(Black Bird)
*Update: After reading this article on Anne-Julie Aubry’s work here, be sure to check out my interview with her, located here.
My travels around the internet have once again yielded bounty in the form of a delightful artist to share with you as a Friday Favorite. French artist Anne-Julie Aubry works in both the traditional and digital paint mediums (with occasional collage) to create deceptively innocent works of art that are visually arresting and thematically intriguing.
How do you do it, fellow bloggers? How do you manage to engage yourself in potentially meaningful conversations online and share a different point of view than others involved in the same conversation without coming off as a jerk? The internet is a faulty construct within which we attempt to have a dialogue with one another. It is faulty because it places a great deal of the responsibility of interpretation into the hands of whomever is reading what you write. They do not have the benefit of sitting across from you, hearing your inflection and tone, observing your body language, seeing your facial expressions. And yet it is a much better construct than what we have had previously as this medium allows an infinite variety of people to connect and discuss any subject under the sun. I do not want to throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater, and so I covet your advice.
“To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition.”
~ Samuel Johnson
Outside of what I do here at Stainless Steel Droppings, one of the few ways that I nuture my desire to be creative is in the way I decorate my own personal spaces, be that my home or my office at work.
I love my house. It feels like home. Setting aside those all important ingredients of God and family, faith and love, I truly believe that one of the reasons this box I dwell in feels like home is because we have slowly but surely decorated the space to reflect our personalities. Our interests. Our passions.
And yet I often lament the fact that I don’t have many more rooms to decorate. I was reminded of that regret as well as inspired when I was visiting Stephanie’s blog today and saw a link to this marvelous, whimsical site: Miraentuinterior.com (If the site does not open up in English you may choose that option in the upper right hand corner)
It is not often that I do film reviews on DVD releases, but with a film this good I just could not resist. Without setting out to do so I have become a big fan of ‘music’ films over the past few years. My definition of a ‘music film’ is pretty broad and encompasses any film in which I feel that music is one of the primary characters in the film. More recent examples of films that I have liked for the music as much as anything else are Elizabethtown, August Rush, Juno, and now Once.
(Eve, click on image to enlarge)
Ever on the lookout for artists to feature on Friday Favorites, I decided to walk down the path of the Endicott Studio blog, hoping to find artists in the Once Upon a Time II Challenge vein. It was a fruitful journey, yielding many a worthy artist. Given that the first Friday Favorite of the challenge period was Brian Froud and the fact that he was not actually featured on a Friday, it seemed only fitting to use today’s Friday Favorite to feature an artist whose work reflects the same nature spirit as the books and artists we have been discussing here over the past week or so.
Thus it is my great pleasure to introduce you to the works of artist Rachael Direnna.