Filed under: Craftsy stuff, Life in general, Tamara, photography | Tags: air hostess, beauty, picture, picturesque, pretty, Tamara
In Burning with desire, G. Batchen writes how the picturesque (19th century aesthetic movement) influenced the perception and representation of beauty of landscapes., the point being that the followers would judge the beauty of nature by how much it corresponded with their “theoretical” predispositions, not the other way around. It made me think about Slovene expression lep kot slika, an equivalent of English picture pretty, which in a way does the same inversion of judgment. To recognise sth. as very beautiful, you don’t refer to the property of the object but compare it to an artificial representation of beauty.
Anyway, the lepa/pretty linocut from the previous post in fact toys with this idea – it can be read as a pictogram for Slovene expression pretty as a picture. The English version would work as well.
My late father-in-law used a slightly different version of the expression, which (unintentionally) spoke on the constructedness of beauty in a more straightforward manner: pretty as an air hostess. He never flew with an airplane, let alone did sth. as wonderfully crazy as Razzman’s airplane hitch-hiking.
Speaking of beauty, I realised I haven’t posted Tamara’s pics for a while. One of the golden rules of parenting – when kids are silent for a while, they are surely up to something. Like this lipstick incident. She was probably humming “Ain’t no shelf high enough” :))
Filed under: Craftsy stuff | Tags: Craft, Craftsy stuff, design, linocut, onsie, printing, T shirt
Here are my latest linocut experiments. I even dare call them products. They were both made for Tamara although CC immediately ordered one print for her as well. Must admitthat working with fabrics was a bit more challenging than with paper, particularly the final prints which were made on a very stretchy fabric. They were also printed rather unorthodoxly (hence no details) but I was quite pleased with the results.
Lepa means pretty or beautiful in Slovene. Tukanga means slide in Tamarish, a strictly oral language currently spoken by only one person in the world :) Am considering compiling a short phrasebook.
Tukanga test prints
Lepa - final print on onsie
Tukanga - final print on onsie
Filed under: Craftsy stuff, Life in general | Tags: illustration, Illustration Friday, routine
What are your routines? Do you like them? Perhaps even perversely cultivate them? And iindulgee in their predictability? Do you miss some of your former ones? Or have no time to think about them, going through the same, tired tried out rhythm of the day…
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: charm, Dance with me, Nouvelle Vogue, weekend
Out of bed at eight AM
Out my head by half past ten
Out with mates and dates and friends
That’s what I do at weekends
OK, the lyrics don’t exactly match our current weekend routine, first of all, it was out of bed at seven AM due to our cute little alarm clock that has no “off” button. And neither “snooze” for that matter :). Anyways, was fun, spent lots of time with my girls, had my two coffees of the week, now I’m back to job-related emails and photo theory readings (you’ll all get a share of that in the near future). One of the more pleasant things of the weekend was the discovery of the band Nouvelle Vague – I have infatuatedly listened to their album Bande A’Part over and over again the past few days (luckily, CC likes them too). Here is my current fovorite - Dance with me. They go particularly well with a glass of sweet white wine. Its simply charming.
Speaking of charm, the pic needs a short translation for the few billion people that don’t speak Slovene. Originally, the sign said Sock shop. The place is under renovation (Tamara nevertheless had a quick sneak peak, workers were not thrilled) and currently, the remaining undestroyed pink part of the sign reads sth. like charm or magic.
Filed under: Things as they are | Tags: DIY, engineering, inventiveness, sun screen
Dear friends, Ileave you for the weekend with this gem of DIY engineering (fitting of a sun screen in one of Ljubljana’s cafes). After a while, it is a proper “things as they are” pic. I’m not sure of the most suitable caption though, should it be “home-made engineering”, “inventiveness”, “a true DIY spirit” or simply ”crap” – the word that was probably muttered by the “engineer” as he was fitting the sun screen, moments before he found this obvious solution to his problem. Admittedly, “crap” is a fairly beautified translation of the original word most probably used…
Filed under: Life in general | Tags: back to the future, pilot, traveling in time
This Saturday afternoon I was stunned. And glad in a way. And a bit puzzled. I had discovered that it is possible to travel back in time.
