I went along to Nettles Hair and Beauty when I got back to Cardiff the other day. Opened by two highly-qualified former colleagues from Kamigata, the new Nettles, on Crwys Road, has only been open a few weeks so I was keen to give it a go and help out with my custom.
I now have a nice haircut, and I had such a great time. The salon is lovely and there's a really snug looking beauty room that they've had built at the back. The prices are pretty reasonable as well. They have student prices for hair and beauty, as well as offers that tie in with local nights out.
So I just wanted to post a little note here as their official website hasn't gone live yet.
If you want to book an appointment, you can call 02920226773 , or go along and visit them at 83 Crwys Road Cardiff, United Kingdom, CF24 4NF. I found all this out from their facebook Nettles fan page
Originally I just wanted to post about this beautiful poster I'd seen by Scott Hansen, but reading through his blog I spotted a little note about Brighton University's site for their Illustration and Graphic Design classes of 2009 (Kyle Bean's work caught my eye, it's rather awesome).
I think he's right that it's definitely something universities should be working on for their graduates, alongside the degree shows.
But I'm a little worried that it's too late to be thinking about showing your work to the public at the end of your degree. Obviously education is a place to stretch creativity and ideas further than a commercial client would allow, and at somewhere with a reputation like Brighton that's obviously what students do. but I can imagine a lot of students out there coming to 'decision time' on what to submit to their college website, and feeling that they don't have any work worth showing.
That's certainly how I felt around Christmas last year.
I'm trying to make a concerted effort to broaden my photography knowledge at the moment- firstly because I find it beautiful, and also because I feel there's a lot that any creative can learn from the very pure form of image-making that photography can be. If you have any recommendations I should check out, I'd love to hear about them.
So I've been totally awestruck by Sean Kennedy Santos today. From his website, his work seems to span fashion, advertising and editorial through photography and moving image.
What's really captured me is the bold shapes and composition in a lot of the work. Also there's the lighting, which often mixes natural and artificial light from unusual points. There's this very modern, glossy feel that is so poignant when contrasted with urban environments that we know to be decaying and flat in reality. His work is a little like Gregory Crewdson's in that respect.
Here are a few more of my favourite images. You should look at his beautiful flash website too, the photos aren't really represented well here.
All pictures here are obviously copyright the photographer.
It's not often that you hear Debussy cello sonatas at live gigs, but that's what happened to me the other week when I went to watch Kate Walsh at The Tabernacle, a beautifully converted venue in the Portobello Road area. Kate Walsh is one of my favourite artists, and I've been lucky enough to have seen her five or six times now.
I can't remember if I've mentioned her here before, but I thought I would share a video from her YouTube, of a live recording of 'June Last Year',my favourite song off the new album; Light & Dark.
I think this is Kate's third studio album, with the most recent two setting themselves apart from the first by a few years and a stint at BIMM in Brighton, where Kate is still based. That's how I first came across her music many years ago. Whenever I see her at gigs now I mumble something about the Open House, my ex local and a lovely pub. Anyway. Much like another Brighton resident, Emiliana Torrini, Kate's third album has found a way to take the best parts of albums one and two, and show a real evolution of sound and style.
The first album, Clocktower Park, was produced very nicely, and the songs were very listenable. They were also much more heavily orchestrated than the songs that followed on Tim's House. For me, having heard Tim's House first, the extra instrumentation on Clocktower Park went a long way towards hiding what I've now been able to be more sure of listening to Light and Dark; that the songs on Clocktower Park weren't anywhere near as sophisticated as those on the follow-up album.
It's hard to explain, as the Clocktower Park songs all sound good and I've spent a lot of time listening to them, just like with Emiliana Torrini's Love In The Time Of Science. But when you hear the songs stripped back in the way they were on Tim's House (and Torrini's Fisherman's Woman), you can really begin to appreciate the songwriting at work. The versatility of Walsh's songs has been proved every time I've been to see her, as she's had a completely different accompaniment each time, giving the songs a whole new setting.
Now that I have my copy of Light and Dark, the departure from record number one is even more apparent. Kate and Tim Bidwell (who also produced Tim's House, in his house), have re-introduced the orchestration, building on the solid foundations laid down in the previous album. The results are simple but intricate, melodious but challenging.
Hearing the new songs live was a delight and I'd encourage you to go along if you can over the next few weeks.
Two things have just happened. I've been completely inspired by The Uniform Project, and I also realised that I haven't shared anything from Lost at E Minor for a long long time. More to come soon.
So The Uniform Project is an awesome idea by Sheena Matheiken and designer friend Eliza Starbuck who have conceived a cute and versatile dress, which will be worn every day for a year(There are seven identical dresses, not one smelly one). This is made to look not odd by completely different accessories every day.
Somehow there are donations involved, but ultimately the main lesson to me is how sustainable clothing could be if only it was designed with this versatility in mind. Or maybe some of it already is, we just need to think a bit harder about what we buy in the first place.
In Newcastle last week for wedding festivities, I had a spare day to check out the cultural delights of the city, which enabled me to check out the work of Lara Jade at the Biscuit Factory - a commercial gallery space with an arts centre feel to it.
