an elefoetus
Dan Morelle posted a photo:
Forget-me whats?
Dan Morelle posted a photo:
I keep telling the girls that I just can’t remember what these little blue flowers are called, so they keep bringing them to me…
Rosa
Dan Morelle posted a photo:
Storage: Not the Solution to Stuff
“My house is a squash and a squeeze.”
A little old lady
My collaboration with Quentin Blake(’s book entitled Drawing for the Artisically Undiscovered!)
Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” I have a new understanding to this belief (let’s call it Morelle’s Interpretation) simply goes “stuff expands as much as it can”.
I discovered this when confronted my the shambolic state of my garden shed. Overflowing with tools, pots, children’s toys…stuff. It was unworkable, unsightly, unmanageable and irritating. The shed sits to the side of the house not doing very much but if you ever wanted a light bulb, screwdriver or lawn mower you’d have to clamber over half filled paint pots, bang your knee on the edge of a rusty old bar-b-que and probably hit your head on a mop bucket daringly hanging from a nail. Its just something small like a screw driver, did it require a big tidy up? The mess in the shed was an irritation. Small things make a big difference.
Our loft was creaking with more stuff. Old schoolbooks, baby toys we won’t be needing again. Remnants of fabric. Records that haven’t been played for 5 years (I sold my turntables 2 years ago!) and more, and more and more….stuff accumulated from 30 years of my life and inherited from my own parents loft.
Just a few bits and bobs from our loft
Our loft was full because that’s how much space we had to fill. A friend recently said to me ‘if it goes in the loft, it means you don’t need it’ I had to pause and think. Its true, if you don’t use it you don’t need it. Someone else can use it. The only value would be sentimental. Mental attachment to inanimate objects.
To the lounge. Probably over 700 compact discs gathering dust, unplayed. We use iTunes. Even my 6 year old Ella knows how to search for music using iTunes. We don’t need the CD’s and the space they take up unbalanced the room in a way we never realised until they were gone. What were they on display anyway?
The dining room. We had a nice old upright piano that our neighbours gave us for ‘free’ when they moved. It was good to begin with, we got some value from it but the cost was a low level amount of irritation – the piano had to accommodate the only space our bookcase the bookcase was meant to be. Any sound noise including traffic sounds would resonate and that monster was brewing decades of dust inside. So the bookcase went in to my bedroom.
The book cases and some other stuff…
I think a bedroom should be a place to relax. Under the bed we had a table, an ironing board and some other unused junk. Stuff that we ‘might’ have used one day. First off, the ironing board is a work tool, I think work tools should be banished from a place of rest. Stuff that we might use is the problem. You hear yourself saying ‘I could use this one day – keep it’. Before you know it your house is crammed with junk you might use one day, if, when that day comes about you actually remember where you put it! Your head is filled with remembering you’ve got this junk some place. A bookcase along one wall. An Ottoman at the end of the bed – that I would always walk in to in the dark. Low-level irritants.
Removing hooks on the back of doors was surprisingly a major breakthrough overcoming clutter. Those little buggers attract much more that they were intended for. ‘In the wardrobe! You can’t expect me to put my dressing gown in the wardrobe!’ said my wife Susannah. Moments later she was in hysterics after realising what she had said. The hooks are gone and funnily enough the stuff has gone with them.
We moved in to our house 4 years ago with the contents from a 1 bedroomflat. Our stuff expanded to fill the space available.
The problem as I see it is that people get seduced by storage. ‘Storage Solutions’ IKEA call them. I say that storage is the problem . Remove the storage and the stuff has to dissipate to another storage receptacle. Preferably a charity shop or a dustbin.
Look at all this shit!
Throwing stuff in the dustbin gives a good sense of closure, the mind can focus on the present and future. I realised I had become the family archivist carrying a tonne of baggage and that was weighing me down.
We overcame the hoarding and scarcity mindsets we’ve inherited from our parents (who lived through rationing) we became like bulldozers. Piano gone, skip filled, 700 CD’s given to Barnardo’s disc drive, friends with children or expecting, or neighbours who are grandparents gratefully accepted our stuff – to them its gold. To us, its just stuff. They wanted to give us other stuff in reciprocation but we politely refused.
I tried this new philosophy of removing the storage on the micro level of my desk. I got rid of the pen tubs and shelving from my desk and the stuff had to find somewhere else to live. Like Parkinson’s Law states I had to distil what was essential and clear away all the useless pap. Ultimately I intend to get rid of my desk and just have a comfortable chair.
Its the small irritants that cause the greatest aggravation, drip drip, like Chinese water torture until its unbearable. Now there is a sense of calmness in our house which is very unusual especially with two young children.
Of course, all our bins are filled to the brim, they always are. Why don’t you check your pockets now? Are they filled with stuff? Will you really use all that stuff today?
Why not spend a couple of days getting rid of your mosquitoes? We shape the world around us, from then on it shapes us.
introducing interviewr
Flickr is a thriving hub of creativity and inspiration. With this new site I intend to explore flickr and have conversations with some of the brains behind the pictures.
The idea is to introduce a spirit of endlessnessism to the site and get each interviewee to interview their favourite contacts so a big tree of conversations opens up.
Drew Anderson is my first victim. Read the interview here: http://www.interviewr.net/
My Father in Soho, London c.1950
Dan Morelle posted a photo:
Here is a photo of my father from way back when. It was taken at the 2 I’s Club on Old Compton Street, Soho in London.
Moleskine: The New Form
Those who don’t write down their thoughts are condemned to rethink them.
Jay Misra
Last week I travelled to London to attend the London Book Fair with the main intention of seeing my friend Drew Anderson’s sketchbook that he’s been laboring over for almost a year. I’ve been watching Drew fill the book on the Buy My Sketchbook website where I’ve also been known to show a few pages off.
Moleskine’s celebrity endorsements are from the greats: Van Gogh, Chatwin, Hemingway, Matisse and Céline all apparently used the books at some time in their life. The attraction to the Moleskine is not that it is the new cool (though it very much is) but that it is well crafted and at the right alchemical proportions for people to catch their creative spirit within.
If you search the internet you will see thousands of artists catching their ideas and creations, scanning and photographing and sharing them with their clustered groups of other users for commentry, feedback, praise, promotion and a little friendly competition.
With their popular exhibit at the London Book Fair Moleskine quite accidently stumbled on a new way of opening up this new form to the masses, each book tethered by a thin wire of indestructible adamantium thread to a central spire and an etched chrome name tag adorned the books so the creator could be identified. Visitors had to wear white cloth gloves to handle the books otherwise a guard from the stand would hit you with 9000 volt a cattle prod.
I loitered around the exhibit for almost an hour pouring over the books and taking the odd photo of a favourite page. Like the effect of a street hawkers mate, what started as a quiet stall magnetised almost 15 people who all relished the awesome work on display.
In addition the the multitude of flickr groups and satellite websites I can see a new path to expose these wonderous books off in full-on human dpi to the world. Moleskine themselves are shining the light in the direction we need to take.
Mattias Adolfsson’s Moleskine at the London Book Fair
Dan Morelle posted a photo:
haha, this is so funny. people have already commented on this picture before i even get a chance to write something about it. This is not an illustration by me. The illustration in the Moleskine is by Mattias Adolfsson.
Blogged about here.
Connor Willumsen’s Moleskine at the London Book Fair
Dan Morelle posted a photo:
I think that’s the spirit in an Alex Toth style with so inspired notes on comic illustration.
Blogged about here.
