when the fete rolls in.

Every two years the local primary school holds a big fete to raise money for the school by hawking various jams, bric-a-brac, plants, toys and so on. It's always a great day (provided you don't accidentally buy back something you donated..it CAN happen!) and this year I found some pretty quirky things among the mountains of stuff, which left me pretty chuffed with the bi-annual splendour that is School Fete day.






Chalkboard- 50c.
Little plant- $2
Books + Comics- $3 for all
Dress- $3
Belt- $1
Brooch for a friend- $3



The Tolstoy children's book was worth it not only for the great illustrations (above) but the curious names of the stories; "Masha and the Mushrooms", "Why Wolves are Mean and Squirrels are Frisky" and, my personal favourite, "Better to be Lean and Free than Plump and Chained" (??).

muccibird.

foodhall love.

I was so overwhelmed with love for good food that I had to return two days after my visit to the David Jones Foodhall on Pitt St.

It's certainly not a new thing, but having not been there for years I had actually forgotten just how amazing big delicatessens are. Every type of cheese, olive, fish, fruit, salami and pasta shape you could think of all housed together in a subterranean haven under the city.

My only sadness is that there aren't more of these in Australia. The whole experience (and it was an experience) left me wishing I lived in a country where supermarkets are the minority and delis and markets rule supreme.

Bring back the deli I say.




muccibird.

Ohayo gozaimasu !

I went to the Taisho Chic exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW yesterday (Sunday). I really liked it. I'm no artist so I won't launch into an analytical exercise about the clash of Japanese culture with Western modernity.

Sometimes it's just nice to see things as they are, in all their beauty, without deconstructing every aspect.

Anyway, I didn't come here to preach either. I came to share. This was one of my favourite pieces from the exhibition:


It's called 'Two girls by the sea' by Kafu c mid 1920s.

I think I will have to go back for a second look. Just to please myself more than anything else.

How I miss the place..

-michiko-

Kitsch Crochet

I have this growing interest in knitting and crochet. The deal was pretty much sealed when this lovely lady at my work crocheted me a tissue packet cover. I'm not talking a tissue box cover, but a warm little home for my tissue packet (with 10 tissues in each plastic packet). I think my heart melted on the spot when I saw it.

I decided to type "crochet" in the search engine to see what I could uncover. Uninterested in the boring sites listed in google's top ten I started scouring the images. My (now)-hardened heart skipped a little beat.

There's a lady out there named Alicia Kachmar that crochets the most amazing things.

For instance, here is a s'more she crocheted!



And here is what a normal s'more looks like:


(The internets informs me it's an American thing - marshmallow and chocolate sandwiched in between some crackers. I'm pretty sure they featured heavily in The Baby Sitters Club books when I used to read them.)

Two peas in a pod crocheted:



And some clouds and sad raindrops:



Ms. Alicia sells her crocheted friends on a website called etsy, which itself is worth investigating. It's a website that allows people to set up an online shop and sell their art, clothing and handcrafted items (and other things) online to anyone in the world. It's amazing.

Click here to see Ms Alicia's other items.

I have my beady little eyes on all of them...


-michiko-

Patrolling the Streets

I think Street Art is a highly underated form of expression. I think most governments possess the wrong view in regards to street art. Yes, without question, some graffiti can be terrible acts of defacing. But there are some truly great street artists out there that are making our cities much more vibrant and exciting.

Looking past the ever so famous Banksy, there is a street artist living in Melbourne under the pseudonym of Ghostpatrol that is doing his bit for infrastructure.







He also draws and makes dolls..





He's pretty great if you ask me..


-michiko-

snap happy.

Fecal Face is a pretty amazing art and design blog from San Francisco that promotes young artists from everywhere from Chile to Turkey.

Hands down, the best part of the site is Photo of the Day. A simple premise, and a lot of art/photography sites do it, but the FF archives are just filled with quirky, mundane shots from all around the world.









See more at the FF site.

muccibird.

believing is seeing.

This week I had to give a presentation on Expressionism in my art theory class.

Sounds boring I know, but there's one thing the Modernists had right, and that is- it's not what you see that matters, but how you see it.

This got me thinking.

Now, I live in an amazingly beautiful part of the world, and even though I can see it's beautiful and appreciate it thoroughly, when I get up from my train seat every day and see it through the window it has no effect on me. This is because I know exactly what is there. There's no mystery. I know that behind that group of trees is a redbrick corner shop and a telephone booth. Down that street is a delapidated house with a goat in the garden, and down the next street lives someone I went to primary school with.

I really think this is a huge part of the appeal of travelling to new places that are completely removed from your usual environment. When you are seeing new places for the first time, you don't know what lies beyond your immediate line of sight. Depending on where you are, and the sort of images you mentally link with that place through years of cultural associations, your imagination tends to fill in the gaps.

This photo might be a good example:




If someone told me this was taken somewhere in the countryside in France, not only would I believe them, but everything I associate with France would be invested in the photo. I would probably imagine that in the unseen parts of the photo is a vineyard, and to next to it are some mustachioed old Frenchmen playing chess in the sun (or something equally cliched).

But, I took this photo, and I know that the reality is not half as interesting as that. It was taken on the way to Australia's most boring, round-abouty "state" (Canberra, obviously), and there is not much else around it other than bushland.

For me, it just goes to show that with art, photography, anything visual at all, it really is all about perception. Maybe all that blah about connotations that I learned in first year was right after all.

muccibird.