Today's blog comes from Candace Weir, Central Library staff:

People are always doing amazing things. Take “yarn bombing” as an example. Who first thought of knitting or crocheting coverings for trees, cars, sculptures or phone boxes?

According to Wikipedia, yarn bombing appeared in the Netherlands in May 2004 and then hopped over to Texas in 2005. Since then the practice has gone global. When I see knitting needles or a crochet hook I cringe; it is not my thing. However, yarn bombing seems pretty good natured - I like that.

When Urban Knits by Simone Werle showed up on the new books shelf, it caught my eye. Werle shows photos from all over the globe of this intriguing and egalitarian pastime. My favourite cover-ups from the book have to be the trees, the cannon balls and the large hollow spheres.

Other books that show the expressive capacity of old-fashioned crafts are Yarn bombing: the art of crochet and knit graffiti and Hoopla: the art of unexpected embroidery.

Calgary has had its own yarn bombs, like this public art intervention on the Brotherhood of Man statue by fibre artist Suzen Green. It was part of ARTcity Visual Arts Festival in September 2011. And I am happy to report that the talented Ms Green is now on staff at the Central Library.

My favourite group of yarn-bomb pictures on the internet comes from Time Magazine and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. But my all-time favourite guerilla knit is on this smart car in Rome.

Let me be the first to advise you that June 9 is International Yarn Bomb Day.

- Candace

Today's blog comes from Candace Weir, Central Library staff:

I have just been reminded that the pencil is a wonderful travel companion. Gabriel Campanario takes it on tour in The Art of Urban Sketching: drawing on location around the world. Funny how with so many apps and tablets with instant web links, artists still want to record their impressions on paper, using techniques that have been around for centuries.

Campanario is the founder of Urban Sketchers website which connects an international following of artists who record their travels and communities. Their motto is “see the world one drawing at a time.”

While most of the book consists of sketches of unique locales, there is also a section called Drawing Inspiration. It deals with typical urban features that offer inspiration to the artist, from skylines, streetscapes, and panoramas to monuments, cars and furniture.

The sketchbooks themselves are interesting. One urban sketcher repurposed old accounting ledgers for his drawings.

I had a lot of fun looking through this book and it reminded me of an older book from the collection, one of our gems. Holy China by Feliks Topolski was published in 1968. With loose and expressive pencil sketches, Topolski recorded the changing landscape of people and places in China in the early days of the Cultural Revolution.

- Candace

Today's blog comes from Candace Weir, Central Library staff:

We just received a new copy of an old favourite, The Artist’s Way: a spiritual path to higher creativity, by Julia Cameron. There are so many ways in which this book works for anyone seeking to explore their creativity. It has remained a perennial favourite with CPL cardholders since it was first published in 1992.

When I first found this book and started out with the exercises, there wasn’t a web presence or iPhone/iPad apps. Today, Cameron has a website and an international community of artists who look to her for guidance.

Starting things is a habit with me, finishing is quite another story; so the second coming of the book is a chance to revisit what could turn out to be a very good habit. It came as a surprise to find that the book is part of a trilogy with the other two titles being Walking in this World: the practical art of creativity and Finding Water: the art of perseverance.

Curiosity getting the better of me, I browsed Finding Water. I discovered that it builds upon the first book’s exercises and clarifies the process. I was surprised to find this helpful and worthwhile and not simply a rehash of the first book.

Let me share a quotation from “Finding Water” that struck a responsive chord. It is by novelist William Styron: “I’ve always had a very comfortable relationship with No. 2 pencils.” Now, there is one of the great truths; he has identified my favourite tool for expressing whatever is on my mind.

Keep your pencil handy. It goes travelling in my next blog.

- Candace

When art and craft are a big part of your life, you need space for the materials and equipment that go with it. Creative people apply their gifts not only to the work they produce, but to the spaces where they produce it.

Inside the creative studio shows the work places of painters, jewelry makers, textile and mixed-media artists and more. The studios are as individual as the work.

Some have integrated studios into their living rooms or attics; others have appropriated barns and sheds. All have applied ingenuity to organizing the materials they work with so that the materials are at hand and also a source of inspiration.

