night. There are going to be 10 in total, all colour coordinated and soft. I really need to think of a better name for them. Finger Friends sounds weird and a little pervie. 

I should have an army of them pretty soon. I am already thinking about the next batches colour combination and I would like to incorporate more pattern and embroidery. 

Dolly

Just saw this little creation on this website, via my favourite blog. Take some time to look through the pictures properly. They are of an abandoned school in Russia and anyone that knows me, knows how I love a good abandoned property. Yum. Everything about it pulls at my heart strings. The old text books, the weird army of skeleton birds, the dust (dust!!), everything. I love it all. It's amazing how everything is still there, untouched.