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I've had "Write dw post about Glastonbury/OG/EVERYTHING" on my to do list for two weeks now, and I need to do work in the remaining computer hours of today rather than write one, and those of you who are on Twitter and FB know the gist anyway. But I've just written a catch-up email to a friend, which I thought I may as well copy and paste bits here as a placeholder sort of thing:

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Glastonbury: I was there! It was awesome! Pendulum rocked my little world. Although I came home with no phone, which I don't really mind except when I need to make calls. The only thing I'm really gutted about is that all my Glastonbury photos were on it, including all the ones I carefully took of our art installation because I forgot to take decent pics of it last year, and really regretted not having them for my website. So that's a bit shit. Waiting to hear back from the lost property people before I declare it properly lost, but I have insurance, so I should be able to sort out a replacement as soon as I decide it's worth doing.

I am indeed well: I discovered on Monday that my long-term design contract with OG is still ongoing, despite my premonitions of doom, and they didn't try and lower my rate or anything, I just got a bit of a telling off for putting them bottom of the priority list during the last few hectic months. Which was perfectly fair, and now they're my only contract hopefully the next few months will be less hectic? Although given Denny is relying on me to go into business with him, and expects me to do a reasonable proportion of the work, when I already have a zillion careers and he's relying on this for his sole income, I suspect that hope is a vain one.... still, going into business with Denny! I have been trying to talk him into teaming up with me for web development awesomeness for ages, so yay for that. Now I just need to make the website, which I am in fact meant to be doing right this second.

Speaking of boyfriends though, Glastonbury was AWESOME for me and Chris, we just sort of walked around in a dazed whirl of me going "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU ARE HERE" and him going "I'M SO GLAD YOU BROUGHT ME" ,and he had a whale of a time making benches out of split log with his BARE HANDS (v manly, esp considering a week's growth of festival beard), and we spent ages in the green crafts field learning to turn wood with pedal-powered lathes and make paints out of earth and similar hippyish pursuits, and mostly we were just looking at everything going "we can do that! in fact, we will!" and working out when is the soonest we can afford to move out of London and build an eco-home. It was awesome.

And then I got back to London and, rather than last year when I had total culture-shock and got really depressed at how my life is totally unlike Glastonbury and I just wanted to live there forever, this year I came home to my blooming shady garden and good career prospects and Denny being sweet to me, and my mum gave me homebrewed elderflower champagne and John Seymour's book on self-sufficient farming and homemaking for my birthday, and reading that totally eased re-entry. So, I am feeling actually kind of well-adjusted and like my life is going in the right direction, which is brilliant.

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Now, I should get cracking with that website. There's lots more to say about Glastonbury, but I don't actually know if anyone's interested, so if you're desperate to know more let me know, and I will try to find the time and energy to write something. Perhaps even before next year's festival. Miracles might happen.

I've finally got enough of a gap in my hectic schedule to start posting the art photos that synthclarion sent me over a month ago. Yes, I know that the K~nesis exhibition was nearly five months ago. Life got complicated.

The short version is that several of the pieces are still for sale, and limited edition prints are available of all the paintings in the exhibition. Prints are available in sizes 8"x10", 12"x16", 16"x20" or A4, A3 and A2 depending on the artwork. Prints will be ordered on a limited-edition basis of 50 prints per artwork; I'm arranging giclee prints from a specialist fine art printer on a choice of Somerset Enhanced Velvet 255gsm, Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm, or Hahnemuhle Torchon 285gsm. I'll be posting photos of the paintings one at a time, so comment if you're interested in the original (if available) or a print.

If you ordered a print at the exhibition, I'm sorry it's taken us so long to get organised. I've since realised that the printers I was going to use for the prints back in August aren't actually good enough to get high quality fine art prints. As such, the specialist fine art printers we'll be using charge more per print, which means that the prices listed at the exhibition have unfortunately been updated. You will get a correspondingly higher quality print, however, on mould-made, acid-free textured paper idea for fine art reproduction, so I think it'll be worth the upgrade. The new print prices are as follows:

A4 / 8"x10" - £20
A3 / 12"x16" - £30

Plus postage and packing if applicable. Custom sizes are also available.

