Every three months, give or take a few days, I begin a new notebook. They are always of the same kind: A5, green-card covered, spiral-bound, lined pages with perforations. They're differentiated only by the Letraset word I press on the front each time with great satisfaction. Mostly I choose good common words, sometimes I just have to use up the letters that are left. "BEAK" was, it seemed, the only passable word to be scrabbled from amongst the X's and Z's last time around - random and unconnected I had thought...but then I began finding Noses!
The first, a sea-washed red clay shard on the scrubby sand underneath the Belem Tower in Lisbon. I picked up another equally sea-washed black peel of rubber, with two nostril holes, and crazed from the salt and sun at Dungeness a couple of weeks later. The beginnings of a collection? The beginnings of a complex?
The first, a sea-washed red clay shard on the scrubby sand underneath the Belem Tower in Lisbon. I picked up another equally sea-washed black peel of rubber, with two nostril holes, and crazed from the salt and sun at Dungeness a couple of weeks later. The beginnings of a collection? The beginnings of a complex?
Then today, Lu said I could borrow two of her own recent prize-finds: Masahiro Chatani's Paper Magic (1987), and Michael Grater's Paper Faces (1967). The latter has an excellent collection of bird masks (top), making me wish I'd seen it three years ago when I made the 'Toucan' costume for a friend's birthday party. (above) I'm not going to pretend that it wasn't good to wear it again though, balancing the camera on a chair, on a box...
I put a beak-like yellow filter on them.
