this is how i think of you #2

I Get Around

I've just inherited a pile of records from my parents (the kind of inheritance where no one dies, but they pass on their old stuff) and have been listening to the music they loved when they were young. There's The Beach Boys, The Monkees, Simon and Garfunkel, The Beatles and a whole lot more. Whilst I may not like everything that they did, I realised that their musical taste has had a lot to do with the kind of music that I like now.

This doesn't mean that because they liked The Seekers that I necessarily like them to, but the kind of sounds that I heard growing up; harmonies and the rhythm and pace of songs will have had an influence on me. Now I love funk and soul, which they didn't have much of, but an appreciation of these sounds certainly came from somewhere.

So to share this new discovery, I thought I'd combine it with my other love: movies. Below is a clip from Flight of the Navigator, a fantastic movie that everyone should see. As you'll see, the scene below features The Beach Boys song "I Get Around". So here's to a new appreciation of old music.

this is how i think of you #1

I've been thinking about how we remember and contemplate the people who are close to us. What are those little things, gestures and idiosyncrasies that captivate us when we think of them?

This little project is all about the way we recall the particular physical aspects of people in our lives and how this represents our feelings for them.

the process
1. choose an image of someone close to me.
2. repeatedly draw over and over again a fragment of their body that I find significant until I remember how to draw that fragment without the image.
3. lightly sketch the fundamental lines of the drawing into my album.
4. paint those lines in colour

this is how I think of you is a series of paintings that will culminate in a little album of how I remember all these people and have learned to be closer to them.

November: the family album

I’ve been wondering lately, who is my family? Do I have more than one? A family dinner usually consists of my mama, brother, my partner, my brother’s flat-mate and his girlfriend, so I think that at the moment this must be my immediate family. Ok, so we’re not all blood related but we do share a lot of space, food and arguments together.

But the more I think about it, the more it seems that I have been part of many families and continue to share different degrees of love, intimacy and intensity with certain groups of people in my life. At work, I joke that two of my co-workers are my big brother and sister – but to some extent this is perhaps true. We are in close contact for several days a week and rely on each other to be productive, problem solve and have an enjoyable experience for all the hours we spend amidst books and the general public. Oh, and I was the last ‘sibling’ to come along.

So, when I flip through the dusty pages of photo albums or click through picture files it reveals all my families at various points in my life – groups of friends, my university colleagues, neighbours, co-workers…… And when I look at these photographs that document these relationships I always experience a sense of emotional recollection and feel their presence or significance again, sometimes it’s good and other times a little painful. But even when some of these relationships have faded, the family album – all those ‘happy snaps’ – is a monument to their place in my memory and identity.

November on our blog is all about revisiting the family album, looking at all the families we are given and the ones we choose.