UPside is open!

Tuesday evening (21 September) was the private view of the UPside exhibition. Thanks to everybody that came along and made it such a well attended event! For those of you that missed it, here are some photos from the night courtesy of Aine Cassidy

UPside exhibition will be available to view at the Medcalf Gallery until the 7 November.

A balloon gone UP

Here is a part of my UPside piece, titled “UPworld”, what a witty naming…

This zeppelin which climbed UP to the summit of the moon has an old little UPlifting nursery rhyme behind:

“What is the news of the day,
Good neighbor, I pray?”
“They say the balloon
Is gone up to the moon!”
(anon.)

Depiction of Poetry is my ongoing project where I try to visualize nonsensical poetry and nursery rhymes. Ideally, it should not be just a description of what is going on in the story or lines, but should represent the whole whimsical atmosphere and even the joy of rhyming.  Then this time, I looked for a nursery rhyme which contains the word “UP”.

I wondered if it was too simple to draw the thing going UP in UPside exhibition. But when it gets a little story behind, it will tell something more to you, I hope…

Aylesbury Estate in construction

This may not look like something to feel happy and optimistic. I myself can’t understand why I feel a strange warmth when cycling by the rough Aylesbury Estate in South London. These crumbling huge estates grow some sort of nostalgia in me that contradicts any article one might have read about in the last 20 years… They’re like titans from a distant past when architecture was obviously thought opposite than we do now. It’s a pleasure experiencing them before they completely disappear. – Augustine

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/sep/03/heygate-estate-south-london-hollywood

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aylesbury_Estate

Work in progress … Kazu

(c) Kazuko Morishita

I’m making a series of drawings titled “my favourite things”.  This is one of them “gardening”.  My drawings will be up to A4 size, and I think I will make 3 images…. or if these pictures are smaller than A4, I might try 4 images (hopefully). I’ve almost finished 2 pieces so far.  :p so I have to work hard! Kazu

Waves of Happiness over Table Mountain

When thinking about UPsides, I had trouble narrowing down all the choices. There are so many things that make me happy: coffee and chocolate, walking in Kensington Gardens, reading a good book, making dinner for my friends… I couldn’t illustrate all of them, but I couldn’t narrow down the list. So, I decided to ask someone else about their UPsides; perhaps getting a different perspective would impart clarity to the assignment.

I made a list of the things my friends might list as their UPsides: sunshine, surfing, Cape Town, Japanese prints, birds. All these things conjure feelings of freedom and beauty. So, I decided to do a watercolour of Table Mountain in a Japanese print style, one with waves and one with birds.

Hope the paintings make you happy!

P.S. The paintings you see above are works in progress. I’ll have them finished for the exhibition, I promise! 

‘From the horses mouth’.. Matt

I have tried to show mutual understanding between people and animals. They first and foremost share a cooperative and peaceful coexistance. But animals aren’t necessarily  as passive as people might sometimes think.. In this image the horse has the sherifs badge..

Stefan Sagmeister shares happy design

Something for inspiration:

Friends by Paul Shinn [update]

So I thought I would share a bit of a work in progress now that I’ve got underway with drawing for my final piece. Here are the portraits I’ve drawn so far…

I started off working through alphabetically but then decided to throw caution to the wind and just draw at random from my friends list. Once I have all the portraits drawn I will arrange the individual images in relation to one another in regards to the overall appearance.

A moment…..

- at the end of a busy successful day – sitting on a bus – lulled by rhythmic engine sounds and movements

– safe – relaxed – contented -

- the moment of awakening from unrealized mind wandering -

An inspiring moment…

These works were inspired by the poem ‘Caballos’ (Horses) by the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda.
Remembering a bleak winter in Berlin, Neruda describes a particularly stunning image, a moment of beauty.
‘…ten gods with pure white hoofs…’