Cloud Cuckoo Land Festival 2013

My first foray into British festivals. And of course it rained. And I believed the weather forecasts that said 'sunny all week'. So wearing the same singular jersey for 4 days and slip slide navigation though mud without wellies was challenging, but be that as it may Cloud Cuckoo Land brought a collection of people together that resonated close to my own heart. Environmental activists, yurt makers, artists, singing faeries, smiling bubble makers, fracking opposers, shining faces, permaculture experts, recyclers, wild-haired children doing what they should be doing- playing outdoors, capitalist protesters and hoola hoopers. There were interesting talks about food waste (all food for staff was provided by the People's Kitchen who use diverted food from landfill - all delicious, all vegetarian), off the grid living (all the talks were powered by bicycle peddling), laughter and conventional yoga, rum imported on a sailboat (the greenest way to ship goods), eager participants making jewelry out of trash and being accosted by the glitter pixies. I volunteered with Upcycling, a non-profit that helps segregate all the rubbish accumulated during the festival. It was at times disheartening seeing what people throw away, and how carelessly they do it. Must be a first world thing. Came across men's ties still in their packaging, full sets of edible eggs in their cartons, tents, cans of unopened alcohol, clothes, cosmetics, fruit, shoes, toys, inflatable pool rings to name a few. So so much waste, most of it unsorted, and nowhere to put it but in the ground. Be that as it may, the spirit of this festival was worth the teeth chattering at night, and the mud-stained sneakers in the morning. Who needs mainstream festivals anyway?

Kew gardens and Eel Pie Island

On exploration days like this I love London. A while back little Miss Gerbil came to visit from Amsterdam and off we went for a free David Nash tour at Kew Gardens. I would have been none the wiser at understanding his artworks if I had just roamed around the gardens and come across his sculptures without knowing his lifelong exploration of natural materials. We discovered his propensity to work with trees, living ones with their roots still in the ground (which energetically link his works to the site he says) or trees that had succumbed to storm or age or disease, scattered across the 121 hectare site. The one specific statue is from a 300 year-old oak that had been weakened by drought, it became distressed and gave off pheromones which beetles picked up on and moved into. Along the way I saw 2 trees that were the same species, but one was male, the other female, her leaves were completely different and she was smaller. I loved the idea of trees that beckoned beetles to their doom, and husbands and wives that were rooted next to each other forever.

The Gardens houses the world's largest collection of living plants. We saw one of the oldest pot plants in the world, the 238 year-old cycad Encephalartos altensteinii which had been brought from SA in the early 1770s. The name Encephalartos in Greek apparently means ‘bread in the head’. Hottentots would remove the pith from the cycad's stem and bury it for 2 months before kneading it into bread and baking it in embers.

Then something I never expected to find, a new-found female idol known as Marianne North. She was a Victorian artist who travelled the world by herself and recorded the world’s flora with her paintbrush. There is an entire gallery of her works at Kew, filled from floor to ceiling of the natural sights she documented on her travels from Japan to Java. What an inspiration. At the end of the exhibit you could take a tag and write down a memory you have relating to a plant, reading some of the childrens' answers are worth a giggle.

The final stage of the day was a visit to an island on the Thames! Who knew. Close to Twickenham, I was drawn to visiting it by some hearsay that the hippy haven had denounced the Queen way back when, and had formed their own state for a day or two before the bobbies came and put them in their place. This was complete 'bollocks' a resident told me, but from the gnomed, mannequined and crocodiled decor, one could tell its not of the mainstream so to speak. Although a trendy apartment development had recently made its way onto the island, which means bankers will move in at some point and spoil the renegade charm of this artist collective. What a pity. All in a day's walk in London.

The Other Art Fair

Damn, I'v been bad with this blog of late. Too many photos, too little processing time. But better late than never I guess. Had a good gander at some inspiring artwork at The Other Art Fair a few weeks back. I came across Paper skulls and plastic peacocks from discarded material, gigantic totem eagles drawn with ballpoint pens, blotted ink swimmers, delicately folded sculptures from found magazines, haunting faceless portraits with a crackling veneer, ceramics with star constellations on them, canvases from cardboard fruit boxes, and a girl whose paintbrush is a typewriter. Too much of rad.

One year on

Gazing Maven is one year today. And so. so. much. has happened since then. This little blog has been my visual diary for a year of my travels, and to mark the occasion, I have decided to showcase a new item on it. Since my move to London, I have already come into contact with so many inspiring creative minds, that I want to share each and every one of their visions. So, to mark this creative collective of not only my own thoughts but others  too, I can think of no better way to highlight this new colourful birth, than with photos of my afternoon with Zoe Thomas, a textile designer/ creative practitioner/ educator / and everything else of vibrance. Her home, a mirrored collection, a childhood haven, a splash of balloons and chalk reminders, fun spice racks, with kisses of colour. Her fabrics, as her life, are full of flowers, festivity and humour. In the grey of London, it was good to see colour again. It's hard not to want to create after afternoons like this.

Dale Chihuly

Something like this I've never seen before. This man's glass work literally took my breath away. Tentacles and petals, folded sand and ocean waves, scenes of underwater dreams. If you are in London, go to Halycon Gallery. Immediately.

An eco-art playshop

I recently had the privilege to run an art worshop for 22 children of Future Families, an organisation that helps families affected by HIV. New and exciting, "love nature" was the theme. I decorated the trees in the garden with animal cutouts, used old donated acrylic paints and leftover paper from a wedding stationary design job I did a while back, encouraged the kids to use leaves and flowers in their greeting cards. Finger painting, cutouts, smiles and a conservation message slowly sinking in. Really, it feels so good to share.

Impressions of Honfleur

After visiting Rouen, it seemed only fair to continue along the Impressionist's route, to a small little town unscathed by the war, where Eugène Boudin (Monet's teacher) and Erik Satie (French composer and pianist) were born. What touched me about the latter was his affair with Renoir's muse, Suzanne Valadon, who after their first night together asked her to marry him. When she left him six months later, he described the heartbreak as "nothing but an icy loneliness that fills the head with emptiness and the heart with sadness". Honfleur also has the largest church made out of wood in France. A daytrip filled with cider served in soup bowls, narrow cobbled streets, crêpes for main and dessert, silly hitchhikers and just your general prettiness overload.