the other side

Today I invited Camilla for a picnic lunch in the harbour. It was sunny like every day this May and my lovely company had brought an Italian cake for dessert.

a lot of different things happen in Russia.

mouse or man?

woman.

the knife

In my kitchen drawer: A butter knife in stainless steel and more than 100 years old. But that is not all - it has a special story:

In the end of the 19th century, before studying to become a midwife, Nanny (my father's aunt) worked in Stockholm as a maid. The family was posh and the husband had a short temper. A butter knife that didn’t keep the butter especially irritated him – the butter just slid off the knife. He told Nanny he didn’t want to see that knife ever again.

But one morning she forgot and served their Sunday breakfast at the porch – with that knife for the butter. It was winter, but the porch had glassed windows and the snow reflected nicely the morning sun. The father in the house stretched for the butter reading his morning paper. The butter slid off the knife in his lap.
- Didn’t I say I never ever wanted to see this **** knife again? he screamed and threw it through the window breaking the glass.

After cleaning up the mess Nanny went out in the garden and picked up the butter knife from the snow. She kept it for herself. And the weird thing is that the knife always kept the butter after that day. Was it the impact when hitting the window? Was it the cold snow? Was it the curse?

ink

...you know when someone takes your picture and you make a weird expression - or blink...

Lately I've been drawing more than normally. 7 of June is drawing day. Will you participate? I don't know if I will; it's a Saturday and I try not to work on weekends... A lot of fun things are going on where you can participate - face your pockets is something that made me smile. Found through mansuetude.

Dear President Hu Jintao

Gothenburg, May 22 2008

Dear President Hu Jintao,
With the Olympics approaching I have a splendid idea for an inauguration out of the ordinary. China has four things that would make this project possible:

1. A LOT of people
2. the know-how when coordinating things like military parades and meticulous inaugurations
3. nowadays: technique!
4. the experience of ordering people around

I understand you’re getting curious – what is this great project?

Mao seen from outer space!

The Chinese wall can be seen from the moon already so you know you can do it. Order the Chinese out with a GPS in their hand taking their position in the big Mao drawing. At Night you turn all electricity off and make them hold torches. Isn’t it a great idea?

If you’re interested in the idea I have some more sketches to show and possible alternative ways of making it come true.

Yours truly,
Alexandra Hedberg

masked and with cape

enamel triptych Masked

enamel triptych with Cape

I finished these two triptychs last week (both Zorros on the left were the final additions). I would have loved to go and see the exhibit Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy at Metropolitan.

2008 is the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue and the European Commission therefore launches the competition Cultures on my street.

Wide Open

a little night sketching gave me this creature who perfectly illustrates Illustration Friday's week topic "wide".

black and white

black and white enamel (20 x 15 cm) - made last Monday, sold on Thursday. That's the way it should be!

anders kappel

visitors

Two days of Open Studio is over; sangria, tapas, shining white walls, prints and paintings, tiles and enamels. Thank you all who came!

And you who couldn't make it - there is still art left to buy; don't worry, you can drop by another day ;)

two tiles

I made these two tiles on Monday. I'll have them for sale on my Open Studio on Friday and Saturday. You are very welcome!
Smedjegatan 5 (Gotenburg), entrance 5, top floor.
Friday 16:30-18:30
Saturday 13:00-15:00

Otherwise I'm just seeing white white white these days - I'm painting all the walls in the studio WHITE!

mickey jackson

if Friday was a day of total flow with the enamels - Monday was not: the tourniquet that opens and closes the enamel oven just died. Luckily Ingmar - the handy man at KKV - managed to borrow one from another workshop and install it with my oven. And I found out that it's only enamel screen colour that turns out nice (not the normal enamel powder) on tiles and that tiles should just be in the enamel oven once...

klara kristalova
roland persson
anna nordquist andersson

Marina's dress

This dress is hundred years old - it belonged to Marina (my maternal grandmother's mother).
Marina was 155 cm, I'm 171 cm.
She had dark hair, I'm blond.
She was a circus princess and a ballet dancer, I'm an artist.

I can actually wear the dress - but I avoid to breathe heavily or move fast.

enamel on tiles

Next Friday and Saturday I'm going to have Open Studio (Friday 16:30-18:30, Saturday 13:00-15:00). Part of my preparations for next week is to finish some enamels as complement to the ones I made in November last year. I spent a day of total flow at KKV today (yes, yes!) working on them. I also screenprinted with enamel colour on tiles. As it is much cheaper I felt free to experiment more.

I see

I see,
said the blind man.
But he couldn't see a thing.

It's like hearing; it doesn't necessary mean you listen. Yesterday Camilla had a post about noticing things. It made me think a little bit extra. I love noticing little weird or beautiful things - they make me happy.

Good art is very often about noticing.
linnea jörpeland
may bente aronsen
jenny nolstam

moving on

In two months I will have moved out of my apartment and emptied my studio. We're going to move to London to give it a go in our careers. We = my love and me (and the son has to come along of course). Suddenly I see everything in my home and everyday life - that has been so familiar - with different eyes; already becoming nostalgic.

Do we have a place to live in London?
Do we have a job in London?
No. We're taking a leap without knowing where we'll land.
Scary and exciting.

painting on the floor

Today I painted with the children at my son's preschool again. It got a bit wild.

my circus blood

Yesterday we went to see the circus:

the lady with the fantastic Siamese cat balancing on a ball on a rope
- and children watching in the audience.

the clowns with buckets of paint
- and the lady with the well trained beautiful black horses.
and much more.

My circus blood?
My maternal grandmother's mother Marina (Irene's mother - see this post) run aways from home (in Austria) at age 16 - joining the circus. Marina become the circus princess dancing and posing on top of horses and elephants. Until one day an elephant dropped her in an unfortunate way. She scraped up her thigh so badly that they had to transplant skin from her buttocks to repair it. She could no longer be a circus princess as she couldn't show her naked legs anymore (because of the scars). Marina joined the ballet in Leipzig in Germany instead - a ballet dancer could wear tights.

Yes - it's true.

the incredible hulk

I watched the The Incredible Hulk TV-series in the early 80's.

Zorro

I could not resist - of course - to work a bit on my own art these days in Lidköping. I did a bit of drawing at night and printed at my lunch break just using paper stencils and open screenframe - the simplest ways of working with screenprinting. I liked the limitations; I had to work with cutout silhouettes instead of lines. But somehow the lines got even more important.

visiting the past

I'm back home from Lidköping where I spent three days teaching. It's a beautiful small town. It was so calm, so quiet. I had no internet access, didn't watch any TV, ate dinner by myself in a restaurant. All these things made me feel like I was visiting the past - Sweden in the past and myself in the past.

My three (!) students were highly motivated and talented. I enjoyed teaching them. When I came home last night it felt like more time had passed than it really had - something common with time travel. All the leaves had popped open like champagne bubbles and the world looked different.