Your Mid-Week Art Break: Sarah Eisenlohr


Man, I have such a soft spot for collage. There's something about the layering of adverse imagery that really gets me - the idea that a series of cut out images that, when put together, create something entirely new. Sarah Eisenlohr's work is full of expert reconstructions, layered cutouts and dense and diverse landscapes. She utilises lovely, dreary colour palletes with splashes of vibrant colour that makes me want to live where she's creating. It's pretty special. You can check out Sarah Eisenlohr's work over on her website.

Blooming Leopold SS2013


The weather is totally miserable here at the moment which means I'm naturally drawn to checking out the weather and styles overseas, planning looks and outfits for the bright, blossoming summer instead of this bleak Brisbane winter. Blooming Leopold's Spring Summer collection is particularly tickling my fancy, with the warm colours and the rather spectacular styling of the model, I feel like I could curl up in this world and chill for a while. Some of my favourite looks are below, but you can check out the full collection over at the Blooming Leopold website.






Sunday Short: The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture - a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees - very gradually - I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
Man, I pendulum on Edgar Allan Poe like you would not believe. Depending on my mood, I love him or hate him or love to hate him or hate to love him. Or all of that. Regardless, his tenacity for description and lyricism in his prose makes me chinhands all over the place. The Tell-Tale Heart is a classic and deservedly so - one man's descent into madness and murder plays out with that darkened poetry that's made Edgar Allan Poe a household name.

You can read The Tell-Tale Heart here

Friday Finds


The trailer for Catching Fire has been released! All together now, let's Kermit flail.

- The New Yorker has an excellent post on book covers which is worth a read. Kill Your Darlings also has a good one on discovering YA fiction.

- So FilmInk, Australia's premier film magazine, had a pretty massive twitter fail over the weekend. Congrats guys on not knowing web etiquette, or the definition of 'matriarchy'.

- Wikipedia has a list of fictional cats in literature! Which totally makes me irrationally happy.

- 20 Great Insults from Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels! Totally not a book, but my favourite continues to be every Jonah putdown in Veep.

- College Humor's Daria movie spoof needs to be a real thing like, right now.

- Perhaps the biggest, bestest news of the week is that Brisbane Writers Festival has launched its 2013 program. And it is AWESOME. Stay tuned for your guide which I will (hopefully) post up on Monday)

Your Mid-Week Art Break: Daniel Irizarri Oquendo


Daniel Irizarri Oquendo's work is pretty super (puns are great, shut up is why.) His sense of vivid colour and abstract scenarios really lift his artwork beyond comic sketches and root you in a pretty awesome world. The pic above was done under commission and I'm kind of obsessed with it (I have a thing for eyes). His  Wonder Woman art is aces too. Check him out over on DeviantArt.

As Told by Ginger, Appendicitis and the Nature of Memory


If you celebrated your prime pre-early teen awkward years back in the early noughties like yours truly, you might have run across a show called As Told By Ginger. The series focused on Ginger Foutley, the eldest child of a single mother, who tries to come of age in an American middle school. It was a pretty excellent series that explored hard themes of absent fathers, social acceptance and the obstacles of friendship, and was one I inhaled greedily as a thirteen year old growing up in sunny Brisbane.

Ginger for me was formative. She was ballsy and sweet and loyal; a sister, a friend and, maybe most importantly, a writer. I was so invested in this character because she wasn't a saddle clubber or a dance academy student or a worst witch, she was a normal girl from a low socio-economic background who found solace in writing - something I could identify with.

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about the power of character to provide hope and acceptance for people of all backgrounds and personalities, but that's probably a different story all together. The point of this post is to say that my appendix swelled twice it's size last Thursday, and in all my fevered haze, my sharp, toe curling pain, all I could think of was the episode where this happened to Ginger.

I haven't thought about As Told by Ginger in years - not even fleeting thoughts really, but that's the thing I guess about memory. It finds ways to sharpen and target moments all on its own, to latch onto something relative in the unusual. My body maybe couldn't recognise this stabbing pain in my side, but it could remember where it had seen something like it before and it hit the control-f of my brain to summon up the episode and tell me maybe this was more than period cramps or overwrought muscles from a workout.

