Previously on Lost Shapes: I produced a cushion as a Christmas gift for friends and family, featuring the mixed weather features of British Isles. And then it rained almost incessantly for about 8 weeks. There was talk of curses and omens....
Well. I'm not a superstitious person, but on Saturday I finished off printing a new range of t-shirts featuring the design - rain likely/sunny intervals. And I can't help noticing that Easter Sunday wasn't altogether scorching... If ever a t-shirt captured a bank holiday weekend though!
0 Comments
We did a little kids photo shoot over the Easter holidays here at the Lost Shapes sweatshop. Some of the best can be seen now on the kids' pages, but here's a little montage to capture some more of the fun. When I say fun, I'm not completely telling the truth. There was pain too. In fact if you look closely at the centre bottom photo you can see the child in the middle still has tears in his eyes. You see I had a clever idea of taking photos of balloons popping on sports mode. Not only does it not work, it really really hurts the person who's holding the balloon. But I still got them to try it again:
This is pretty off-topic really, being nothing to do with screen-printing, t-shirts, organic cotton, or anything else related to Lost Shapes. BUT, I did actually study Wood, Metal and Plastics for my degree, and it has everything to do with design and the sort of things that get the inspiration cells fizzing; I decided to share anyway. ![]() I have wanted to visit the Bakelite Museum in West, Somerset for sooo long - it is, after all, the largest collection of bakelite in Britain! But not everyone sees the attraction (see this article about 'Crap Days Out: 10 of the worst days out in Britain' if you find that hard to believe) so I was saving it for the right company. Admittedly the kids didn't seem particularly impressed when I tried to explain the early importance of thermosetting plastics in the car on the way, and friends suggested there were better places to take visitors who can only stay one day. But they're wrong. Only those who have lost their love of life could fail to be impressed by the abundant mixture of domestic relics, defunct inventions, and plastics both beautiful and hideous. There's even some rude stuff for the teenagers! And you don't even have to care about Bakelite, you just have to love looking at stuff. The personal collection of artist Patrick Cook, the mass of Bakelite and other vintage household wares are displayed in a beautiful millhouse outside Williton, alongside tree-lined stream and vintage caravan collection. There's almost no labelling, and exhibits are packed in throughout, but it's certainly not random - collections of colour, theme and purpose laid out with what must be slightly obsessive care. More inspiration still (all in one day! And I haven't even mentioned the cream teas and fish and chips) from Contains Art, at nearby Watchet Harbour: a great concept, using shipping containers as galleries and studios in a working harbour. I really want one. Want to follow some more Lost Shapes days out? I sometimes take my phone and instagram it...
Up until now 'The Lost Shapes Studio' has been a corner of the garage: dark and unloved and surrounded on all sides by oily bike parts, wellies and mouldy camping equipment. It's still a corner of the garage, but it's now a well-defined corner with interior walls, overhead lighting and enough insulation to hopefully steer off another winter of frost-bitten printing.
![]() These are a few of my favourite things: 1. The library steps. Picked up from a bin at a college in Bristol. There are more practical shelves, but none with as much character. |
NO MORE BLOGGINGI stopped writing this blog a while ago - social media just seems a more responsive way to share ideas these days (plus I never got 'round to it!). I'll leave these posts up for now for anyone who wants to get a bit more of a sense of what's behind what I do. Archives
September 2018
|