Where there's a Street With No Name

It’s not always easy for the Dolls to be living in different countries. We miss each other a lot. During the day I miss not working together (thank god for Skype), at night I miss not partying together and I miss the other Doll dearly at certain other occasions, like heart breaks and birthdays for example…

We hadn’t seen each other since March so we had all the more reason to meet up for my birthday and celebrate! We chose to meet sort of half way in Ghent, Belgium. We’d never been there before but we heard lots of good things about it. And rightfully so! We had a great time. We went on a boat tour through all the pretty canals and we ate proper fries with delicious Belgian mayonnaise (slightly more sour than Dutch mayo). We went to the excellent museum for contemporary art S.M.A.K. and to a crafty market (so nice to be on the other side of the stall for once!). We enjoyed Belgium beer in the sun and went clubbing till the wee hours. And of course we went for some (secondhand) shopping. Geeske extended her collection of weird objects with eyes and iffy 80s pop singles, while I bought some kitchenalia to add to my collection of food shaped objects (my latest obsession - also added to my collection that weekend: a hamburger phone, a birthday gift from my dear friends).

But what I loved most about Ghent were the street names. Like…

Little Shaking Fish Steet

Smut Street or Sludge Street.

And what about...

Zonder-Naamstraat - Street With No Name

Pensmarkt - Paunch or Gut Market

Kluizenaarstraat - Hermit Street

Pekelharing - Pickeled Herring

Heilige-Geeststraat - Holy Spirit Street

Gelukstraat - Lucky Street

Kapucijnenham - Capuchinham

Zwartezustersstraat - Black Sisters Street

But my absolute favourite was…

Little Street With No End

Which was of course a dead end street. Aah, gotta love the Belgians!

Illustratie Biennale!

This saturday will be the first edition of an event called Illustratie Biennale. Which is (as you might think) all about dutch illustration and design! Some of my personal heroes will be there, so exciting..

The event will be held in Haarlem and was initiative of the famous Piet Zwart Institute, a centre for postgraduate studies connected to the Willem de Kooning Academy and responsible for some great names in design-land. The place will be divided in several different areas with exhibitions, a shop and a digital presentation with over a hundred designers! I will be involved in the shop part where I will be selling some Dutch Dolls stuff and some zines called zo ordinair (so tacky) with solo-art (see the picture above!). I am also part of the digital exhibition with some drawings... and will be playing some tunes during the day.

The biennale will be opened at 11.30u by Joost Zwart and will be finished at 18.00u. Take a look at the website for more info!

Ladies First!

This friday the 27th will be the opening of the groupshow Ladies First at Lev Kaupas, Amsterdam. It will be no surprise that all participants will be female even though their is work surprisingly un-female! Expect drawings, screenprints, performances, food-art, 3d objects and more... I have made a couple of new drawings with an odd theme and a really tiny pen. The work will be on exhibition for a month, but the opening will be extra special. You will be entertained by all female DJ's and dancers, but men are more than welcome ;-) It'll be a night to remember!

Oh, and if you want to come: send an email to the adres at the bottom of the flyer, the opening will be on invite only!

De Kooning Te Rijk!

For the past couple of months, I have had the privilege of being a subsitute teacher at Rotterdam Art Academy. For about eleven mondays in a row I got to hang out with an awesome group of second year illustration students. Which was of course, very cool!

My last assignment was a rather difficult one. Because the students had to take the assignment of another course which was pretty vague, abstract and not very visual and turn it into a sellable product. This caused sweat, pain and yes... I even saw some tears. But even though I have to be patient for a little while longer, I believe the endresult will be stunning.

The students' work will be on exhibition (and for sale!) this friday at Gallery Blaak 10, Rotterdam.

Time: 17.30 - 21.00u, Place: Witte de Withstraat 7a

"What kind of beer do you like?" "Heineken." "HEINEKEN?! FUCK THAT SHIT, PABST BLUE RIBBON!

