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Yesterday, the Oundle Festival of Literature hosted my You Can't Eat a Princess! event in this appropriately palatial hall. They squeezed in exactly 301 children and we had a great time drawing aliens and designing space ships.



Here's Leigh Giurlando, who organised my visit, and Joanna Patterson Gordon, who runs the beautiful Oundle Bookshop in the town's market centre. And a lovely chappie who helped with the setup. Fellow princesses, take note: no ball gown is ever complete without a fetching piece of string tied round the waist.



Sadly, when Viviane Schwarz met me at Kings Cross station after returning from Peterborough, I was no longer wearing my royal apparel. We went for coffee and I got to see the American edition of her marvelous new hamster book with Alexis Deacon, A Place to Call Home. Which she illustrated while she was moving house, which rather suits the theme.



Viv and I went on to lovely Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street for the launch of an exhibition of beautiful painted illustrations by Polly Dunbar. Nearly everyone in children's publishing must have been in that room! Here's Polly in her smashing new dress and shoes, with Alexis Deacon and his comely angel halo.


The exhibition, The Picture Book World of Polly Dunbar runs until 24 March, so do go on over and have a look! And Daunt Books has loads of Polly's books for sale, which you can have her sign tomorrow, 19 March.


I'd only ever spoken with Book Sniffer by e-mail, who had gone by Mr P, which made me assume Book Sniffer was a man. But no, it's a blue stuffed dog and the lovely Emma. I've promised her a blog entry, so you might see that before too long.





I see Philip Reeve has blogged about his first Skype-based event, in America. I need to think if I want to do that sort of thing; it would be great for doing low-cost events in other countries.

Here's a brand-new Ants comic from James Turner (eruditebaboon).

And one more thing, a video of the remarkable Warwick Johnson Cadwell drawing a gorilla. A great way to end a day's entry.


YouTube link

Revealing the unseen world of how mail is delivered to the farthest corners of the UK, Royal Mail gave Tim Knowles unique access to its delivery system. Creating an artwork that captures the experience of a parcel in the post - carried by foot, Royal Mail vans and trucks, a Boeing 737-300 cargo plane, a small Shorts 360 propeller Aircraft and a ferry - this object traveled 20 hours 22 minutes. A specially constructed parcel recorded its own 902-mile journey through the postal system from London to the Isle of Barra, in a sequence of 20,000 images, a continuous audio recording and a GPS track.[...]

Casa Rota is literally a house, but also an exhibition space in Levittown, Puerto Rico where owner and exhibition maker Bryan Arocho presented last week a collection of small format collages titled Violation. At a time when alternative art venues seem to be anonymously sprouting amongst galleries and art institutions, it seems necessary to reveal alternate ways to exhibit works in a rapidly changing dire economy. This is one of the places where art is happening, but few seem to know about.

Vermeer in Munich: King Max I Joseph of Bavaria as a Collector of Old Masters

17 March–19 June 2011

Alte Pinakothek
Barer Strasse 27
D-80799 Munich
Germany

curator: Dr. Marcus Dekiert

from the museum website:

At the beginning of the 19th century, the first king of Bavaria, Max I Joseph (1756–1825), amassed a private art collection of the highest quality. He focused almost exclusively on 17th-century Dutch masters, mostly landscapes and genre paintings. To these he added the works of contemporary painters in Munich who were inspired by such Old Masters. In December 1826, the private royal collection was sold at auction. Some exceptional works were acquired for the state collections; others found their way to the Alte Pinakothek via roundabout routes – as part of Ludwig I’s collection, for example; many are now scattered far afield. From today’s point of view, the greatest loss is a masterpiece by Johannes Vermeer: Woman Holding a Balance of 1664. This exquisite work is returning to Munich from the National Gallery of Art in Washington for a threemonth period. Surrounded by other exceptional paintings from the “Golden Age” – including works by Jacob van Ruisdael, Willem van de Velde the Younger and Philips Wouwerman – it gives visitors the opportunity to discover Max I Joseph of Bavaria as a collector of Old Masters.

<http://www.pinakothek.de/alte-pinakothek/kalender/kalender_index_en.php?haupt=ausstellungen&inc=ausstellung&action=&which=3684>

Regina José Galindo, Hermana, video still, 2010

ROLLO Contemporary Art’s exhibition Regina José Galindo: 12 Years presents works from 1999 to the present date, including two new commissions, and surveys the dominant themes of Galindo’s ground-breaking performative practice, where the artist typically uses her own body as a raw material that is subjected to violent and dangerous acts. The exhibition brings together performance-video works from Galindo’s 12 year career in the artist’s first solo exhibition in London, including two new works never before exhibited, which Galindo has created especially for ROLLO Contemporary Art’s exhibition; Hermana and Joroba.[...]

Last week, I took my Glasgow Auntie's advice and popped into the Royal Academy before the Random House party to see The Glasgow Boys exhibition. I'd seen bits of it with her last year at the Kelvingrove in Glasgow, so it was fun to pick up where I'd left off. ...Oops, can't say that, my aunt has firmly instructed me not to say that art galleries are 'fun'; they are not 'fun', they are 'interesting'. ...Hello, Auntie!



