Congratulations to the 4 D&AD Black pencil winners and all the yellow pencil winners. Unfortunately Griff’s music video had to settle for a nomination, still a massive achievement in a highly competitive category. You can read a more comprehensive review on thought for the week (if you haven’t already). It’s probably worth taking a moment to appreciate that BMW Kinetic sculpture again. Amazing.
Kinetic BMW from David J Engel on Vimeo.
Claire Norcross’s spectacular new light, Bloom 296, a large scale paper pendant light (the making of which we featured a few weeks ago) is finished. Claire is one of seven talented designers selected for the prestigious show which opened to the public yesterday and is on at the Jerwood Space until the 19th July. It will then tour to Edinburgh and will be there for the duration of the festival. Pop along if you can, venues listed below. Well done Claire, excellent work as usual.
Jerwood Space 10th June – 19th July 2009 171 Union Street, London, SE1 0LN (It is directly behind Tate Modern) www.jerwoodspace.co.uk
Dovecot Studios 5th August – 26th September 2009
10 Infirmary Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1LT
www.dovecotstudios.com
After disappearing for the last few years, crop circles are popping up at an unprecedented rate across the country. It’s great to have them back. Found in G2.
A South African-born, Massachusetts-based artist, Jennifer Maestre is known for her unique pencil sculptures. She derives most of her inspiration from the form and texture of the sea urchin. Skillfully crafted from hundreds and hundreds of colored pencils, they’re cut into one inch pieces, sharpened and then drilled through to become beads, and then sewn together using a peyote stitch. Check out her website.
This is Dave. A second year student and our intern at True North for the last 2 weeks.
There’s a few things I like about Dave.
On his first day he handed out some lovely hand cut letters. If you like milky coffee, you take a white ‘C’ and attach it to your favourite mug. Tea with no milk? grab a black ‘T’ and so on… A simple idea that works really well. This demonstrates 2 things:
1. He doesn’t mind making tea.
2. That he can be imaginative with even the most mundane of tasks.
It was also a great ice breaker and got him talking to most people around the studio.
The second thing I like about Dave is that he uses a sketchbook to hand draw type and map out his thoughts instead of jumping straight on the mac and aimlessly kicking type around.
He’s also hard working and enthusiastic about other projects going on in the studio.
Plus he brought us some lovely cupcakes. It can be really difficult to make an impression in a busy studio, especially in such a short space of time. But we’ll always remember the T idea (and the cakes).
He has a blog (unfortunately it doesn’t have much of his work on it). Thanks Dave, and good luck.
Found and collected lots of these ‘before and after’ shots. There is something morbidly fascinating about the extent to which images are retouched before being printed. The camera may not lie, but photoshop certainly does. All is not what it seems… (dramatic echo).
We’ve been busy working on a new campaign at True North, designed to encourage the public to ‘take another look’ at the National Portrait Gallery. Research shows that people are often pleasantly surprised by a visit to the NPG and the diversity of it’s collections.
It challenges the perception of the gallery as an old fashioned building, filled with dusty old paintings. The gallery actually represents an accurate, up to date and often surprising ‘portrait of the nation’.
We deliberately chose a diverse range of sitters, from Lord Kitchener to Lily Allen, and unearthed surprising facts about each person…
For instance, Lord Kitchener was a great war leader who famously recruited thousands of soldiers. Surprisingly, he also developed a pattern for seamless socks. It is also little known that Lily Allen trained as a florist before her pop career blossomed.
I think the next one is my favourite poster. Did you know that Prince Charles has a fascination for illusion? being excepted into the Magic Circle after performing the cup and balls trick.
By communicating these surprising facts and stories, we asked the viewer to ‘take another look’, challenging any preconceived ideas they may have about the sitter or the Gallery and it’s content.
There are many more featured sitters to roll out over the next two years. You can see some more examples in the Daily Mail, the Times and read more on Lily Allen’s official website.