Anniversaire

Exactly one year ago today, I began this blog (Top Secret™, but some of you found out anyway!). It has really taken on a life of its own— opened doors and windows in my life in surprising ways.  Happy birthday, little blog!

And thank you to you (yes, you) for reading, looking and shooting the breeze with me.  And stay tuned for more...

Summer sketching

Summer is here:  let the sweltering commence!  In my sketchbook (totally ignoring the scorching heat) a giraffe  serenely munches a cool fresh leaf.   Me, on the other hand?  Melting.

Any tips for beating the heat?  Other than Mind Over Matter™??  Now would be the time to send them.

In the meantime, if you have energy to click:

• Le chat du rabbin (aka The Rabbi's Cat), by the wonderful Joann Sfar, has been released in France as a feature-length film— and won the top prize at Annecy!  I hope it gets a worldwide release.

• Do you know the Jacket Museum?

• And lastly:  Bernard Lodge, printmaker from Brighton.

Stay cool, Reader.  

Paris and posters

                   

Here's a page from my sketchbook, revisited with the odds and ends that always find their way into my pockets.

These Colonnes Morris—part of the Parisian landscape since the mid-1800's—are advertising pillars originally built to combat rampant advertising and graffiti. Some of them contain telephones and automatic public toilets.  And sometimes—startlingly— they serve as a broom cupboard for street cleaners.

Here's a Colonne Morris (seen from my local café on Fontaine Saint Michel)—also doubles as as hat!)

But most of all, they are adorned with beautiful posters: only those advertising cultural events (films, concerts, theatre, etc) are permitted. With such a steady stream of work (some of it publically funded) and abundant places to display it in, the flowering of French poster art was the inevitable result.  From Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha, to A.M. Cassandre and Raymond Savignac and Hervé Morvan, not to mention André François, Nathan-Garamond and Jean-Michel Folon —they all contributed to the rich visual feast on the streets here.

Newer practitioners you may want to look at:

• Michel Batory (who had a retrospective at Musée des Arts Decoratifs recently)
• The fabulous Zeloot (and much more here)
• Michel Quarez (and here)

In general:

• French posters: a huge collection organized by era (don't miss the ones after World War II...)
• Chaumont: International Poster Festival 
• And further afield: there's the International Poster Bienale, at the Poster Museum in Wilanow, Poland (which is held in June of even-numbered years).

Road trip, anyone?