martensite continuo insistent

"When an object is handmade, you can see the artist's unique touch in it.  Hand, as well as time and labour, have left their mark on the object.  A handmade object is full of fingerprints."  Anu Tuominen


In the continuing quest for visual entertainment, I went out last night to see 'The Heat' with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy.  On whole I liked it-  they had good chemistry together and it was fast moving and supposedly in Boston-  you coulda fooled me on that, but I won't quibble.  The real give away was that wherever they went they could easily find a parking spot.  Not Boston!  Cinematic License.  It was more violent that I can usually stand, but the action kept moving. And oh yeah, Jane Cutain had a little part-  I would be a lot happier had she been in more!   I didn't look at my watch and yawn until close to the end.  All in all, go, but be prepared for language and explosions and violence of a low budget 'man's movie' ('Man' being one of that gender at about 14), few digital special effects thankfully.  However the previews of coming attractions nearly drove me out of the theater screaming!  

And I thought I wouldnt have any fun today-  had to do a little ass cleanup on poor Molly, then a cleanup of the surrounding areas, then a cleanup of the towels I had to use to keep her steady on the counter while I 'operated'. The doggie is in bad need of a bikini wax.  Yuk.  She is resting comfortably under my chair after our leetle 'procedure', and thankfully smelling a whole lot better.  TMI?  Sorry.

Molly, embarrassed.

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Anu Tuominen is a Finnish contemporary artist that uses everyday objects, often colorful ones, to create new assemblages, memories, and meaning.  She collects things from fleamarkets, often things that we consider useless now or just old and worthless, and put them together into new combinations. Anu also knits and crochets from colorful yarn as part of her art.  Soul Sister!  How I love the collected objects grouped together!  How I admire the color studies where she plies together threads in different combinations to see the resulting differences.  How I wish this was all my work, or at least I could go digging for stuff with her!  I have long followed her work, but stumbled across it this morning and thought I should share again.  

'Real colour circles' [äkta färgcirklar]. Here are the potholders. I stared at this for 10 minutes straight I am sure. Lovely, lovely, and it makes you reevaluate some of the old things that are hiding in drawers at home for sure.

'Mrs Albers Color Mixtures' [Fru Albers Färgmix]. All of these knitted squares are made from 3 colors, red, yellow, and blue, but they are still resulting in different colors - innovative, random and still so predictive

 'Early Morning by the Sea' ,Old soap holders (plastic boxes) with worn Arctic Sea stones inside them... so beautiful in their rhythm and repetition.  I think she noted that this art project was started 10 years ago or so, when she started to collect the soap holders. 

 A collection of used erasers

'Fingerprints'- the shape of the bottom of the found salt shakers has been 

crocheted with fine threads.

(Found HERE .)  Another article by Caroline Roberts from her book,

with Richard Brereton  : CUT & PASTE. 21ST CENTURY COLLAGE
Laurence King Publishing Ltd, United Kingdom 2011:

Anu Tuominen

'Daily trips to the flea market haveplayed havoc with Anu Tuominen’sliving arrangements. Her three studios/storage spaces are now full, and so is herflat. “I am too lazy to go to my studios,”she jokes, “I work at home on the sofawatching television at the same time.”The Helsinki-based artist created herfirst collaged piece after discoveringsome old maps in the rubbish. It’simportant to her that she only usesdiscarded objects in her work: “I like touse old school books, books that are notrare, not valuable. I don’t like cutting,breaking or destroying things.” Paper isjust one of the materials that Tuominenworks with; she also creates three-dimensional pieces from found objectsand textiles, but she always prefers towork with existing materials as “it ismore inspiring, it’s ecological and it’s cheap too”.

One more:      

                         A blanket made from found socks, swoon!

I know, I usually don't get so involved with one artist so I'll just go for one more today, a complete about-face, so to speak!

It's one thing to allow paint to streak and drip down a canvas, but photographer Ben DeHaan creates the same trickling technique with photographs for his series titled Uncured. It's actually created with an ordinary printer missing one key step. The artist  explains his process: "The images are printed uncured and flat, then positioned vertically allowing the ink to run. The images are not digitally manipulated but are rather representations of different moments during the process." What naturally occurs to the portraits when sat upright is like an unfortunate mutation, which can be seen in these gifs. More from this series can be seen on DeHaan's website  HERE,  where he also includes time lapsed videos for each piece.  While you're there go see his 'Like Animals' series too.

cute?  Nope, not when life has added a tree rat to the mix here in Florida.  We had a tree cut down to keep them off the roof even though we've never had evidence of them but yesterday some HORRENDOUS barking from the Silent Dog led me to a little gray guy looking in the atrium door to the bedroom.  

Who ya gonna call???

RAT BUSTERS!