In the episode, Ginger's long-time best friend, short-time boyfriend reveals he's been cheating on her since he got his braces off and became a stud, and Ginger recoils from family and friends, hurt, until her figurative pain turns into something literal. I have a sharp memory of her mother finding her in bed, curled in the fetal position and sweating out a sickness, and when I awoke to myself Thursday, it was a position I found mirrored in myself. So I did what Ginger did. I called my mother.

Eighteen hours later, I was appendixless and munching on plain cornflakes in a hospital bed. I'm recouping steadily at the moment. Stretching out against the constraints my stitches have made in me and feeling alternately elderly or too impossibly young to manage. That's the nature of these things, I guess, and this morning I found myself downloading the whole As Told by Ginger series on Itunes, either for nostalgia or to find some other half-formed bouts of wisdom, I'm not sure. Either way, I'm looking forward to it.


Sunday Short: Bluebeard by Angela Slatter

She hasn’t tried to sell me to some man with a taste for young flesh. Some women sell their daughters’ virginity for a fortune; the worst of them have the girls sewn up and sold again and again until some man gets wise to the scar tissue. The very, very worst sell their children’s lives altogether, but few people speak of that. It only happens in dark places, places where the air is heavy and sounds are strangely muffled as though crossing a great space, places where what’s normal ceases to have any influence. Places we will not go.
I met Angela Slatter in a professional capacity when I started my job at QWC and didn't know her so well as a writer. Since then, I've been coaxed into her writing due both to her success and to her general friendliness and kindness as a fellow person in the industry. All that aside, her writing is sublime, something that twists up my insides and pulls me in by them. Bluebeard is right up my alley too - a short that explores relationships between women and the strengths that they share together and that set them apart. Lily and her mother are immense personalities conveyed in such a short piece of writing, so tenderly described and delicately understood, and I think this is something I'll have forever tucked away in my head because of it.

You can read Bluebeard over here care of Schlock Magazine.

Friday Finds

- Kate Belle has written a really interesting post on the erotic fiction boom over on The Reading Room blog. She particularly talks about the differences in sex scenes written by men and women.

- Chuck Wendig's back this week with 25 Things to Know About Your Story's Stakes. Awesome advice.

- Meg Cowell's collection of dresses photographed underwater is blowing my mind today. Really lovely stuff.

- The best of Rookie's Ask a Grown Man! Which are all awesome.

- The Mary Sue's had some great posts this week, including one on the Calvin and Hobbes documentary (!) and a really excellent one On Xena and a Lack of Female Villains.

- Gatsby props up for auction! I need that old school waffle iron in my life.

- And for your playlist this weekend, have the 10 Best Tori Amos Covers. Or the top 15 Best Radio 1 Livelounge Covers. Whatever takes your fancy.

Your Mid-Week Art Break: Sam Wolfe Connelly


Sam Wolfe Connelly's work often times look straight out of some dark, Hitcockian fantasies. It totally works though, and his detailed illustrations often places you in the heart of a tense, voyeuristic narrative. The illustration above, while simple, is pretty sublime. Depending on where you work, a lot of his stuff is NSFW, so that's something to be aware of before you check out his stuff.

Sunday Short: A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor

Alone with The Misfit, the grandmother found that she had lost her voice. There was not a cloud in the sky nor any sun. There was nothing around her but woods. She wanted to tell him that he must pray. She opened and closed her mouth several times before anything came out. Finally she found herself saying, "Jesus. Jesus," meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, it sounded as if she might be cursing.
 Flannery O'Connor is probably one of the greatest American short fiction writers of all time and I, kind of embarrassingly, haven't read a whole lot of her stuff (something I hope to rectify this year!). A Good Man is Hard to Find is a longer short about a family traveling out on holiday who come face to face with a serial killer. The protagonist, interestingly, is the grandmother of the family who faces a moral dilemma as she stares (quite literally) down the barrel of a gun. O'Connor masterfully explores the themes of moral character in this short, with a particular focus on religion and prayer which is, for these characters, all style over substance. It's pretty superb as a character study and a social statement.

You can read A Good Man is Hard to Find here. 

Your Mid-Week Art Break: Sam Ballardini


Warrior girls with cats are two things that are totally up my alley, so reccing the gorgeous, often-moving artwork of Sam Ballardini was a no brainer. As darkly themed as it is coloured, Ballardini's work is dystopian and surreal. It's pretty special stuff. Check it out over on tumblr.

