Full-time dreamers

I am still feeling sad. After finding out that most of my former neighbourhood in the UK has been demolished, that in fact, two-three years on, it is more or less history for those who are now flocking to the new college that has replaced the blocks of flats that seemingly were viewed as a symptom of all the ills of the city they belonged to.

Must have been a whole lot more homesick than I realised for all his emo stuff to come out now, Whatever.

For all you astrologers, well you should see the mundane horoscope for Coventry, that is all. Just the sort of place that would have various Ceaucescu-esque town planners intent on creating a Brave New World of perfect civic infrastructures, harmony, transparency and - of course - prosperity. Of course I could visit in another 3 years and gratefully recognise this great wisdom. They were right and after all, my former home was inside one of the blocks that was retained. Perspsective, perspective. long tem, short-term. ......Like my photo (It is not a UK one, though)?

I even remember telling someone beofre finding out, who was studying to become a designer of urban spaces, that they really ought to go and see Coventry, to find out about botched replanning and its consequences.

I am always asking, wondering: just how do you create infrastructures that facilitate rather than create obstacles,n ot oppress rather than allow everyone to flower in solidarity and friendship. Then, the nagging worry, that perfectly functioning infratstuctures just might end up becoming somewhat Orwellian. On the other hand, here I am again, in another bad country that is giving me the sense that my survival, as ever, is on the line. Lose an invoice book and the full weight of a vengeful IRS is there, waiting to devour me in its claws. OK I have been in a bad mood all this week. Long story.

Full-time dreamer, as said again. Yet, it was the very dysfuncionality of Hillfields, the sense of living somewhere subversive that for a whole, made being part of our totally sad artist's group such a wonderful adventure. Misfit inner city for a misfit girlie.

To quote the immortal Pink Floyd refrain, can't think of anything else to say. Just wish me luck tomorrow in dealing with the Powers that Be.

Confessions of a crap entrepreneur

Well...I did it!! I sold some prints on RB!

The bad news being that I miscalculated on the currency and ended up with the princely sum of.......66p.

Don't spend it all at once...

Etsy kept turning down my bank cards and parania was starting to set in, but it sems that the only problem was that their software did not recognise accents and umlauts on letters.

So here is my Etsy link:

www.etsy.com/public_profile.php

Remodernist Manifesto???

OK, here is an entry I made in an idle moment at Red Bubble, a forum for artists, along with a link to the responses to it:

www.redbubble.com/people/ne...nt-5256084


'Remodernists

Recently I was asked to join the ‘remodernist’ group, which apparently is made up of members ‘who would challenge the hegemony of post-modernism.’
Well, sentiments like these could certainly have taken the words out of my mouth.

I wonder how many people are getting tired of the elitsm, the gimmickism ranging from exhibitng dogs to die (allegedly) to urinals (that was the first post-modernist exhibit), along with (allegedly from an artist friend-cum-student of mine who saw it), a machine that makes synthetic but authentic manure (with no commercial or scientific application whatsoever, It was All in the Nameof Art), to more exhibiting more organically-produced poo in various hues?

The Emperors-new-clothes aspect of the cleverness of it all created laziness for me too. Why bother with an inner artistic path of transmutation or however you might wish to define it, when some graduate from the right school only has to daub an ugly shape with ugly colours (ugliness cannot be superficial after all) and make thousands out of it???

I do hope that my work will be able to speak for itself more and more'

Have I started something there????

Well guess what, I really hope so.......

Douglas House

This picture shows me standing on the balcony of the block of flats where I used to live: Douglas House, Coventry. It was part of a notorious estate of high-rise flats in an inner-city area called Hillfields and most people thought I was crazy to move there. And by the time I left, 'I told you so' sentiments were writ large, as the crack dealers had taken over.

This building is practically the only one still standing, the rest have been demolished. Ostensibly, it is because the flats were too expensive for the owners to run, but now I gather it was because the Powers that Be wanted to build a new college in their place.

When I first moved into Hillfields, there were task forces of do-gooders who were trying to forge a better sense of community, bring jobs to the area, etc, etc. By the time I left, all this had been forgotten about and it was obvious that the powers-that-be had decided to allow the place to rot.

