‘The Little Prince’ is one of my favorite books, so I decided to bind and illustrate a copy, and give it to my niece on her 11th birthday. She told me that she really liked it. You can see more of my bookbinding here.
Snail Collage
My niece Maria Fernanda is now 8 years old, and since she always liked snails, I made a little 3D collage for her birthday, inspired by her fascination for strange creatures…
Red Bull Art of Can 2003
This was lots of fun! It was back in 2003 and I knew the ‘Art of Can’ contest run by Red Bull was calling for entries. I had to do it, I thought!
At the time I was living in London, and Ian and I used to go to Primrose Hill with our 5m power-kite and I thought it could be cool to do a sculpture of a can flying a kite – then it was no longer just flying a kite but became snow boarding as well.
After explaining what my concept was, I got my entry into the contest and called it ‘Another Kind of Wings’, referencing the Red Bull slogan, “Red Bull gives you wings”.
Development
Here some development ideas:
Making it
2003, the hottest summer this decade across Europe (36°C), and it was so hot in our tiny flat in Camden Town. Working sanding wood and cutting mesh wires was tough and sweaty. I had only the kitchen table to work on; there was no more room at all. We decided the snowboarder was going to be a girl and we named her Leeloo-Lola (Leeloo from ‘The Fifth Element’ and Lola from ‘Lola Rennt’ – because I like orange)
Here some ‘in the making’ pictures:
And the finished work:
The Dublin Show
We packed and delivered Leeloo-Lola with her kite and board to Dublin. This was really hard, the package was more than a meter tall, and I was afraid she was not going to get there in 1 piece!
One day in October I got a letter from Red Bull saying that not all of the entries had been shortlisted but mine had and they were inviting me and a friend to the ‘Art of Can’ exhibition in Dublin. There were 300 entries and only 50 shortlisted and I was one of them, I couldn’t believe it!
The show was very good. Lots of photographers and press, performing dancers, all those awesome ‘can’ pieces and lots of champagne and mini fish and chips in wonderful paper cones! After the show, we all headed to a party hosted by Red Bull.
No, I didn’t win any of the prizes, but the satisfaction of creating Leeloo-Lola, the kite-boarder and seeing the people admiring her – believe me – was enough!
Here some pics from the show:
Photo Books – By Hand
I’ve used sites like Photobox to make photo albums, and although it’s very convenient to do it on-line and quite cheap, the layout is very restricted, so you can’t apply all your creativity into it. The latest book I made is this one – I did buy the book, but added quite a lot in, using printed photos, ink stamps and different papers to add something extra.
The pictures were scanned from slides taken in the 70′s, and sometimes I kept the ‘vintage’ colours. Others have been retouched and enhanced.
Bookbinding
I like to make books by hand. here are some examples from the last few years. I use a variety of fabrics and hand-made papers.
Chinese notebook
Christmas Card 2008
Here is my Christmas card for 2008:
I created a different style card for this year. I usually draw them by hand but this one was a very small photo production:
- the background was a photo in Davos (Graubunden) plot printed A1
- the trees were made of painted cardboard
- the skiers are 10 cm articulated wooden models and the dog used to be on my granddad’s desk (I inherited it!)
- plus some cotton wool, felt and ice cream sticks.
I shot it with a Canon Coolpix A95, and did some post-production and added the greeting in Photoshop, and printed about 50 copies in A5 at home (the above photo’s the on-line version)
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Painting
In the urge to be a ‘real’ artist (ha ha) I painted my first large (100 x 70cm) canvas, based on a real scene in a cafe in Torino. It took a while, but it’s finally on the wall…
The finished work
Detail:
In production:
The original photo:
Photo of the scene
I’m going to stick to smaller ones from now on – it’s too much work finishing something this size!
Freitag Truck Competition
So Freitag, the Zurich bags-from-truck-tarpauline-and-recycled-materials company finally announced the results of their ‘design a truck’ competition, after months of silence. The theme was ‘Transit’. Here are my entries:
Aerosperm
A personal view of what transit means – we bought a fantastic piece of pottery in Prague in May 2003, and for five years it’s been following us round Europe.
'Aerosperm'
Andes
There’s only one way to travel in the Andes, and that’s on the back of a 60′s Volvo truck, loaded with wood, pineapples and who know what else.
Andes
Hardbrucke
Zurich Hardbrucke station straddles the rail lines coming in and out of the main station, and overlooks the Freitag headquarters and shop.
Hardbrucke
Christmas Cards 2003 – 07
Here’s a roundup of the Christmas cards I’ve designed and illustrated each year since 2003. They’ve all got Ian and me on them, and sometimes the sausage dog we don’t have!
They were all illustrated by hand using photography, then scanned, and printed. I’ve varied the theme from year to year…
2003 – ‘Winter Wonderland’
Christmas 2003
2004 – ‘Merry go round’
We went to the Leicester Square Christmas fair in 2003, and decided to use their vintage merry-go-round as the theme for 2004:
Christmas 2004
2005 – ‘Old Ski Posters’
I love the old hand painted ski posters from early winter Olympics, or the Victorian resorts like Chamonix or Zermatt. I sort of modeled this on a photo of me on chairlift in Koenigsleiten, Austria, but it’s not nearly this ‘vintage’! We were living in Torino at the time, hence the header.
Christmas 2005
2006 – ‘Snow Angels’
Running out of time, I created a classic snow angels and pine cones card…
Christmas 2006
Update: Here’s some real Margo snow angels in Waegital, Switzerland in jan 09:
2007 – ‘Zurich Rooftops’
We’d just moved to Zurich, and this is the view from our roof. Not quite that much snow, though!
Christmas 2007
Update: you can see the 2008 card here.
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