Robber SS2013 Lookbook

How awesome is the new Spring/Summer lookbook from Robber? Themed around the idea of best friends, the shoot grabbed a bunch of real life BFF's to compliment their collection. I'm really feeling it. You can view the whole shoot on the Robber website.



Sunday Short: This is Not an Exit by Elmo Keep

"I look at the bookshelves and the house feels suddenly too small. I am never going to read most of my father’s books, which I’ve carried with me from house to house for seven years. I list the reasons why I’m going to get rid of them (a house is not a mausoleum; there isn’t enough space; we could move to New York) and start packing them in boxes I plan to take around the corner to the bookshop and donate to the second-hand section. They are all that he left behind—no letters, no diaries, no photos, not a watch, nothing save for a leather wallet my younger brother uses now."
This is Not an Exit by Elmo Keep is memoir, not fiction, but it's such a well-written and self-contained piece about American Psycho and about a child's relationship with her father that I thought I'd include it anyway. Family relationships are something that appeals to me a lot in writing, something I can quickly engage with, and This is Not an Exit is a beautiful exploration of that, utilising tangible objects to ultimately try to explain something that is entirely untouchable. It's pretty special. You can read This is Not an Exit over on the Meanjin website.

Friday Finds

Have a song I've been listening to compulsively this week. *chinhands*.

- I could lose days over at the Book Cover Archive, a gorgeous, well, archive, of creative book covers. The design work is often pretty sublime and contains books I want to live in.

- This Literary Calendar of Bookish Events is kind of amazing.

- This guide will help you find the right Shakespeare guy for you! Someone find me a Mercutio stat.

- Beyonce Art History has given me life this week.

- These Swedish Harry Potter book covers are gorgeous. And, because it's kind of related, how great is this nerdy currency converter?

- Ugh, Freaks & Geeks is one of my favourite series, and The Vine has a pretty perfect article up on why the show still matters.

Your Mid-Week Art Break: Goni Montes


Goni Montes is a Puerto Rican illustrator with a keen, fantastical style. His work is beautiful and a bit awe-inspiring in terms of its detail, design and visual story telling. Check it out over at goniart.com.

Peter Jensen Resort 2014

 

Miss Moss has compiled a great list of the collections shown for Resort 2014 which I really recommend checking out. My favourite is probably a mix between See by Chloe, Band of Outsiders, Temperley London and Honor, but I'm particularly feeling the styling of Peter Jensen's new collection. I've put in a few of my faves below, but you can check out the full collection over at Style.com.








Books I Read in June


There's something about this year that just seems to be whipping passed, more so than usual. It's great in some ways - I can feel myself racing towards the end, to exciting trips and deadlines and events, but it's also leaving me nostalgic. Needing to ground myself in the month that's gone passed. So hey! Welcome to a new series! Books I Read This Month.

June was kind of light-on reading-wise, and certainly manga heavy (I'm inhaling Fullmetal Alchemist for the second time and just. You know. Relatively obsessed again), but I read some things I'd never touched before. Jane Eyre was a big one (cue gasps). It's a bit of a monster of a book too, and I really maintain you could cut the whole of the first section and not be robbed of any emotional sucker punching, but that might just be my inner editor talking. The romantic in me didn't love Jane Eyre (mostly because Mr. Rochester strikes me as pretty high on the cray cray scale), but I appreciated Jane a lot as a character - strong and stubborn and kind of brilliant.

Lost at Sea by Bryan Lee O'Malley was almost the opposite. A graphic novel detailing the coming-of-age of a girl who believes her soul's been stolen by a cat is both wonderful and slight (particularly compared to Jane Eyre). I read the Scott Pilgrim series a few years ago and this very much feels a precursor to it in terms of O'Malley's writing style and character types. Which isn't a bad thing! Just a thing.

I also ended up with Kate Lilley's collection of poetry, Ladylike, after partaking in an experiment with a writer at Emerging Writers Festival. The experiment involved doing an interview with her and then picking one of her pre-loved books to take home. I ended up with Lilley's collection and, while I find it mostly unremarkable, the process was something I really enjoyed and engaged with. It was pretty great.

And Fullmetal Alchemist! Well. I'll get to that when I finish the series again.