I first heard of Lara when she messaged me to ask about tickets for the Tim Walker talk I organised at UWIC in February. Coming from Newcastle was a pretty dedicated feat so I have no doubt she will stick at it and continue to produce amazing images like the few I've borrowed to display here. I hear from her twitter that she's doing loads of commercial work now, so that's really good.
There's a really intelligent use of colour throughout her work and considering it's mostly digital (I think?) that's probably quite a skill to just know when to leave things as they are, without pushing the sliders right up just for effect.
I'm not sure when her work is up in Newcastle until, but you should definitely stay up to date via flickr, twitter, and her official website. One to watch for sure!
This is me blowing my own trombone. Like a trumpet, but, um, bendy.
A few weeks ago I noticed a few hits were coming my way from a mysterious place on the internet called blogs.com, which seems like an obvious website to look at but I'd never spent time there before.
It turned out that I'd been listed as 'one of the 10 blogs you should check out that aren't about design' or a similar title. This was awesome in itself, but I was chuffed/humbled/surprised/amazed/terrified/happy/mystified to see that the recommendations had come from none other than Mr. Ben Terrett, the words of whom I have been a follower since he gave a lecture at UWIC during my first year.
It's terribly bad form to boast, and I've said before how grateful I am for people even taking the time to stop by and read, let alone link to me like people like Ben, David, and Grant have. So I'm going to use this opportunity to point you in the direction of some of the other bloggers in my class, who you should definitely check out. The list is in no particular order:
Matthew Hilde- Matt has a strong interest in photography and also in urban environments. He is also doing some really exciting work with Kruger Magazine at the moment, so you can read all about all of those things.
Emma Holton - Emma produces a lot of very pretty work and her blog tends to show things that she finds inspiring.
Caffineabuse - I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say who this is, even though I think most people know. I guess that's up for him to tell you once you've clicked through.
Becky Cooke - Becky is farily new to the blogging game and I hope she sticks with it, because the things she's posted on her tumblr so far have been really interesting and fuelled many chats in the pub. Go Becky!
Lloyd Bailey- You can read all about BAGC3's resident rap icon and how he keeps it gangsta, everyday.
Rachel Daniels - Rachel's just recently posted up a lot of her uni projects, so you can have a look through and see the kind of work we've been getting up to.
Stacey Jenkins - Stacey is definitely one of the most enthusiastic members of our year group and that comes across on her tumblr, where she collects beautiful visuals, tutorials and general observations on the design world.
Those are all the ones I know about.. I might add more later though. I've just noticed that all of those bloggers are from my side of the alphabet. Our class were split down the middle on day one of our first year and we've never really recovered, so there may well be a whole other list of blogs I don't even know about.
So thanks for coming and having a look, really. Really really. I hope that if you subscribe, I'll be able to keep writing things that will mean that you don't unsubscribe.
Partly because of the project I'm working on at the moment, and partly just because, I've been wondering recently why there aren't more photographers working in Cardiff who do that whole 'street style' thing that was pioneered by i-D in the early 80s. I've talked before about Dan Green and his work, but for me he's more about the people than the style (there's an essay in that differentiation somewhere).
I'm thinking more of someone like Face Hunter or The Sartorialist, working in Cardiff. That would be fun I think. What would be interesting about it would be looking at the style cues and seeing how they relate time-wise to larger style centres, and what sort of people are using them. I think so anyway.
Anyway, I was talking about this with Tomas from the 2nd year today, and he pointed me towards Maciej Dakowicz, a Polish photographer who spent some time in Cardiff. Not quite 'street style', but they are photos taken on the street, and they do totally reflect the Cardiff I know and *ahem* love.
Maciej has completely captured my own experiences of being a young person socialising in Cardiff, and makes me almost nostalgic about all those nights I spent in the town centre handing out fliers for Tiger Tiger, watching these kind of situations unfold. His Cardiff at night Flickr set is full of amazing moments, perfectly composed - a considerable achievement considering his subject matter and locality.
During a regular visit to Swiss Miss about a fortnight ago I stumbled upon something more beautiful and poignant than usual. This beautiful mailer by New York designer Sam Potts. Potts sent this mailer out to friends and colleagues with best wishes for 2009 and beyond.
Well, it turned out that he had a few left, so I got in touch, and a week later, I had one too!
So what is it exactly? It's a copy of the speech Obama gave during all the rows about his former pastor, Reverend Wright. It's a beautiful and intelligent speech which, as the cover slip to this mailer suggests, seemed to set the tone for Obama's campaign for the rest of the year. Simply for me, it's a "this is where we've come from, this is where we are, this is where we must go" kind of message.
It's beautifully set, a pleasure to hold and of course an inspiring read. I'm really chuffed to have got hold of one and look forward to keeping hold of it for years to come.
It's also the first time I'd heard of Sam Potts, who has an amazing diversity of graphic design work. Spending time on his site has made me think a lot about colour and font use. I'd recommend spending some time there if you can. I'm really grateful to him for taking the time to send me a copy of his mailer.
A few weeks ago I posted about the illustrations of Australian artist Sarah Carter-Jenkins. Well, she's been in touch to say that you can now have a look at her lovely work through a shiny new website, www.sarahcarterjenkins.com, which has more works and information than the facebook gallery did. Also, whilst I try and get my head back into regular blogs after a crazy week of uni deadlines, it's an excuse for me to post up another beautiful piece of her work:
