Selma's House

If you have been keeping up to date with our blog you might remember me mentioning a photoshoot we did in Selma's house. The developing has taken a while as I waited to get them done by my trusty guy in Brighton. I am really exctied by the results and the project has sparked of loads of new ideas for films and other shoots. Before you see the photos, let me tell you the story:

On our travels, we stopped in Sarajevo for the night and found ourselves staying in a wonderful treasure chest. The woman who rented us the room (for something like £10 for all of us) opened the door wearing a full maroon, velour tracksuit. She was smoking a long straight and had dark-red hair. Her low, husky voice was undoubtedly a tribute to a lifetime of chain smoking- overall, Bosnia's answer to Dot Cotton. She showed us the room and Anna and I looked at each other in disbelief. Project. Half an hour later she told us she was going out to a local festival with her friends. In a short conversation with much sign language and guide-referring she told us to make ourselves at home. That we did, wearing her clothes and accessories in her kitsch playground of a home. She arrived back and came into the room to give us more sheets just after we had finished putting everything back in its place. Annie, Danni and Anna ran into the shower/loo and hid there giggling whilst I stood there in a skimpy, gold swimsuit pretending we were getting ready to go out. Part of us felt terrible as she was so lovely but the other part thought that if she had known about it, she may well have got involved! This is the (tame part of the) tale we (just) lived to tell...

Bestival

The fancy dress effort was AMAZING! Best I have ever experienced at a festival. One photo I didn't get that I wish I had, was one of a group of people who all had oversized scrabble letters on large sticks so that they could come together in the crowd and make words. A useful tool for finding/cussing/embarassing your friends or sucking up to the live acts on stage! My other favourite costume has to be a giant whoopee cushion. What a great weekend...the photos speak for themselves. Hopefully some of them will be published at some point. A selection of the photos of Bestivalians wearing wacky shades will also be blown up and used in an opticians window display. Unfortunately the photos I took of the Cuban Brothers, on the night we interviewed them didn't come out so well. The lomo cameras just prefer the sun I am afraid! I am still awaiting one medium format film though so we shall have to wait and see what those results are like. For now, here are a few of the best:

New things

My Mum went on holiday and got back today, she brought me gifts.... She asked what I wanted and I said just have a little look for some jokes old magazines. She knows how much I love 50's graphics and I can't belive what she brought back for me. Loads of inspiration. Looks like I'm having a quiet night in with my new old things.


A slection of 1960s mags with some strange old adverts in them.



This crac gun is so cool. What a great little toy.

Oh yeah

I forgot, the first one of my friends got married on Saturday. How scary, but right for her. Although it means that Anna and I now won't have a cushty pad to rent in Williamsburg, NY anymore as they will be living there! Katie is an actress in Sound of Music and got the guy from Hair and beauty to do her hair in a twenties flapper style. What a beauty she was...

I almost forgot...

These are some (pretty bad) photos of photos Anna and I took whilst we were away... we only found out on our way to Bosnia that derelict buildings often still have landmines in them...ooops. Will upload them properly when we have the negs scanned.

YCN Alphabet

Our latest piece of work is for YCN. We were commissioned to customise a bespoke letter 'J' for the next YCN book. Other designers and illustrators were comissioned to do the same. The results will be used to illustrate the book. Hopefully there might also be a photographic feature on us, as our creation is interactive. We decided to make a Mexican piñata after taking the initials JP for Jiggery Pokery and coming up with 'jackpot'. A piñata is a hollow shape made from papier mache which is then brightly painted and decorated. It can be shaped as whatever you want i.e an animal, a flower...Inside it is usually filled with sweets and children take turns to beat it with a stick, blindfolded, until it breaks and the sweets spill out. However, our piñata is not conventional and no amount of questioning from Alex at YCN has made us disclose our secrets! Here are some photos from start to finish taken in what is now my bedroom, come studio, sitting room, gallery, office and antique shop:

Festival Season

A summer of festivals is that of the norm for Anna and I. this is not to say that we are purely hedonistic however. Exit was an exception to our normal working festivals. Since graduating we both worked at Big Chill. Working is the best way to enjoy the festival. You get a free ticket, meet loads of new people and to top it off Jam Events, the company we work for pays us too! Hats off to them. Chromeo were amazing, Cinematic Orchestra and Kruder and Dorfmeister stand out in my mind and I can't not mention the Soulman himself- Isaac Hayes. It was the first truly sunny festival of the year and my favourite Big Chill so far...