Ah, it arrived just in time: The Hipster Handbook by Robert Lanham. Because this weekend I’m going to this All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, which is like a Mecca for Hipsters. I’ve been twice before and every time I felt hopelessly normal. Aaaah, what to wear, which beer to order, which bands to see?!?

I don’t think I ever heard the term Hipster before I spent a semester at an art school in Boston in 2003. But I sure got to know it there; plenty of Hipsters were attending the Art Institute of Boston and loads of them would gather at night in a nearby dive called the The Model to drink PBR’s. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what made these people stand out, until one day I found The Hipster Handbook in a bookstore. It had nice illustrations by Bret Nicely of all the hipster looks, their hairdo’s and their accessories (ranging from cigarette and beer brands to tattoos). It has a glossary of the Hipster slang (which I suspect is a little outdated now – are deck and fin still ‘key words’ for Hipsters?) and lists of their favorite music, movie stars and books. And at the end of the book there’s a quiz that helps you determine whether you’re a Hipster or not through questions like how you would name your new male French bulldog, how you prefer your armpits to smell, which font you would chose for your business card and whether you have margarine in your fridge (Hipster answers would be Kit or Jimmy; naturally musky or unscented; you have no business card; false). I must say it proved to be bizarrely accurate and it has been very insightful, ever since I’ve been able to spot a hipster from miles away.

Just before I left Boston I bought the book for a friend of mine and I have always regretted not getting a copy myself. The ATP festival triggered my memory of the book (and with it the fond memories of my time in Boston), so I ordered it online for just £0.67 (!). Of course I would never use it as a source book on what to wear and what beer to order. Although I do check most of the boxes on the Hipster music list (Pavement, Yo La Tengo, Stereolab, Public Enemy, Stan Getz, The Kinks and so on), I now check quite a lot of boxes on the Symptoms Of Hipster Depreciation list. And "as a Hipster ideally possesses no more than 2% body fat", I am simply "too fat to be a Hipster".

the value of repetition

The pattern we designed for our lavender sachets Monsters in your Closet (with loads of moths on it) is now featured on REPEAT-X REPEAT-Y, an online collection of 'fresh' patterns. Go take a look, there's some pretty cool stuff on there!

Talking about the value of repetition.. we would like to remind you our wonderful smelling lavender sachets are available from our webshop :-)

let's get physical.. critical...

I've been ranting about cycling in the UK before on this blog, and today I'm going to do it again. I'm afraid I became a bit of a bike fanatic since I moved here. A classic case of 'you don't know what you've got until it's gone', I guess... Cycling is so good, in so many ways and I can't stand it that I get ridiculed for riding my bike!

So last weekend the time had come to put words into action: I joined the Critical Mass bike ride here in Cardiff. Now I might need to explain the phenomenon of the Critical Mass to our Dutch readers here, since in Holland there is no such thing.

The first Critical Mass ride took place in San Francisco in 1992 with the idea of drawing attention to how unfriendly the city was to cyclists. Cyclists will be wearing signs and banners and make lots of noise by ringing their bells. The rides can take on truly massive proportions, with thousands of people taking part in the London and New York rides for example. Unfortunately things can get aggressive. Car drivers get impatient. As it's important that the group stays together roads might get blocked off and traffic lights ignored. (But I always found it's fascinating what happens once people step into their motorized cookie jar on wheels. They suddenly think they're invincible (and invisible - ever noticed how many people are picking their nose while waiting for a traffic light?!).

But in Cardiff things weren't that extreme. I thought it was good fun. It was so nice to be riding together. I felt even more like being in that Smiths video! So I gathered some more music videos featuring people cycling in herds (them being decent songs was another criterion). Enjoy the ride hehe..

The Cardiff Critical Mass takes place every first Saturday of the month. They meet at 11.00 in front of the museum on Park Place. Join their Facebook group!