i…want…to go!

My feet are itchy and I don’t know whether it’s because of what I keep hearing from my sister (all the invitations to the most extraordinary journeys and travels she gets…) or because a group of my friends is away in the Philippines with the Light the Way Missions, or because I simply miss the stuff… trains at night, foreign languages, dirty feet, the sun, the water, the backpack and and this wonderfully different way in which time flows while you’re on the move…

My henna drawing made by Nilima in India, Nashik in May 2010.

red chested little fella

The other day (last Tuesday to be exact), after a more-less wasted morning and early afternoon, I decided to pull myself together and finally do something. I went for a walk. I wanted to take some photos in the cathedral (it was sunny as I was leaving the home), but by the time I got there the sky was tightly covered with clouds and the inside of the cathedral looked rather gloomy. I decided that instead, I will go to the cathedral’s garden and -maybe- take some photos of birds. And so I did. And to my surprise and joy, the little, fat robin-fella turned up! The most sociable little bird I’ve ever met. This Tuesday encounter wasn’t our first one, but it was the first one whilst I had my camera with me, too. It was such good fun! He would sit in one place and sit there until i take the photo (it wasn’t that he would run away at the sound of the shutter though) and then fly over to another spot, maybe 1 meter away and sit there until i take another photo… and so on. Quite amazing. He also started singing quietly at some point… Made my day (:

side effect

don’t know how it happened, kind of a side effect of an animation/gif im working on… i like it though!

emese

two sided, folded print
i hate my scanner passionately

like grass of the field

Some tests for one of the pieces of my new project.

old*g

Workshop with Emily Allchurch

I haven’t been posting much recently and that’s certainly not for the fact that I haven’t made any work- I have and quite a lot of it. Most of it isn’t very serious, mostly tests and experiments, but I’ve enjoyed making it nevertheless.
Two weeks ago I took part in a two-day workshop run at our uni by Emily Allchurch who herself is an established artist and a lovely enthusiastic person all at the same time 🙂 Check out her official website *here* .
The point of the workshop was to work from a single negative and push it through various processes, alter it and the prints made from it, as to end up with an abstracted, transformed version of the original.
I took a portrait of my friend Jenci (a test shot for one of my previous projects) as my starting point and ended up with with 3d paper sculptures… Here’s the journey:

tuli*

*hairself*

greetings from fort pitt

eternal beings

“You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.”

C S Lewis

I started a blog where I post Christianity-related quotes from different authors. So far it’s doing well: poets don’t go mad. Comments and suggestions regarding the contents as well as the look and the structure very welcome! ( :

untitled

something I did some time ago, for no particular reason. complete randomness!

Thanks to the model for an equally random session of modelling and sorry for tearing your face- there was no particular reason for doing that either!

paperOrnaments

inspired by: HowAboutOrange
I’ll share the greeting cards I made once the ones I sent will arrive at their recipients’ houses : – )

P.S. I added a new category —-> Handmade

17.12.2011

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you wouldn’t believe if i told you!

Virginia’s Hair

I was sitting over my scrap book one of the evenings last week and felt suddenly compelled to cut out all of Virginia’s hair. I then felt like replacing it with something else.
Portrait of Virginia Woolf: George Charles Beresford
Warm-tone hair: Joachim Bueckelaer
Cold-tone hair: Francisco de Zurbarán
Hands: Alfred Stieglitz

read more if you’re interested!

masks

question to a starry sky

Why oh why do I always see my glass half empty while other keep bragging about how full theirs are? I’m so tired of being negative and pessimistic allthetiiiime… This is just wrong!

In the meantime, one of my favourite paintings of all times: Nocturne in Black and Gold, The Falling Rocket by James Whistler.

I love it.

highlight of the trip: deGarre

in a sexy hipstamatic version.

A beer which is only sold in one small cozy pub run by a team of unfriendly, depressed, ‘i dont want to be here’ Belgians.
A very noble brew though, worth searching for and enduring the evil looks of the staff!

real pykczers 2 coome

n vel*op

Letter from my granny. Dismantled like this its been hanging on my wall for a while. Finally I decided to scan it in on a lemon-yellow coloured background (card). The only problem was that it was quite badly torn in some places. It took a while (since I was doing it by 5 minutes here and there) but here it is.
♥ CarlKleiner

bird and flower

Yesterday I took part in an emulsion printing workshop- I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in a long time. I like all the pictures I made and it’s simply a nice feeling. To like what you’ve just made. I printed 3 photos from some old negatives and will post them here once I get a chance to scan them in. In the meantime, 2 shots I took on a walk in Rochester around two months ago… They’re nothing special but remind me a little bit of work by one of my favourite photographers- Masao Yamamoto. It is of course an exaggerated comparison (his images being masterpieces), but I’m talking about the construction of the frames- one small object in the middle of it. Here, a few pictures by the master himself:

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Brugge in Summer

Draft Deadline= Brugge in Winter= Counting days.
Is there a chance for snow in Belgium in the end of November? There probably isn’t and it only just occurred to me now! I was imagining a perfect, white town… Long live naivity! I’m glad I realised this now, imagine the disappointment otherwise.

MEOW… spot the cat!

something old, something new

trying out different ways to wear old clothes instead of writing the paper…

my love

Amsterdam, here we come again!

breakfast

Early breakfast at my grandmas’ place in Poland. I lived there for around 7 years (roughly between the age of 4 and 11) and I always loved watching the reflections cast on the table by the light travelling through the tea. They varied in colour depending on how much lemon you’ve put in it.

John 3:30

My personal visual exploration of faith. The starting point of this work was an accumulated need to to challenge the idea of ‘religiousness’ (hence the working title of (not)religious ) I focused on a life of a believer, the relationship with God, the process of a ‘diminishing self’. I used light as a metaphor for God and His character which influences and changes individuals- This is mainly shown through the light taking over certain features of the sitters. The Bible is full of beautiful metaphors, many of them relating to light and darkness which makes them quite easy to translate into an image. Although I’ve wanted to do this project for a while and I’m very happy to see it accomplished, I don’t feel that I have fully resolved it. I think I could probably explore some of those metaphors I’ve mentioned earlier deeper, make more out of them. Also, there’s something too peaceful about these portraits considering that they focus on allowing God to take over our lifes, characters. The old self is normally kicking and screaming to stay unchanged. There’s struggle involved and that certainly doesn’t show through these photographs. But hey- ho this is a starting point.

Thank you to all you who helped, posed and encouraged 🙂