I moved in partly because the Ballardesquely lurid reputation of the area did attract, have to say (though there wasn't yet any crack dealing), and I knew there was a community of artists living there. And for a time, there was indeed a good community of artists. From an artistic point of view again I liked both the quality of the light in the flat and being a litle above ground level and that is what I like about the flat I am living in now by the bye, which is similar to where I lived before. I had thought the dreams about moving back into Douglas House would stop after buying this place, but they did not, as dreams about wandering through the estate and not quite recognising the landmarks continued. As I would not, now. It isn't there any more.

Yeah, Progress...

Prints available

I have spent a night and a day updating my artwork pages - here is the portal to it all:

www.geocities.com/lyndastev...yintro.htm

You can also now order professionally-made prints of some of my artwork at Red Bubble, as well as at Imagekind! So if you like my work, then please check these places out.....

Now you see it.....

I shal update my website with my new work soon. Meantime enjoy my new photos.

One in particular is lookinfg worse not better, whilst the luminescent black ones still will not translate well with the old digital.

Opening

Well, here it is.

The venue is called the Duna Plaza.

I was not able to see the actual opening because of a student I could not contact in time. And I hate being skint.
When choosing the 5 pictures to exhibit, it made me want to bin a lot of my earlier pieces, as terminal crap. In fact on Sunday I sprayed over them instead. The effects were interesting.

Exhibition

Right now I am too lazy to work out how to send this as an invitation, but anyway, for anyone who is anywhere near the vicinity: I will be exhibitng 5 pictures at an exhibition in a shopping mall called the Duna Plaza, you can just get into the mall from the metro stop at Gyöngyösi Utca on the blue line - head for the centre. The opening is at 4 o'clock Friday 8th February.

There will of course be other work on show and the aim is to raise money for terminally ill or disabled children - though I got to join this group simply because one of the orgsansers saw me on the metro once with my artwork and asked me if I would like to join them.

Beam me up....

I did beam this on up..from my mobile into my pocket PC, then to PC.

She climbed on top of my bag, then all he way into my rucksack last time I visited.

Sadly, not much in the way of art has been done recently. It is all about computers, computers, computers, computers. Still, there are more and more 'Eureka' moments, though yesterday there was not, as the thing fellout of my hands and manged to tip over straight onto my face. There wasn't even any ice, just a doggy bag....

The cat, however, got into my bag, again, not out.

Wild Mood Swings

Yes, this pic represents a mean and moody phase.

I have just booked my ticket to the UK, so that makes the Christmas break more of a reality.

I have decided on what to get before the 31 December deadline as a Christmas present to my precarious entity as a crap entrepreneur, as a stranger in a strange land - my Poison Chalice. Satisfying my weakness for gadgets, where the line between 'want' and 'need' is indeed hard to define.. Pocket computers. A needed new mobile that incidentally can download music.

Bad day yesterday, members of a course not communicating properly with me about what should be, misunderstanding everything I say, possibly I suspect accidentally on purpose. Same school not knowing what has happened to my last invoice, never mind the new one. Why does this have to happen now, of all times, when yet another huge expense has come up as yet another consequence of that little b!%(h coppng out and doing a runner last year, when all she ever had to do was tell me that she didn't want to do my books for me any more???

Day before - bad day - red tape hassles closing in. Just that trivial, lousy question of making a living, rather than having this living dictate my whole life. A November of days lasting from well before dawn to well after dusk, with even Saturday not sacrosanct, yet still the whole thing about basic Survival rears its brutal head because of yet another set of Kafkaesque rules. Why bother making things simple when you could make things complicated and incomprehensible instead, so that is is almost impossible to fall foul of The Rules? No wonder lawyers and accountants can do so well out of us mugs. Trapped, trapped and trapped. And did I say, the whole lousy equation makes me feel trapped, when this full-tine dreamer just wanted to sublimely create in my attic?

Will it be lights in my eyes during interviews, fear of the postbox, the summons for the cardinal sin of Not Getting It, getting the wrong information emerge a millionfold again next year?

But......another Eureka moment tonight, as my Red Phase unfolds again. Wow, wow and wow, Still seeing red, everywhere, though. Too bad all my work will just fall on stony ground after I am long rotted away. Yeah, whinge.

Wild mood swings.

When will it ever end????