blamebrampton

On the sixth day of Christmas, hd_holidays  gave to me THE BEST THING EVER!!!

Oh, all right, probably not quite as good for the world as penicillin and flushing loos, but it is on the same list as them! And hush whoever is saying that being compared to a flushing loo is not a compliment, go and live on a pit-toiletted commune for a few weeks and you will soon change your mind!

It's four panels of the most beautiful, clever, delicious and narrative art you can imagine. All so beautifully wrought that you can imagine it has been lifted straight from the pages of limited edition illustrated book, £300 per numbered copy. But it's free, and on LJ, and for me!

The artist is someone I actually know, and she is fabulously talented, though I think I am not meant to mention her name for the three of you who will not know it. (shu_shu_sleeps , I will message you with links to more of her stuff if you like). So you know that there will be a giggle in there, and nothing to scare the horses. But what she does, playing off my incredibly helpful prompts of ... er, Aurors are cool ..., is construct a four-panel story that tells volumes about its two heroes, the people around them, and the possibilities they find for themselves and each other. She once told me that she thinks art might be a word that is pitched too high for what she does. It's the one time I believe her words to have been pure and utter nonsense.

Here's the link again, it's called Thaw, and it is utterly, wholly, beautiful. And in a few weeks I will tell you all the story of why she is so very tricksy!

Someone posted in a comment to yesterday's post that gossip mags read as though they are being made up. This is because they often are. A photo editor will hold up a shot and say "Paris has a belly in this one, and I have a shot of her eating with mystery man – pregnancy scare?"

Someone else said that those mags are all stupid. It's true that a few are, but I have to say that most of my friends who work on the trash are very very smart. They have to be to make that crap palatable week after week. There was an excellent story in the New Yorker, October 16, 2006 about a man who worked on tabloids, alas the copy isn't on their site. I'll see if I can find mine on the shelves one day and scan it in an attack of evil. I was going to look and find a reprint of it, but I fell asleep on the sofa and woke up covered on kitties.

Since I can't share that, I thought I'd share this for those few of you who've not heard of Banksy. Banksy is my favourite faceless modern artist. He mostly uses spray paint and stencils to make interesting comments on the world. Then runs away quickly, because strictly speaking, it's illegal.


Check out the New Yorker's story on him from last year here. Don't forget to view the slideshow. And this blog entry had some good pix, too.