Cyber Punk London (by sarah)

Years ago (over a decade actually) Alaric tasked me with illustrating two Role Playing Games he had written. I have been steadily working on them and part of that is finding suitable visuals to construct the very specific images needed. So I often trail around cities taking images of cyber punk type stuff and the fanciful - the weekend allowed me to sneak some pics 🙂

Our cities are full of unexpected finds like this ciggy bin face - it is obviously a droid from Alpha Centuri and is fed up with people putting burning leaves into it's eye sockets!

Little micro structures hide, clinging to the larger buildings around them as if we truly are creating a jungle of a different type - covergent evolution, lies at the heart of this one 🙂

There were so many great shapes and geometries but I had limited time as we were lit. rushing from the station to meet our friends. I want to go back and spend another creative weekend in London, catching as many of the little hidden textures as I can!

As beautiful as the buildings are, there is also something menacing about some of them, they loom in and block out the light. But if you look hard enough it is still there, defiant of the giants that rise on metal frames.

Parasitic towers cling to their host buildings gloaming in reflected sunlight, the light was sunset light and was thick and golden, tinged with surrealism as the cities lights mingled with it.

The city is a labrynth, including confusing and distorting reflection. They buildings are glass coated, they shine and reflect and capture each other's images, it can be hard to tell what is a building, and what is a reflection of a building on a building or a building within a building.

The steal and glass and light created metallic rainbows and an eye rolling husband who was trying to make sure I did not walk off of steps or in front of cars as I was so captivated by the scenes.

The building vary, some are angular and sharp and others are soft and curvy and some are curvy and angular but modular and it is a landscape of geometry.

Again the shapes and angles begin to suggest something organic - in this case back bone and central nervous system - it made me think on what would happen if metal suddenly became alive - what sort of creatures would our cities spawn?

Many patterns, textures and ornamentation where present and just waiting for me to capture them, the gerkin looks like glass scales, arching off into the distance. I am also starting a photo study of texture this spring and the buildings were a surprising source of such imagery.

And of course hidden in this new glass and chrome London is an older London, and it cries out for stories and contrasts and has a kind of magic realism. These pictures scream... write us into a story, a poem, a piece on heritage and art... and that is indeed what will happen to these images, they will be appearing on my writing and art blogs in various guises as well as being used for drawing practice 🙂

But really why are there giant marshmallows in these trees? And they were not the only strange and fantastical thing we found - a steampunk macarbe sat in the pub where we met our friends just before heading for curry on Brick Lane - there were clusters of young people preaching or goading or occupying London. There was a religious zing to them and they dressed in threads that were bare for aesthetics rather than worn to unravelling. I could not hear what was being said but they had followers with glassy zeal in their eyes. A passion pulsed in the underbelly but it was a safe fire, a cold fire.

We had a great meal and catch up with friends but as always I am reminded that my London is erroding, disappearing, I can not say weather this is a good or bad thing but London is bright and over whelming, like a million pieces of brain fire. Confetti of glitz and glam that may well tarnish or burn out in the blink of an eye. The markets are gentrified and hipster zones, interesting but no longer mine. Consumerism as always drives the city forward - this has not been lost on the natives living in all the envrions of London - a city of villages and zones.

Music and Friends (by sarah)

Just at the point where Jean started to take to playing and learning songs for the keyboard/piano, our hammond organ decides to die. We are hoping we can still fix it but it is going to be a major job 🙁

So a friend of ours said we could have an old keyboard of his, it used to be his grandmothers. We picked it up at the weekend with a little musical distraction!

For Jean spotted his epic set up with phone and mic stand and coloured buttons all set up to the computer 🙂

He also has a tank drum from Bali, I love these instruments so he let me have a play and of course that meant Mary had to have a play!

It was great seeing friends at the weekend - some of whom we've not seen for 3 or 4 years!

Of course after school yesterday my poor old struggling laptop was kidnapped for music recording / song making to happen - this mainly seemed to consist of Jean shouting at Mary for talking over the recording!

Once again I've been amazed by our wonderful friends 🙂

Rainbow Clouds (by sarah)

Yesterday was mad! It took five hours of extra driving to get home thanks to lots of different road works, a detour to th wilds around Oxford due to kids not listening to "go to the toilet now as there wont be any other toilets on the way home" and having to show the nice police that our van only contain kids and no stolen motobikes!

But it did mean we were driving when the rainbow clouds appeared in the sky, the colours haven't really come out that well - possibly as the best angle for colour was not one where I could get a picture and I was in a moving van taking the photos through the windscreen!

I believe this is Cloud Iridescence and was something I have only come across in the last few years when I saw and photographed some green clouds with my phone. Since then I have been seeing it quiet regularly though normally when I am not in a good position to take photographs!

It's basically little ice crystals in the clouds working like mini prisms and splitting out the colours of sunlight. It's beautiful, I am wondering if it is because our climate is changing that I've only just started seeing it or if it is because I was just really unobservant before?

Extra-Ordinary (by sarah)

Today I feel like a failure, today I feel fat and not ugly so much as plain with frizzy hair and glasses. Today I looked at the things I make and think... they are all a bit naff. Today I am the failed scientist and the untrained artist, today I am FAILURE.

