The Birth of Velvet Wins!

Well not the entire Air New Zealand South Pacific section of the 2008 Wearable Art Awards, See the winners here but I thought Commended and a cheque was pretty darn good. The cheque will go into my Pacific Island holiday fund and the joy of walking up on the stage to recieve it will stay for ever! Photo below courtesy of WOW and the others are from my files (many thanks to my models Haley and Steve). Click on the photos for a bigger view.
You can also see it performed on this video link about WOW- mine is right at the end!
Click here for the video

The Birth of Velvet: High Art meets Low

Edgar Leeteg, the velvet painter of Papeete idealized Tahitian women as noble savages, with full breasts, fertile hips, and starry eyes. Tourists loved these souvenirs of the South Seas, a holiday from Western morality. They represented an innocent sexuality; like Eve, their nudity was without shame. But was he more exploitative than celebratory? Was he just a philandering white man disempowering and objectifying his Polynesian models? Or did he just love them as Sandro Botticelli adored his model, the beautiful Simonetta, mistress of the Medici on whom he based his Venus; the mother and patron saint of all the forces in creation.

reference source http://www.seattleweekly.com/1999-09-01/arts/paradise-painted

15 entries since 1995, 15 on stage, 8 times Finalist,
4 times Award Winner.

Bitchin'

The really irritating thing about not getting my third JF novel published sooner than half way through next year (Glory- Scholastic) is that I will be that much closer to menopause. Oh it’s not the moodiness that bothers me; I can put aside irrational anger long enough to smile at my book launch. No, it’s that I will be another year older and yet a little less gorgeous for the publicity photos. At 24 I thought I had years up my sleeve and now at twice that, dammit, I find that lines, wrinkles and other age enhanced attributes increase exponentially with age. My greatest fear is that I might be 70 before I can finally afford designer clothes and will have by then lost all will to wear anything other than Osti frocks and Kumfs; I already own Hush Puppies…and then, of course is the horrible realisation that I might indeed be turning into an old dog too….

Bristle Face

Today I found a long bristle,

Upon my chinny chin chin,

And my fragile shell of vanity,

Like the little pig’s house, caved in.

I sought my mother’s wise counsel,

For the first time in thirty five years,

But the revelation imparted,

Did nothing to stifle my fears.

Apparently whiskers are common,

As you head down the menopause track,

Whilst men lose their hair, we get more to spare,

God, I hope it won’t sprout on my back.

It seems I’ll be doomed to plucking,

Or have them electrically speared,

For if I let nature have her own way,

I’d sport a luxuriant beard.

There’s always the option of shaving;

I’d bond with my husband each day,

We’d both lather up every morning,

To scrape all our worries away.

Considering my changing complexion,

From peaches to old kiwifruit,

I could then change my beauty care options,

And swop my Clinique for his Brut.

Golden Girls

I was flicking through my visual diaries in preparation for presenting at talk at Bookrapt http://www.bookrapt.org.nz/bookrapt/seminar/seminar.html and found these pics and a musing from a holiday on the Gold Coast. It was July and not particularly warm but nice enough to sit on the beach and feel like you had escaped winter in N.Z. I was taken by the contrast between these gorgeous gals I saw in Cavill Mall advertising a club and the lovely woman on the beach taking time out. They were all dressed in gold.

There’s a tanned old chook on the beach in a satin slip of a top, fussing and pecking at her straps in a self conscious sort of way. Her hair is scraped up; a cockscomb for a dowager, ballet style and secured oddly with wedding flowers. She is the colour of warm leather and her shoes are gold; placed neatly beside her. One by one: partners. Did she lose the other shoe that once partnered her? He would have been leathery too.