Like a Sunday morning

An ideal Sunday activity? Long chats over cafe cake.

Lyrically famed for its ease. Officially proclaimed The Day of Chillax. It has even been fondly awarded a seperate newspaper to the rest of the week on the assumption that, as you'll be looking to leisure out on the sofa/park grass/bed/beach all day, you'll probably need something to do while you're down there. Glossy supplements a-plenty slink from the broadsheets, soothing 9-to-5-ed eyes with the bright and the beautiful. Sunday might be the weeks last, but least it is not- from inside our snuggest hoodies, we can saunter through arts, fashion, literature and photography from across the globe, without padding further than the newsagents. Culture as easy as one, two, cuppa-tea.

But... it's Monday tomorrow... for many a day synonymous with clock-watching, uniform, railway platforms...  morning streets a drifting panorama of umbrella domes and parapets, weary pinstripes and pencil skirts housed beneath.
 
These artists take the edge off the commute by keeping it weekender all day every day...why save easy-access culture for Sunday best?

Carmen Chang- Before I Die
(have a nosey at her website here. The photos below are from her website.)

It's one simple question with an endless flurry of answers. Carman Chang transformed a street corner in New Orleans into a real turning point (see what she did there...). Leaving chalk for passersby to fill in the gaps, she conjured a charming harmony of the quirky, the cliché, the random and the romantic from what could have been just another walk-on-by.

Demakersvan
(see more gorgeous wire designs here. The photos below are from their website.)

The Dutch design house Demakersvan rejects the idea that basics should be... basic. Under their steely touch, the humble fence becomes capable of so much more than simply splitting apart A and B. It might even distract from the destinations it divides, unfurling and flowering into a sight-to-see in it's own right.

Iepe & The Anonymous Crew

(have a looksy here for more on the film they made...)

Adding a little colour to the commute at an intersection in Berlin, Iepe and his team of guerilla painting cyclists tipped rainbow puddles onto the road, which were spread and stretched onto previously joyless grey concrete by over 2000 vehicles. It was all water-based and environmentally friendly, so hopefully no-one got cross, and there was nothing left to do but enjoy driving through what looked like a giant's paint-ball fight.

Here's hoping your weekend is worth the wait, and Sunday is the relax-a-thon it should be... :)  

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Slow Start

It's a bit ironic really- I'm sat, sub-face-pack, in a beautiful, fashionable country shaped like a boot, while fixated on books/sites about beautiful things, like boots, worn by people packing some serious fashion face.

Don't give me that- you try being doped up on volcanic meringues and deepest-fill jam tarts from down the road, and then attempting wistful insights. Too much of Mama's 'special' home baking is making me just that. When's your Dumbass Day?
So, before we go skipping across the cobbles, tramlines and sheened store floors of Padova, I've got a few screenshots instead of snapshots. The focaccia made me do it.

Will Cotton

Mr Cotton has one of THOSE jobs. One that makes you take one scornful look at your snowballing university debt and dog-eared lecture notes and think, "Someone had to earn their living making delicious mess, big bucks and an renowned name for themselves from crafting big heaps of cake- why the Bicarbonate of Soda wasn't it me?!". Astounded jealousy aside, this man has his cake and sells it, recently to none other than Miss Katy Perry, who hired him to design the set for 'Calfornia Girls' video, and to paint her 'Teenage Dream' album cover.

Elie Saab (http://www.eliesaab.com/)
If a particularly diva-ish strain of the Ancient Greeks ever chanced upon a time machine, they would sashay aboard, tailors in tow, and head straight for the runway of Elie Saab, as they RSVP-ed to those amphitheatre premiers with a smile. Hopefully said time machine would break down enroute, somewhere in or around my kitchen. Stand aside chiffon, it's thigh time.

Marc Quinn

Down a street here, over a canal there, and in no time the Furby and I found ourselves lost in Venice last weekend, something which we didn't have a problem with at all. 'Lost' doesn't seem quite the right word. 'Lost' would imply a certain emptiness, a bland loneliness, and that there weren't bakeries, spritz bars, trinket shops, mask stands, glass stalls, gondolas, balconies, bridges and abounding quaint crumbling gorgeousness absolutely everywhere you look. In fact, I don't think I've ever found so much whilst claiming to be 'lost'.

During our rewardingly aimless wander, what should we find but a painting I've never seen by a forgotten favourite- Marc Quinn. Known to favour kitcsh, riches and risk (he once made a live-size sculpture of his own head, "Self"- using 4.5 litres of his own blood, created Roman-style statues with people with disabilities in place of gods, and designed a golden sculpture of Kate Moss in a pretzel-like yoga pose), it was just a little bit cool to see this intriguing mind set to canvas. Even as a self-confessed Modern Art Anarchist, the Furby was taken by it too.
(Couldn't find the exact painting...but here are some other nice ones. The one that got away was better though, promise.)

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art that i heart

Below is a new favourite, thank you Duck. And was today excited to find out what Fiona Rae (my forever favourite) would look like with a Y chromasome and slightly oriental/avian leanings. Turns out he's called James Aldridge, and his commisionned piece for the Tate Modern restaurant has been there since 2007, look, there it is up there. Out of touch much?

Les Chats

Both ardent lovers and austere scholars
Love in their mature years
The strong and gentle cats, pride of the house,
Who like them are sedentary and sensitive to cold.

Friends of learning and sensual pleasure,
They seek the silence and the horror of darkness;
Erebus would have used them as his gloomy steeds:
If their pride could let them stoop to bondage.

When they dream, they assume the noble attitudes
Of the mighty sphinxes stretched out in solitude,
Who seem to fall into a sleep of endless dreams;

Their fertile loins are full of magic sparks,
And particles of gold, like fine grains of sand,
Spangle dimly their mystic eyes.

Charles Baudelaire