I stopped to make a sketch of a rather strange little painting, Contrabandista, by Arthur Melville. It's mostly composed of shapes, so abstract that it's a bit difficult to work out what's going on, which makes it sinister in a fascinating way. I can just about make out a convoy of people travelling down a hill slope on a track, with a sort of mushroom cloud on the horizon; then these huge bluey shadows blot out the foreground, most likely a group of bandits, standing at the top of another hill. Very different from the other paintings in the room; portraits, women playing tennis, a goose herder, a couple arts-and-crafts type scenes from Celtic mythology.



I love the strange light in this 1886 painting by James Nairn, Auchenhew, Arran. I wish I could paint atmospheres like this, it's such a different skill from the kind of work I do. The cottages in it remind me a bit of one of my favourite films, set in a remote Danish fishing village, called Babette's Feast. (It's more fun to say with a Danish lilt, Babettes Gaestebud.)



I often walk up Jermyn Street, and Paxton & Whitfield was looking lovely with a dusting of snow. I'm particularly fond of this shop because it appears in a book of lithographs by Eric Ravilious titled High Street. It's quite a rare book now, but I have a facsimile version, which is one of my treasured possessions.



And Fortnum & Mason looks even more amazing at Christmas than the rest of the year. Yum, yum.



The other day, before I went for dinner with Philip Reeve, I popped into see Chris Beetle and the launch of a book about the creator of Dan Dare, Frank Hampson: Tomorrow Revisited by Alistair Crompton. Lovely colour prints inside. I haven't grown up with Dan Dare, but my dad loved reading it, and I like the look of it; more adventure story than superhero. I might have to do some catching up with Dan Dare. My friend Rian Hughes drew Dan Dare for awhile, and his book has a similar title, Yesterday's Tomorrows.


Chris Beetle with Frank Hampson: Tomorrow Revisited, Alistair Compton

Links: Have you seen, my fab frie

The rose is burning
in its watery vessel-
searing my eyes

Tangerine Rose, 7 x 5 inches, oil on linen mounted to panel
This piece will be on display in this upcoming exhibit:
Small Works 2010
Artists' House Gallery
December 3 to December 24, 2010
Two receptions:
First Friday:
December 3,
5 - 8:30pm
Sunday,
December 5,
1 - 4pm

Artists' House
57 North Second Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
(215) 923-8440
[email protected]

Felipe Arturo, Estación móvil para hamacas

Over the last decade there have a been a number of exhibitions dedicated to Miami artists. These have been excellent at presenting a generation of homegrown artists, and explaining its internal dynamics and its relationship to previous generations that migrated to, and continue to work in, the city. What these exhibitions haven’t done as consistently is place the work of Miami artists alongside that of their international generational peers in a concrete way--that is, by literally presenting the work side-by-side, on equal footing.[...]

Koen Vanmechelen, Cosmopolitan Chicken Project, photo courtesy Galerie West

Since 1998 Belgian conceptual artist Koen Vanmechelen has been working  on a project titled the 'Cosmopolitan Chicken Project,' where he cross-breeds chickens and uses them to address issues related to multiculturalism, globalization, ethics, genetic manipulation and the meaning of life.[...]

X.J. Vadera, X, 2010. Metal, acrylic, and pigment, 103/4 x 9 x 3/4”

Catch it while you can or else bring it to a gallery near you.

On a long stroll up the Upper East Side of NYC I decided to finally pop into ELSE, the current exhibition at the Tilton Gallery, co-curated by Derrick Adams and Jack Tilton. After just a couple minutes in the exhibition space the eccentric hood poppin’ sophisticated mind of Adams was clearly visible.[...]

image: Sophie Blackall – Big Red Lollipop

As is now routine, I moseyed through the park and did my weekly grocery shopping at the Grand Army Plaza greenmarket on Saturday.  This time, though, I wasn’t too loaded down with pickles and goat cheese, and actually had the energy to stop at the Central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.

I’d been meaning to hit the BPL because, though I’ve always been a huge library supporter (it’s in my blood, thanks mom and dad), lately I’ve been in the bad habit of buying books instead.  But with student loans looming this November (it’s been nearly 6 months already?!), it is time to tighten the finances and catch up on my reading – for free.

I was disappointed that I didn’t find anything super fresh and exciting in the YA section… but I guess it’s good that teens are checking them all out. Next time, I’ll have to bring a bigger list. I DID get the chance to see the Drawn In Brooklyn! exhibition of children’s illustration – and that, in itself, was worth the trip.

Drawn In Brooklyn! is a 4-month long festival of 34 local artists, celebrating the borough with the largest concentration of children’s book illustrators on the planet. In close proximity to Manhattan, illustrators can network with the publishing and art worlds first-hand… but then find both community inspiration and a bit of creative peace back here.  No wonder Brooklyn is home to, well, almost everyone I admire.

image: Peter Brown – Chowder

In the vast display of work in the Grand Lobby of the BPL, there were many, many familiar names, including personal heroes (Leo and Diane Dillon, Ted and Betsy Lewin, Paul O. Zelinsky), current favorites (Sophie Blackall, Peter Brown) and former professors (Pat Cummings, Megan Montague Cash). Also, a few illustrators I’d never heard of before: both Daniel Salmieri and Sergio Ruzzier‘s whimsical, quirky characters made me smile.  Here they are below!

image: Daniel Salmie