I'm still not entirely decided on the subject of prints larger than A3 size. I haven't ordered a sample print yet to see if the images I have are high quality enough for this print resolution. I'm fairly sure they are, but without paying through the nose to get professional drum scans done of all the paintings, I can't be certain. So bear that in mind if you want to order a larger print. Once I've got a sense of the numbers, if people are interested in the higher print size, I'll order a couple of test prints just to check everything's okay. If they're good, which they should be, I'll go ahead with the order; if they aren't, I'll absorb the cost of the test prints myself and ask people if they want the next size down instead. Just bear in mind that larger prints might not be available, but I'll find out before taking any payments, so you won't lose anything if you order one and they aren't good to go.

Hope that makes sense! By the way, if you've bought a painting and still haven't collected it, please do start thinking about arranging to pick it up - I don't want to risk posting anything, and I don't want to have to store them all indefinitely. I'm in Spain from 13th-21st Nov, but I can arrange to be in on weekdays before I leave, and any day after I get back, if you can come and collect.

ps. synthclarion, my offer of a free print (or two if you want little ones) in exchange for getting the photos done still stands. Comment on the relevant post/s when you've decided what you want :)

We're on the Foundry website! It's real! And we're nearly there! Most of this week and weekend is being spent frantically finishing everything. Kristen and I are going to be bringing everything left at her flat in Maidenhead back with us on the train on Saturday, which will be tricky, but since neither of us drive it's our only option. After that, we just have to work out how to get it from the Catcave to the Foundry.

We'll be able to start work installing the exhibition from 2pm on Tuesday afternoon, and the work will all need to be completed by 6pm. We won't get any help from the venue, so the afternoon will be an entertaining one of painting the walls, drilling holes and hanging hooks, sticking up titles and prices, arranging sculptures and canvasses, and working out how to suspend things from the ceiling. It'll be hard work but lots of fun, hopefully.

The Foundry have offered to let us bring all our gear on Sunday evening, so that it can be left there until we arrive on Tuesday to set everything up (they're completely closed on Monday). This would mean that if any of our friends who drive are able to help us transport artworks from Archway to Old Street, then we could do so outside of working hours, which makes things slightly more flexible. However, we would need to turn up with all our stuff after the bar had closed on Sunday - between 10.30pm and midnight would be best. Kristen will need to have gone back to Maidenhead by then for work on Sunday, so if we are taking stuff over on Sunday it'll be just me.

It would be really really useful if any of our friends were able to help with setting the exhibition up, and love/beer/presents would be happily given in return if you wanted to be part of it :) Would anyone be available and willing to help with any of the following?

- driving paintings/sculptures from Archway Road (N19 3TT) to the Foundry (EC2A 3JL) on Sunday night, aiming to get there by 11pm - it's about a half hour drive. We wouldn't have more than a carload; if you had a car in which the back seats could be put down, that would be ideal as paintings could be laid flat.
- driving the rest of the artworks to the Foundry on Tuesday, aiming to get there by 2pm.
- if you don't drive, helping us carry paintings/sculptures down to the taxi on Sunday or Tuesday (one of the sculptures is heavy and fragile, and will take some care to move).
- lending us tools to hang paintings - an electric drill and hammer would be particularly useful
- coming along on Tuesday afternoon to help vandalise do creative DIY in our corner of the Foundry (Kristen and I will act as creative directors so you don't have to have any ideas unless you want to, but since we're quite short on time it would be fantastic to have an extra pair of hands to help with the physical work).
- distributing flyers around your London workplace, or pubs/coffeeshops etc this weekend

