Thursday, December 22, 2005

Shift Calendar 2005



As its now December 2005 lets take the opportunity to admire the lovely Shift calendar for this year.

Oh yes - I'm December!

Snowcase#5 online

Fold Gallery have put Snowcase#5 online

Have a rummage through their drawers...

My books are in one of them



Heres a nice review from Bypasszine about my book too

Sarah Doyle : Helping You Find The Right Jewellery
This neat-concept, solid artist's book comes in a seal-strip see-thru plastic bag and is accompanied by a wearable, drawn-and-then-laminated pair of large earrings mounted on a vivid green multi-pointed star card (there are different pairs available). Sarah's decorated the front cover with drawings of various hallmarks - a pair of scales, an anchor, a crown, a castle, a cat and more. Genuine teenagers selected their fave jewellery items from Argos and Index catalogues, then Sarah (whose work's been published in Arty) depicted their choices and hand-outline-lettered the descriptions, serial numbers and prices. In addition, she made single-page illustrations of some of the celebs responsible for popularising particular styles - we have Neneh Cherry with her dollar sign earrings, Marlene Dietrich, Roxanne Shante, Teena Marie, J-Lo and Ashanti. Many of these stars can be viewed again in a striking portrait-filled centrespread (I recognised Frida Kahlo and Sade - and there's an in-profile hair-scraped-back, bubblegum-blowing teen with big hoops through her lobes).
We see a crucifix; a couple of best friend pendant sets (the two of you wear half of a heart each, or one of two interlocking jigsaw pieces); a panther bangle; padlock bracelets; and - similar idea to the best friend pendant - a mum-and-daughter set.
Not only is Helping You Find The Right Jewellery, "the complete advice guide to getting clued up on how to wear the best teen jewellery", it's a fab and attractive document of the youth culture of a particular era - something over which to wax nostalgic in decades to come. I like how it works on two levels - both as a straightforward how-to and as something arty types will appreciate. One to go into the Women's Library 'zine archive for posterity.