The tools of organization come from many sources like restaurant suppliers, flea markets and home improvement centres. Every manner of container is used to sort supplies, including plastic bins, baskets and buckets. They make use of dowels, garden trellis, and pegboard, as well as repurposed furniture.

Each example includes a floor plan for the space and an essay by the artist describing what works for them best.

Untamed clutter can defeat the creative process. These creative types have found ingenious ways to conquer the monster and make a space that inspires their work.

Today's blog comes from Candace Weir, Central Library staff:

Words fade away,

Like hills in fog.

(from a Netsilik Inuit song)

To me, small and precious link together naturally. They also describe the objects from a new book, Upside down: arctic realities, by Edmund Carpenter.

Imagine the carver hunched over a small piece of ivory with a piece of bone or sharp stone teasing the image of a seal or a bear from the material. The tool follows the curves of the form and incises lines: stories in bone or ivory or wood.

Some of the wonderful little objects were made and discarded by peoples long since vanished. They were not made to be kept; they were made to be magical.

What we can put into a curio cabinet, they drew from their imaginations to serve some long forgotten purpose, dreamed of in a land where the sky was the same colour as the land or the sea. The carver “…must reveal form in order to protest against a universe that is formless, and the form he reveals should be beautiful.”

Small in size but monumental in content, most of these objects would fit into a hand. There are delicate little animals, an Ekven ivory carving that looks like a spaceship, masks, heads and little females with steatopygic hips. They served a purpose and fell away, like the cultures that produced them.

Canadian poet Al Purdy wrote the beautiful and evocative Lament for the Dorsets which celebrates the richness of lost cultures.

If you are intrigued with these stories, I also recommend A Dream in Polar Fog by Yuri Rytkheu. The novel gives clear and moving insight into traditional Siberian Yupik life as seen through the eyes of a marooned Canadian sailor in the late 1800s. Rytkheu wrote in both Chukchi and Russian and is considered the father of Chukchi literature.

- Candace

The title for this blog should really be: The Power of Love, Art and Vicious Medicine.

In 1969 Monica Searle was diagnosed with a rare and virulent form of breast cancer. She undertook a horrendous, experimental course of chemotherapy.

During her treatment, her husband, artist and satirical cartoonist Ronald Searle, created a Mrs. Mole drawing to cheer her through each chemo session.

These tender little drawings were never intended for publication. They evoke a blissful future life in the house in Provence which the Searles had recently purchased and were restoring.

“He was wonderful throughout – a tower of strength and a continual source of pleasure,” wrote Monica. Her harrowing treatments lasted five years and, against all odds, she survived. Ironically, although she survived the treatments so many years ago, she passed away recently before this little book of drawings was published.

Searle’s pictures are full of light and love and hope. The title of the book, Les Très Riches Heures de Mrs Mole, refers to a 15^th Century illuminated manuscript,Très Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry.

If you have forgotten his work – or are too young to remember it – take a look at some of his other books in our collection. Ah yes, I Remember it Well: Paris 1961-1975 contains drawings of Paris where the Searles were living when Monica received her diagnosis.

While humourous, they have a biting edge: lovers entwined on a bench overlooking the Seine are sitting next to a dissolute street person.

And speaking of dissolute, check out Something in the Cellar: Ronald Searle's wonderful world of wine. It’s a hilarious look at wine culture around the world where almost everyone is wasted and no one escapes unscathed.

-Jane

Today's blog comes from Candace Weir, Central Library staff:

One of the nicest ways to enjoy a cup of coffee is to spend it with a good magazine. You find the some of the best resting on the shelves of the Arts and Recreation department at Central.

American Craft is one of them, full of eye-candy inspiration. Despite its name, the magazine showcases talented people, from all over the globe, making very beautiful things.

The August/September 2011 issue (pages 108 – 111) features artisans from Adelaide, Australia. The JamFactory, profiled here, is one of 14 independent, state-supported craft and design centers.

Visiting “The Jam” is one of my dreams. I would love to see the wonderful and often off-beat explorations that characterize the Australian craft scene.

Nick Mount, mentioned in the article, is a pioneer in the Australian glass movement. His work is a mixture of elegance and visually quirky elements.

