Fact or Fiction

So once again, I've been pretty out of touch with the whole 'blogging' scene. I know it is something I should get back into but I have been dealing with the reality of life unfortunately to an extent. OK, that sounded pretty pessimistic. I have been having an great time in my first semester of third year and getting back into the swing of projects and doing lots of other fun things involving stuff outside of college. I have been having some problems again within the dealings between Edinburgh University and ECA in regards to exchanges, but I am not going to vent it out on here as it would be unprofessional of me, but I have been scoping out other opportunities to hopefully find some other interesting things to do.

I watched Gallery Girls for the first time this evening and the feelings that resonated within me made me die a little inside. I think it was because it reminded me of the reality of my future, how pretentious it makes the creative industry appear, and the competitiveness within an art school environment and the art/design industry. I was at an internship at an illustration agency in NYC myself just past August and this TV series has made me feel lightly disheartened about my career choice and all these opportunities I've tried to pursue. I know that these kinds of American TV series are somewhat dramatised but also touches on some things which are a bit too close to the heart. Maybe I'm just being too overly sensitive.

I also watched Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives for my design theory this evening, and I loved every moment of it. It's like a series of short stories and it reminded me of all these classic asian films I used to love when I was a kid, such as the The Littlest Warrior, Princess Mononoke, and the Monkey King (not the new version but the older versions) TV series, The Cave of Silken Web and Jet Li's The Evil Cult. The costumes, language, music and inspiration behind the story line just remind me of days long gone.

Anyways, aside from cultural asian media ramblings...

Here is some work I've actually been doing for college - I did a 'reportage' theme illustration project about Carol's Sauna on Easter Road where I created a series of 'Tart Cards' style calling cards inspired by the ones you find in London phone boxes in the 1980s/90s where they were cheaply made and printed. I was interested in the history and graphic quality of the creation of the original Tart Art cards. There's a good essay which I found a lot of my research from by Tom Phillips called the Commercial Art in the Public Realm and Wallpaper*' Sex Issue's Type Tart Art project in response to a letter sent by Mike Dempsey to Wallpaper* magazine.

I also further developed some of the imagery of these 'tart cards' inspired by the Belle du Jour (1967) film and Belle du Jour (1928) book by Joseph Kessel into a book cover which I had fun playing around with typography. I wish I had had more time to develop it but I only had one week to do this project as I was away in Moscow but I was happy with the result but I guess as I didn't cover the brief properly by not conveying my opinion more. 

Asides from that, there's a few more things I'll try and post up over the next couple of days. I have some work for a new Edinburgh street style Indian restaurant Tuk Tuk opening in Tollcross and another book cover which I've been working on for an exhibition at West Port Books which I'll put up in my next post!