Today I am the stuck at home, non housework doing, burnt cooking mum, I am the can't spell, can't concentrate hack filling in forms to apply for events/jobs that I know wont want me, not daring to apply for the acting roles as I'm too fat, too old, too short, the wrong physical gender, I am the failed to get my kids to the things they want and need to go to, I am the fail parent with a trail of failed careers.

Today I finished knitting DNA, and worked on a mermaids tail, cut out and folded a micro-zine I drew and scanned and made, I helped Mary write a story and she made a cover for it to be a book, Jean helped me find my unfinished knitting projects and I finished the basis for some little easter rabbits. I typed up a poem and ordered polymer clay to make little creatures with. I put away a giant papier mache sculpture I made for the visually impaired and checked that the brain I am making is drying ok, there were piles of paintings I had to move, piles of my paintings - I can't see them as good, I can't compare to the other artists that I see locally, my stuff just... does not quiet cut it and yet... it is the headline picture for the group.

Today I feel like a fraud, I feel like I am pretending to be good, to be amazing, when I am not. I am just me, a lost, lonely little me. A few days ago I performed at a launch event, people came to tell me how animated and full of energy I was, they said they liked my work, the world was full of chances to grab and take and I did... but... I stood outside the venue looking at the door, wondering if I was truly supposed to be there, weather I was an interloper, I had to battle mind doubt dragons to go in and whilst I talk, whilst I feel alive at the creativity around me, I look at the crowd of amazing people and think how wonderful they are and how drab I am. And I feel the press of eyes and the expectation and I want to run, I want to hide, I am the extroverted introvert or introverted extrovert and sometimes I think I have wasted my life.

Today I sit writing this drowning in craft supplies I need to put away, this week I have designed many new workshops covering science, art, writing, specific themes and the environment. My old injuries ache with the clammy cold weather and I long for summer but know I have much to do but I can not stir, my head still rings from the head injury I had coming up to two years ago now and I feel thick, stupid, clogged, my c-section scar is hurting, skin burning and sinus pain is king. It is nothing to the physical pain and discomfort I have suffered in the past, I'm a little inflamed and virally that is all. I fail at not moaning, at not feeling used up and rung out.

Today I think of all the people who have helped me and I know I have failed them and worse I have not always passed the buck, I have been too busy or distracted or lazy. I walk past the homeless and realise that it more than two years ago that I did any proper charity work, even though an event I acted at this month has just raised over £400 for charity, I had to claim my expenses - I have a loan to repay and things I need to get to - I failed at money management - I struggle with numbers now, I did not used to. I had to take the money but not because I would starve because I wouldn't and that makes me wither inside. Am I greedy?

Today I told my husband - I told him how when I write down the things I have done they sound fantastic and great, or brave and selfless - when I know it wasn't like that, it was clutching at straws, it was trying stuff, it was itself often failure. My life has twisted and turned and looped da looped and I am giddy.

Today he told me I am extraordinary and that most people - are not. He told me that people are in awe of my work but these words hurt and puzzle. He gave examples and I am like "no that is just because they have had to survive differently, they want to do stuff, creative stuff, science stuff." And then I was angry about how their potential is being lost, how my potential was lost, about how my husband would be the better home maker and can't be, how society traps people in rolls and classes and demographs.

Today I survived, I live and so does my family, and for that I am truly in awe and fearful of a harsh and unrelenting world. But sometimes... sometimes survival is not enough and that is only because I am lucky, I have capacity, I have safety nets, I have family and friends and love and food and shelter. I am higher up the triangle of needs - but that should not be the case. Potential maximium should be achievable for all, with no judging as to what that is, no expectations of what a successful life is, no squinting and muttering when a sideways corse is taken. Failure should not be seen as well... failure. It is the experimenting, the living of life, it is were the discoveries are made, if you don't try you can't fail, but if you don't fail have you ever really tried?

Today is not today anymore, today is now tomorrow and I feel the ideas scritching in my brain, they have been gone a long time, I have to rest lots to let my brain heal - it healed enough to give me ideas again. Proper new fresh ideas, but my health has always been shoddy and I have lost so much time, and I can't go fast, I can just be. So I pool and collect the ideas, and hope they will get their day. Somedays they erupt into the world and the world laps them up, other days... not so much and I gather them back in for another try, on another day.

Today is new, I still feel hollow, but that will pass, it always does, and the void will be filled with colour and patterns and thoughts and then I'll accidently create a thing or things or a thing of things. Until then there is hugs and coffee, and admin.

Florence Nightingale The Puppet (by sarah)

Florence Nightingale the puppet is getting about over excited about Mr Gray's Anatomy. Like Ada Lovelace Florence is a Victorian icon famous for developing graphical representations of data and for being one of the founders of modern medicine.

Though she was made with the other four puppets that we developed after Ada she sadly has not had that many outings but now is her time to shine. The brain hat I knitted for the Science Showoff event will be one of her props along with the brain - she may have to share with some of the other puppets at times 🙂

Other works to go with her are scripts, research into her life, her manga self and a series of other textiles and papier mache props, possibly with some 3D printing.

She is very excited to be out and about and is currently relaxing after what has already been a hectic British Science Week - she will be at Cheltenham Hackspace on Sunday 19th of March (yes this Sunday as of time of posting), for the Science Cafe!