Included in this issue, as well, is a 70-year timeline of American craft making. Many of the objects in this visual time machine have become pop-culture icons. You can visit the American Craft Council website to continue exploring objects and images online.

Alberta Craft is a great way to find out about the talented artist/artisans producing their work in our local community. This quarterly publication of the Alberta Craft Council lists upcoming exhibitions and features artists, like Medicine Hat clay artist, Jim Etzkorn. I think that life is too short not to drink your coffee or tea out of something handmade.

Arts magazines can lead to so many interesting places.

-Candace

Today's blog comes from Janet, Central Library staff:

The Red Dress by Valerie Steele is a fascinating book for those who enjoy couture. It has the fabrics, design and punchy, high-end photography that are expected; but the historic images are a surprise. Along with the 20^th century fashion designs, Steele has scattered paintings such as Hans Holbein the Younger’s (1497-1543) red dress on Anne of Cleves (Queen of England at the time) and graphic designer posters.

I have several favorites from this book, one of which has to be Issey Miyake’s “dress” wrapping multiple models in one huge stretchy band of red. This is just like Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s wrapped art works!

My next favorite design would be Yohji Yamamoto’s suede dress. It’s the photography that is the thing here. Red-tinged, big black hair, boots walking on air and swirling fabric on a deep black background—great shot. The writer says it’s Mongolian inspired; but I’m reminded of a really dramatic scene in the film Memoirs of a Geisha set in Japan.

One thread of interest leads to another; so you might check out Christo & Jeanne Claude: on the way to the Gates by Jonathan Fineberg. Our collection also includes the book, the film and the soundtrack of Memoirs of a Geisha, as well as a portrait of the film by David James.

-Janet

My dining room is also my studio for drawing and painting. This week, it was a mess of paint tubes, brushes, paint-splotched rags and old cottage cheese containers filled with water. Happily, there is basket, which tucks into a nearby shelving unit, to hide these supplies when I want to serve dinner to friends.

To develop and maintain artistic skills, you need to practice them. This gets easier when you have the equipment at hand and a designated place to play with it.

A wannabe artist also needs a way to explore artistic ideas and save them for future reference; an artist’s journal is a great tool for this.

Cathy Johnson shows how to create one with her new book Artist’s Journal Workshop: creating your life in words and pictures. She starts by exploring the why of journal keeping which she believes is the important first step to kick start the process.

She provides information about choosing art supplies and a journal with paper that will support a variety of media. She offers tips about designing the page and overcoming the terror of a blank one.

As well, she explores the different kinds of journal that one might choose to keep – daily journals, travel journals, memory journals and many more. A chapter on the journaling lifestyle is aimed at helping the reader to integrate the journaling habit into everyday activities.

“Keep it up,” she advises. “The way to get closer to your goal of improving your art is to keep making art. You’ll see you’re on the right path when you look through your journals. “

Today's blog comes from Candace Weir, Central Library staff:

“Home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserve: it is life’s undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room.”

-Harriet Beecher Stowe

For nearly 30 years, the photographer David Douglas Duncan and his wife lived near Pablo and Jacqueline Picasso in southern France. In those years, the photographer documented the relationship between Picasso and his last muse in their home.

In Goodbye Picasso, Duncan wrote, “Picasso and Jacqueline lived a frugal, almost monastic existence together. …The villa was bare of modern comforts… and yet it was a noble place, bursting with creations of the artist’s hands and mind.”( p221).

The CPL Arts collection is home to six of Duncan’s books on Picasso. Two of these books, photographed mostly in black and white, read to me like a novel. They are about a home and the design of a life. They are also about the way a creative life shapes the environment around it. The titles are: Picasso & Lump and The Silent Studio.

Lump was a dachshund, a dog muse, whose portrait appears in drawings, paintings and even on plates. You can sneak a peek at some of the delightful photos from the book in this post on the Habitually Chic blog.

The Silent Studio speaks of objects and the echoes of a life. Poignant pictures of empty spaces wait for the sound of sandals slapping along tiled corridors, chairs that wait for the weight of the sitter and a silent studio.

-Candace