After ten years (gulp), I had returned to the scene of many crimes, to the small sport airfield near my hometown for some grilled meat and beer. Two of my friends from my former life of a gliding pilot became fathers. After initial staggeringly surprised looks and three to four sentence catching-up, it was just like the old days. And I mean exactly like the old days. The same people would spend the evening standing in a couple of fluid circles, talking about flying and latest models of planes (a lot of hand talking there) only to end up (re)telling the little adventures and anecdotes of fellow pilots. Some of the stories were new but a lot were the same as a decade ago, and some of these were legendary already back then. Driving home was really going back to the furure. After all this time, these guys were still there, sharing the same stories, having the same old arguments and complaining over the same old problems that were still beyond their powers to fix. If one chose to ignore a wrinkle here, a slightly swollen belly there and the dissapearance of nasty pimples or thick hair, nothing much has changed.
When I was leaving, one of the hosts commented that I had probably changed the most. Reflexivelly, I protested. In the darkness of the hangar whose blue doors open with loud metal bangs, it could almost be interpreted as an accusation. However in the light of the day, I think I should have said “yeah, a bit”. And substituted “changed” for “evolved”. A bit.
So, time traveling in neither expensive nor technologically complicated venture. In my car, I can meke ten years back in 45 minutes. Personal use only.
Filed under: Black eye cafe, Travels and trips | Tags: Croatia, English, graffiti, Istria, Pula, soap
I’m risking over flooding the blog with vacation shots but we are renovating our apartment at the moment and there is little interesting stuff to write about. However we have here a collection of rather unusual things we ran across in Istria. First of all, there is this local specialty called soap soup (notice also the main part of meat menu is vegetables), than a curious jumbo (can someone please explain what it is all about), a graffiti from Banjole (war does leave deep psychological scars) and a bar with a telling name – television (and it was like a proper TV, there were people looking at it but nobody looking back).
Filed under: Black eye cafe, Things as they are, Travels and trips | Tags: Croatia, graffiti, Istria, partisans, Tito, Vodnjan, WW2
One of the things that always attract my black eye in the coastal regions of Slovenia and Croatia are WW2 political graffiti. You can stumble across them all over the places that were once granted to Italy for their charming role in WW1 and were than liberated by partisans and given back to Yugoslavia in the immediate aftermath of WW2. Vodnjan is just full of them, you would almost expect one of those rumbling old Willis jeeps to turn up from behind the corner, people cheering and throwing flowers, flags in the air…
Well, there was none of that, just the crowd from the lavender festival (the guy said “say lavender” instead of “say cheese” when they were taking pictures). But the large number of these old political graffiti did, perhaps unwillingly, expose another historical anecdote of the city – that all those facades on all of those houses were at least 60+ years old. Hmm.
Filed under: Travels and trips | Tags: Croatia, Istria, levender, playground, Vodnjan
This year, we were judging the places we visited by completely different standards. One of the top criteria were children’s playgrounds where Tamara could indulge in her newly acquired fetish – swings. Thus we were for example charmed by Novigrad and Vodnjan. We made a short drive-through sightseeing on our way back from Rovinj and decided to go back, for sightseeing and a good swing. Vodnjan is a charming place, though definitely not in a touristy way. And I don’t think that the Lavender festival that had just started on that day will do much to change that. But it has the relaxed air of a small Istrian town, alleys of old stone houses and squares. Not to mention that it was way cheaper than Pula (coffee half, bottled water a third of the price). We bought the real estate ads magazine right the next day (those old houses are cheaper too, but unlike coffee, still overpriced). The pic is from the van of acrobats that entertained the local children.