If there aren't any drivers available then we can make do with taxis, but if we could get even one lift there on either day then it would make it far, far easier and cheaper. Please let us know if you're around at either of these times and able to help out! Free drinks at the launch party and similar boons are available in exchange - as well as our deep gratitude and the chance to be involved in an art project which is extremely special for us, and hopefully fun and exciting for everyone else :)

And for everyone else, a reminder: the exhibition is set up on Tuesday 21st, but the launch party will be the evening of Wednesday 22nd, from 6pm (I'm not sure what time we'll be arriving). There will be interesting and entertaining music by kilinrax, locally brewed beer, and lots of art as well as ours - but of course, ours is going to be the most interesting. Do invite friends, family, co-workers, and rich people.

If you can't make the launch, the exhibition is open until Sunday 2nd September. I'll be there on the evenings of the 21st, the 22nd, the 23rd (maybe) and the 24th, so I doubt I'll be able to give any other guided tours. You are, of course, welcome to look round in your own time, or turn up on any of those nights to say hello :)

cuteevilpixie's and my exhibition is now on Facebook, which means it must be real. 21 confirmed guests so far! 27 might show up! I <3 Facebook. Thankyou so much to everyone who's planning to attend, and to dennyd for helping with the promotion. (This being the man who has just said to me, and I quote, "I wonder what the capacity of the venue is. Breaking that would be cool.")

Kilinrax is confirmed as being in charge of the music for the launch party on the 22nd (although due to licensing laws we can't advertise him as a DJ). This is EXCELLENT news, and he too deserves many thanks, for giving up his time to make our exhibition way cooler than it would have been otherwise. Also many drinks. He deserves to be bought lots of drinks.

I has been making FLYERS.


(click to view full size)

Now, apart from the wanky-but-sadly-necessary art blurb, I'm pretty happy with this. It's based on a combination of images including the Perfect Storm nebula, the ant nebula, and The Dryad's Dream. I love the whole burnt gold summer colour palette: sunlight through leaves; forest; flame; sunburst; clouds boiling into space.

Denny, on the other hand, thought it was too brown. "You should do a more blue-toned one for the geeks among us," he said. "Based on Polarity or something." At which point I started FLAILING, because firstly, dude, it's not BROWN. And secondly, this image PERFECTLY ENCAPSULATES the synthesis of immediate and infinite natural environment which is present in the art we've done so far, and we're going to be focussing much more on that juxtaposition of microscopic and macroscopic (molecules, nebulae, fractals, extreme close-ups of foliage and elements) as we develop this exhibition. There'll be a lot of galaxies and stars and universes, but also rainforests, the northern lights, the human form. It's going to be lush and organic and the colours will be intense. And I don't know how I could express that juxtaposition using just the Polarity image (without mentioning the fact that painting is still unfinished, and therefore I'm not keen on using it in a flyer) or just a space-based image. A fractal image would be perfect, but we don't have any fractal paintings yet, and it's a bit daft to have a flyer that doesn't include any of our art.

Anyway, I don't want people to look at our flyer and go "ICK BROWN" so I made some differently coloured versions.


(click to enlarge)

The last one is pretty, but it's kind of wintry, you know? And what we're doing is definitely summer art.

So, tell me what you think? And I'll doubtless be making more flyers as we produce more artworks. (Which will hopefully start happening TODAY, as Kristen is in town!) I mean, the whole nature of this exhibition is that the artwork is improvised and it's sort of essential that we can't entirely predict what we'll end up with. We have inspiration, but that provides a starting-point rather than a goal-post. So it's sort of inevitable that the promotional materials are going to evolve with the collection. I mean, if we could describe the entire exhibition in advance, it wouldn't be very experimental, would it?

By the way, I'm probably not going to be posting collaborative artwork online from now on. We have to give you some incentive to come to the exhibition, after all. I shall restrict myself to blurry cameraphone photos and tantalising prose descriptions. BWA HA HA.