Following Big Chill, Anna went to Reggae Sundance in Holland (ok so maybe that is two festivals without working...ahem) and I got promoted to be a manager of one of the bars at Green Man Festival. Lots of working and new things to learn but (muddy) fun too. Joanna Newsom was incredible, even in the pissy rain and I discovered a new band I now love called 'My Brightest Diamond'- check them out on Myspace. Glanusk Park in the Breccon Beacons is probably the most beautiful festival site I have experienced. The festival was small and chilled and a warm-down from the other bigger festivals...

UNTIL We were given BBC press passes for this weekend's Bestival on the Isle of Wight. Just as we thought we could pack away our tents until next year...Now we are going to, what will hopefully be the best festival of the year...and the festival that ends the summer each year. We will be helping to interview and photograph The Cuban Brothers, The Dub Pistols, Rob and Josie Da Bank. This work comes as an unexpected and exciting new project through a couple of friends who we will be working for in the future. They are starting a magazine and we will be Art Directing the front covers and hopefully getting involved in some other creative aspects of its content. It will be launched this winter so watch this space for more info. We are both really excited about being involved in a new project starting up and the fact that we will have a lot of creative freedom. There is also a chance we might do some work on a couple of music videos with an up and coming art director. Ho-hum, lots of possibilities...all very exciting. We will both feel a lot better when our website is re-launched so that we can start promoting ourselves properly again. Until then you can see what we are getting up to on this blog.

Where Have We Been??

Yes it has been an awfully long time! We apologise for our lack of blogging over the last few months, it really is not acceptable. After the last blog we finished our degree which was a welcome relief. We put up our shows (Photos of Anna's to follow) and survived the private view...

...organised, built and promoted our London show with many thanks to the help of our amazing families and friends. It looked amazing, we had a brilliant weekend in East London and quite a few people had interest/got jobs from it. Altogether, a big success(more photos to follow).

Lots of hard work, energy consumption, blood sweat and tears took us right through to the end. I am glad to say we have come out the other side too...

Since then we have...here goes... been travelling... Italy...Slovenia...Croatia...Bosnia...Serbia...Hungary...well that ticks off five new countries on the 'I have been to' list. Along with lots of beautiful beaches and fresh seafood...

...1 incident with cackling, howling jackals, much night swimming, a discovery of sea urchins (I had a lucky escape but ended up being doctor to all), head-banging and getting involved with the face-paint at a HALF YEAR(!?!) Party...

...eating the juiciest peaches and nectarines ever, my first time driving on the other side of the road in a left-hand drive...

...many mosquito bites, lots of good books, a photo shoot at Selma's house in Sarajevo (WATCH THIS SPACE!), a massive history lesson and a trip to our first festival of the summer 'EXIT' in Serbia. Exit was amazing, enduring, overwhelming, music, booze and sun-filled. It was the reunion/celebration Anna and I had been waiting for after finishing uni...

Jack Murray gets first prize for best-dressed at Exit it in the male category...

...or maybe second after Alex Bec in Katie's sequinned top, on his birthday...??!

...but it has to be Anna in the silver Lame leggings in the 45 degree heat that takes the women's prize!

After the endurance test that was Exit, we travelled home via Budapest. We spent one much-needed day at the beautiful Gelert Spa, bath and pools. The same night, Voytek took us to some of the most interesting, inspiring bars and clubs, all hidden away on tiny nothing-looking streets. The unassuming entrances led up the the highest roof gardens or breaking out into massive courtyards full of recycled furniture, collected lamps, pictures, mirrors etc. The language barrier proved particularly testing on our journey to Balaton airport (never do it-pay the extra, trust me!). We awoke to the train inspector waving his finger in my face and then pointing at the tickets exclaiming "no,no,no,no...no". Half-asleep and confused, it took us about 20 minutes and an amateur game of Pictionary (illustrators, what illustrators??!) for us to realise we were on the wrong part of the train...phew panic over and we arrived...home.

Thankfully tanned, we then GRADUATED!! Both with 2-1s. We are very happy with our 2-1s as the marks we lost (or rather the marks we never gained) were replaced with occasionally partying. Anna and I both agree that this is always necessary in order to hold on to a little bit of sanity...

WOW. That was one long post that involved hours of finding/organising and choosing photos...I will re-cap on other things that have been happening recently in my next post...for now I must pack for Bestival (watch this space too!)

(N.B Some Photos borrowed from fellow friends and graduates: Jessica Bonham, Vaughan Ward, Katie Waters and Isobel Evans. Check the links to view their work.)