Black, Red and White

 

 Malevich

Black, white, red, geometry

all images via pinterest.

Four Hearts

Jim Dine

Happy Valentines Day xx

DIY Valentine Cards

I had some fun today.  I made some potato cut prints. I cut out a heart shape and printed it onto cards.

Valentines Day is a charming holiday, a day to tell your loved ones you love them. In school when we were children I remember we would have a special day to make Valentine cards for our mothers, the cards would have cut out hearts in paper that would pop out in cards, or stencils in heart shapes... all kinds of ways to make a mark on a card.

Potato cuts is one of the easiest and fun ways to print. I couldn't resist looking at the bag of potatoes I was going to use to make soup.

Like a recipe, these are the items needed:

A potato
knife
plate
red paint
pens, pencils for embellishment
card, any size.

Start with your potato and cut in half, then draw a heart on the cut piece.

You have 2 potato halves, on one I cut around the heart, on the other I cut out the inside of the heart. Oh my god, that sounds heartless, but it is just a potato. When you have cut out the shapes, just blot them on a piece of paper towel.

 Put some paint on your plate. It can be any color, pink, green, blue, any color, white on a black card would look very chic, then draw a red line around it... thousands of ideas.

Then print:

This is so much fun with children, they can bring them to school for their friends, give one to all you love. So much nicer than a bought card or an e-card but just as nice as chocolates and wine.

Vertigo

I am as vulnerable as the rest to reading lists of the greatest. This week when Sight and Sound listed Vertigo with Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, directed by Hitchcock the best movie of all time, I had to watch it again and see what had captured the imaginations of 846 critics, programmers, academics and distributors. And interestingly what caused it to displace Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane was only nudged to number 2 in this list which it had held for 50 years, but a film which many have always considered a change in the way films are made, using the skills of film, sound and light to help tell a compelling story.

But Vertigo? I watched it again last evening and was struck by the colors and use of lighting to move the narration of the story. I did not think the story was any more compelling than Citizen Kane or Casablanca, one of my favorites or even another Hitchcock, Marnie. It is a murder story with the duplicitous use of a man's fractured psyche to spy, follow, trail another man's wife and set him up to cover up a murderous plot. The husband of the murdered woman takes her fortune and moves out of town, there is no satisfaction in this movie. It leaves you feeling with a sense of injustice.

Vertigo is a visually stylish movie with costumes by Edith Head. But it is the use of color and light and graphics in the anxious and angst nightmare of Jimmy Stewart when we are taken into his mind through animation starting with a bouquet of flowers that disperses into colorful petals and ends with a black silhouette of a falling man in a spiral of anxiety. Visually powerful stuff. And the visual references today to that sequence are numerous: the Dumbo dream and the pink elephants to Mad Men... and all that was done by hand.

The use of color: red, the restaurant with the deep red brocade wallpaper. The green light as Novak and Stewart stand against the window in her apartment. The green face and purple background of the dream sequence. Kim Novak's purple dress, the gray suit he so desperately wants her to wear. All scenes and more to augment the tension and anxiety in "Scotttie's" mind.

 

And marvelous shots of San Francisco. All these elements to the story and film making are prescient to today's world and our use of computers. Think of the filters we can now put on a photo, an image to enhance the color, fade it or highlight. Think of how we can cut out a segment of a image and layer it through photoshop and think of the way we follow, spy trail people through social media. As a whole movie, I wouldn't have listed it as the greatest film of all time, but I can certainly see how it has influenced the visual imagination of a new generation.

What is your favorite movie?

What's Going On In Your Head When You're Dancing?

This is the title to an exhibition of Karl Hyde's paintings and drawings at the  Bernard Jacobson Gallery on Cork Street from 17th July to 10th August.

These paintings are large, they stretch across the wall and are full of energy and vitality. There is a feeling of movement and a rapid gestural swoosh of a brush and charcoal, but standing in the space you can see there is much thought and contemplation that goes into the forms that dance across these canvasses. One can see the contrast of creating something that is rapid motion and movement but at the same time needing to think through how you want to fill that space and create a coherent expression of that moment of music and movement that is dance. Film can capture that, but the essence of film is movement. These paintings capture that moment of movement.

I was taken by the titles of the paintings, "Following The Sound Of Your Voice", "Birdlike Woman Runs a Giant Comb in through her Hair", "Your Feet Flick Fast with a mind of their own" or "On a Pink and Windy Morning" and many more. They are titles to short stories or the first line in a poem, or like a fleeting memory.

Many other images and paintings come to my mind when seeing these paintings, the colors of black white and red remind me much of contemporary Japanese calligraphy, but the more immediate image that came to my mind was the explosive sequences of Manga Anime.

Rapid, movement, gestures, fast, explosive, but pattern, rhythm, beauty, like Japanese calligraphy.

In my head when I am dancing it is the fusion of mind body and soul with music, I forget everything and exist in the moment letting my body move to the music.

See the show at the Bernard Jacobson Gallery, 6 Cork Street, London.

Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July

Tryon, North Carolina

Tryon, North Carolina is a charming small town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and where we spent our recent vacation in a home of friends that was a delight to be in, Camp Fire Water. A house designed for swimming and boating on Lake Lanier, a home to entertain family and friends, a home that was like a Ralph Lauren showroom, full of treasures and les objects trouve all about camping, fishing and hunting, games and sports, treasures of Indian artifacts and every corner a chair and a table with books and a lamp. A porch with rocking chairs to look over the lake. A dream house.

 

A delightful vacation with family and best friends, wine and food by the lake under a full moon. But after a vacation it is "au travail" back to work in French....... much love, Kelly

Hearts

 Happy Valentines Day  

Swatches from : Designer's Guild,  Etamine, Sheila Coombes, Harlequin.

A Home in the Country

 With the coldest weekend this winter, I was with my dearest friend in the country. The home is warmed up with a wood fire, throws over the chairs and lots of conversation. We walked in the snow, visited a friend and tasted some Vodka flavored with a blade of summer grass, a drink that warms you from within.

 A country home has many textures, but this home has the warmth of wood, textiles that are embroidered, rugs hand knotted and throws hand woven. The pottery is hand thrown that show the potters thumb print and the ridges from the clay being spun on the wheel.

Vases of fresh flowers make the room redolent with fragrance and bulbs are sprouting in pots, promising blossoms in a few weeks.

A delightful weekened and with no service for iPhone, no email, twitter, blogs, it was another world.

Red Squares

 

 Abraham Cruzvillegas from the collection Energy and Process at Tate Modern. Incredibly beautiful.

Saluda Grade Cafe

Red doors, fruit stands, benches outside, sunny and warm, a visit to the Saluda Grade Cafe, North Carolina.

Christmas Tables

I was in the the grocery store this week and saw all the Christmas foods on display, thinking of many recipes that are rich and delicious, simple settings will look best. The food will be the focus and the feast.

Source: foreverfunideas.blogspot.com via Kelly on Pinterest

Source: withstyleandgrace.blogspot.com via Kelly on Pinterest

Source: marthastewart.com via Kelly on Pinterest

Touches of red on the tables with white linen for Christmas, pretty.... and simple.