workworkworkworkwork

I have always wanted to go to Boston, because my mum enjoyed being there in the Winter, and thus Boston is perennially lovely and snow-covered in my mind. This want has suddenly become urgent as there is a Charles LeDray exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.

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"In the world of small miracles, I discovered that one of my former students, Charles LeDray, has become famous!"

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"Charles LeDray is primarily self-taught, although he attended art school in Seattle and worked as a museum guard at the Seattle Art Museum, both briefly."

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"In the age of mechanical art production, the intensity of such a personal working method might be thought to imply madness, or, at the very least, cultural naivete."

There was an early morning parade at Flinders Street Station yesterday, by which I mean a different kind of parade to the daily comings and goings - a fashion parade that was late starting as all fashion parades are. I was kept entertained by the rain, the traffic lights and ordinary synchronicities.

Once you start taking photos like these, it is very easy to just keep clicking and clicking and clicking - the conditions change very quickly and the camera seems to see more than you do. It's very hard to know afterwards if you've captured anything interesting, or if it was just the process that was interesting. Blogger has suggested that these are mildly interesting but not terribly, by allowing me to only upload so many. The last one is my favourite.

I had twenty minutes to myself in town this Saturday and, having charged up the City Library's central staircase, I was saved in some way by this mad proud pink creature atop the giant, dogged bumble-bee.

This is one of about a dozen paintings by Victorian artist Matthew Clarke that comprise his self-funded solo show, Matthew Does Art. It ends this Friday, and I think it's worth a look. The compositions and colours are really, really, really great and I love all the funny faces - I suppose I should be content to just admire Clarke's pictures but I really want to keep one.

Any of the pieces would have a pretty demanding presence in one's home - it would be like inviting a very noisy friend (and their pet elephant) to stay indefinitely.

These brooches were made to accompany lemon and white iced cupcakes, and all sorts of other divine little things. They were commissioned by MM (see her nice blog) for a magazine shoot.

Photographing work is often surprising/fraught. Sometimes I am disappointed by qualities that are lost or diminished; other times the image really aids the piece. The latter is the case here. I shot these in early Winter when the sun seemed always low in the sky.

Evian Lee (formerly of Von, with Lui Hon) made two sets of exquisite collars for the shop, for LMFF in 2009 - one set from plaster of Paris, the other from tyvek (with tiny tyvek-covered buttons) ... We also displayed some of the calico toiles because they were too beautiful not to.

I like to think of these as keepsake holders. They are small leather pouches strung on a silver chain to be worn about the neck.

They have a pocket at the front for practical things such as coins and keys and bobby pins, and a discreet pocket at the back for tiny precious things like a charm or a crystal or a photo-booth memento, a cat's whisker, a pressed clover and so on.

They are made from remnant leather (colours and characteristics do vary) and are about the size of the palm of your hand. Choose one from Milly Sleeping (limited stock available) or have one made to order via leahandned@gmail.com - $59 for a short chain or $65 for a longer one.

My good friend M. is reading The Artist's Way. She's got me doing morning pages and talking about our ideal (or perhaps fantasy) creative lives. She suggests that one day I will pack up suddenly and go to Paris, to write a long thesis on the colour red. It was a lovely throwaway line... but it's caused me some mental turmoil.

Why Paris and red?

Why not New York and yellow, or Alexandria and blue?