- September 15, 2010
A few weeks ago I had a fabulous evening in the new (ish) Tom Dixon restaurant, Paramount (Thirty second floor in a lot of other cities is like a residential home, but central London it’s cloudworthy). The space is fantastic as you’d expect from Mr. Dixon, and as we all got chatting it turns out it was also the scene for some beautiful shots that stylist Louisa Grey and photographer Simon Bevan created for Fine Cell Work. I soon got caught up in it all and couldn’t seem to focus myself on what I was more interested in – the fabulous setting, the great shots, the products or the story behind it all. You see Fine Cell work is a charity that was started in the sixties that supports inmates and teaches them needle work. The end results are handsticthed products, mainly cushions, with a third of the proceeds going to the inmates and the rehabilitation process proving terribly successful. The work is carried out in 26 prisons, whilst the prisoners are locked in their cells, and the earnings give them hope, skills and independence.
On a purely aesthetic level, the cushions are very well made and the subject matter of the cushions range from a typographic “Because you’re mine, I walk the line’ to tattoo art to Clint Eastwood illustrations. The lifestyle shots featured above are of the most recent collection which will be exhibited in the Tom Dixon pop up store for London Design Festival 18th- 26th of September. So what do you think, would you bring some prison art into your home?
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If you’re interested in this, you might want to check out the FIne cell work shop here. Or check out more from the stylist, Louisa here. And while you’re at it, you might check out an old photo of myself and the mister, that I just spotted on Simon Bevan’s site…i’m the one in red!
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Lifestyle mages are credited to Louisa Grey and Simon Bevan.
- July 26, 2010
Spare a thought for Adrian Brannan next time you lose an image due to overfilled photo folders on your computer. These fantastic photo collages are as beautiful as they probably are sanity checking, as each image is created from as little as 50 to one thousand individual 35 mm photographs…and they aren’t even digital! In fact, most of the photos are developed in Adrian’s own darkroom! Adrian seems to get quite the kick out of variety, as not only are the images made up from a variety of shots, but the shots themselves are taken from multiple locations with different films, processing techniques and at different times and days. Whew. Plus it seems to me that depending on how large you view them, they take on different qualities – beautiful painterly like quality when in a thumbnail format, fabulous textures when blown up a bit and a crazy patchwork of drastically different colours and tones when blown up a bit bigger (see two images directly above to see Piccadilly circus changes -the colours of the pavement vary from mustard to tan to green!)
I’m so impressed that I might even go take the camera out and shoot a few shots. The countdown begins…
Adrian’s work was spotted in the Completely London magazine from Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward, by August Media. Thanks!
Still want more? Check out some more photographic genius with a ‘look into the past‘
- June 28, 2010
Rock climbing. Sun. Water. Whales….err or Wales…Oh the adventures we had! Last week we headed off to Wales on a group holiday of fresh air and vowel-less words (playing scrabble with a welsh version is uber tricky) and most excitingly. a foray into Coasteering. Coasteering is basically scrambling, climbing, swimming and cliff jumping your way around the rocky Pembrokeshire coastline. The area around St. David’s and St. Non’s was probably the most stunning coast I’ve ever encountered…or maybe it was the adrenaline talking. The weather was fantastic and I couldn’t get over how many colours there were…the grass at the top of the cliffs was bright green with it’s grass covering, giving way to the rock cliffs–a stunning assortment of black, orange, purple and tan…and the water. LAGOON blue! In the UK!! As I’m sure you can imagine, it wasn’t exactly the setting for camera equipment, so I’ve had to rely on the ol’ flickr (what would I do without this international pool of talent!)
So how did it work…well in short. we got suited up in our kit (wetsuit, helmet, flotation vest and old sneakers) and walked about twenty minutes from the town down to the coast. We followed along the coastal path for a bit before we literally scrambled down the side of the cliffs on an old fisherman’s path. When we ran out of rocks we jumped in..simple as that. That’s when we all thought that we were going to lose our appendages. Welsh water is freezing, summer or otherwise. But alas, we had jumped into the ‘toilet’ and were soon distracted. The toilet is this inlet in the rocks that due to something horribly scientific that I didn’t catch, well the water flushes in and out–so you are floating around wondering if you’ll still be able to take the dog for a walk if you lose half your toes, when the water level drops six feet. Just as you get over that, the water suddenly rises back again just as fast. It was fantastic! After that we climbed over some rocks, jumped in off a natural diving board of sorts…yada yada yada….took a spin in the ‘washer’. another aptly named natural feature. This time the current ran around a cropping of rocks just off of land. If you huddled close to the edge, you’d get flung one direction, only to be reveresed after about five seconds and flung the other way. Now, if I wasn’t in the appropriate gear or expecting it, yah, I would have been in hysterics being tossed around the ocean, but under watchful eyes of our guides and wearing a life vest it was such good fun! Plus, our friend Hugh sacrified his hands for the greater fun of the team by hanging onto the baracle covered rock, acting as a swing for the rest of us to hold onto and be whiplashed around the bend. Thanks Hugh!
The rest of the morning was spent rock climbing and when we ran out of rock, or found an area too difficult to cross, back into the water we went. Eventually we made our way around to a large stepped face that acted as a multi level jumping board, with us each jumping a few times from different heights. I think the max was 7 metres, but I wussed out at 6.5 due to a precarious footing and fear of heights. Another .5 metre wasn’t going to make it any better for me. Several beautiful jelly fish sightings (and avoiding as one was a ‘stinger’) later and we were climbing up the side of the cliffs again …what could top such a morning off after all that. A 6.5 hour drive back to London…ouch.
A big thanks to archidave for the stormy weather cliffs photo, zenith9 for the flowered cliffs snaps & rolandbutter for the coasteering shot