The eye of a needle.

Not overwhelmed by the art, I wandered around looking at other things.

Someone had ordered a flower arrangement and said:

I want something different.

If I had R 50 000 lying around, I might have bought this sculpture.

My mother remembers Tretchikoff selling his paintings in Garlicks - a department store in town, in the 60's.

She found them rather awful, though my grandmother had his "Lost Orchid" hanging in the hallway, above a half moon table with a crystal bowl of Gerrie Hoek dahlias from the garden.

I often fell asleep with that picture in my mind, imagining the woman who had lost her corsage.

What a pity is elitism. That a ticket for the exhibit costs R120, putting it out of reach of the majority of the city.

Our moody valley.

If you don't act fast, you share everything with the birds.

I don't mind. The figs on our small tree were honey-sweet and delicious.

There is a new star in the garden: the Andean Manzano chilli. Inside, the black seeds sit in a brain-shaped cluster.

The plant has dark furry leaves, the flowers are purple. Medium hot flesh, very juicy and fruity.

The bee balm bush is full of shaggy flowers. A plant wonderful in so many ways that it has been named several times. Bergamot, horsemint, oswego tea and monarda.

I am reminded of a woman I saw at the art fair - she wore her hair as extra clothing - a scarf, a shawl, a floating set of sleeves.

The Temptation To Exist.

We were classmates at university. Now he's a zillion dollar artist and me... well, I'm not.

Conrad Botes' current exhibition at Michael Stevenson is spectacular.

The scale of it. Countless brushstrokes, devilish self portraits, entrails, bones, fire and brimstone and an ocean of tears. A crossed out shopping list:
MELK, BROOD, VODKA.

And my utmost respect.

Jakkals trou met wolf se vrou.

We walked down through the Company Gardens to the National Gallery to see the Tretchikoffs. As we walked up the stairs, a fine rain started falling, all sparkly in the sunshine. I loved the exhibition in the front hall: The Indian in Drum Magazine in the 1950's. If I could have one of those photographs, it would be the one of Tommy Chetty and a teenaged Amaranee Naidoo riding a motorcycle on the "Wall of Death". Her hands flying out at her sides, her eyes shut in bliss. She did stunts way into her eighties.

That signature I know so well. My grandmother had "Lost Orchid" in her hallway, above a dark wood half-moon table with a lustreware vase of fresh flowers, more often than not Gerrie Hoek dahlias from the garden. The rest of the house was impeccable - antiques and Persian rugs. My mother would raise her eyebrows when I mentioned the T-word.

I live with a small print of his "Birth of Venus".

Neither of these are at the gallery. But I loved seeing a host of familiar images in the flesh. The curator leaves judgment up to the observer. "Love it or hate it"...  personally, even if a work of art makes sense investment-wise, if I can't live with it, I don't want it. And there are very few of these paintings that I could live with. But it was a thrill to see the brush strokes, the impasto - I desperately wanted to touch those yellow dahlias.
The colours are still so fresh and vibrant, and yes, often garish. His floral paintings - the vases in particular, reminded me of a favourite painter I had forgotten, Cape Town's Michael Pettit. Very little similarity, just wonderful association with an exhibition of his at the AVA years ago. (A painting I've never forgotten - vases balanced atop of each other and a small black doll on a field of green.)
 
"The People's Painter", he's all around us.

The Milnerton Market

When I started writing here, my idea was to have a place to talk about all the things I have to find for my job as a set decorator/props master/art director and often end up buying, either for work or myself. Of course, as these things do, it evolved into something else - though it's still about finding stuff,
tangible or not.

I do a good deal of shopping at the boot sale in Paardeneiland. (It started on a field in Milnerton and the name stuck) I've been going there for years and often it's quite sociable - one tends to bump into people that you know and have a bit of a chat.

Today is one of those big weather days in Cape Town - rain, sun, puddles and cauliflower clouds with silver linings. Perfect. I was so happy to see my friend Dave Southwood peddling his wares - some camera equipment and also his beautiful book about the market - he's been photographing it for the last ten years. The collector's edition is priced at ZAR 10 000, but the good news is that he's signed a standard book deal, so pretty soon all of us will be able to buy one.

Yay!

Zwelethu Mthethwa: New Works

We saw this exhibition on Thursday and it's been on my mind ever since.

Selections from the series The Brave Ones:

Large portraits of young men from the Shembe Church group during their annual pilgrimage to the sacred mountain of Nhlangakazi in Kwa-Zulu Natal.

I love large photographs and I found the subject matter interesting, but the images didn't speak to me - I wouldn't want to live with any of them. In this genre I'm an admirer of Pieter Hugo's work - somehow he manages to capture his subjects with such consummate empathy.

Because of Zwelethu Mthethwa's background as a painter, his photographic work is often described as 'painterly'. Regarding this series, reference is made to the rich colour and texture - this was another thing I didn't particularly like about it. Too much yellow in the mix makes for a saturated image lacking depth and richness.
 

But... the other series - The End of an Era, these I loved. They are still life interiors of hostels for migrant male labourers in Johannesburg. They could just as well be contemporary paintings by old masters.

Traditional chiaroscuro, points of vivid light in sumptuous brown darkness. The everyday becomes filled with portent. You wonder about the occupant and you wonder what's behind you in the room.
 

I wanted to see them without the glass.

iArt Gallery, 71 Loop Street, until 29 June

Borderlines.

Take yourself down to the AVA and see Damien Schumann's exhibition of photographs taken on the Mexico/US border in 2009. Evocative and striking, each image accompanied by pages from his diary.
Visit his website for shockingly beautiful images of body builders and the horse hospital.

Fame awaits you my friend.

The things we do.

Ahh. The life of a freelancer. Any time is red-wine-o-clock (a problem for some) and how easy it's been to slip into the habit of sleeping in. Making up for all of those four in the morning call times perhaps...

A lovely Indian Summer's day yesterday.

We did a little loitering, one long-legged man and I.

Saw Sanell Aggenbach's exhibition Some dance to remember some dance to forget at Blank Projects in Woodstock. Such evocative and beautiful images. I left feeling nostalgic and homesick for something I couldn't begin to describe.

Popped in at a few shops, chatted to some people on the street. Saw our friend Paul Painting's exhibition Phantasmagoria at Salon 91 in Kloof Street. The film industry has it's fair share of moonlighting artists and musicians. It seems a little unfair sometimes. One wants these people to paint more, play more. Nevertheless, I'm so impressed that this dedication and talent exists. I loved his ink and bleach paintings. Beautifully expressive brushwork, pink pencil lines...

Drank coffee in slanted sunlight. Came home, listened to some records. Went out for sushi and saw COAL play at the Waiting Room. Three sweet-voiced girls and one nimble-handed guy. Ross Campbell from Benguela
is drumming for them now.
More dedication, more sheer talent.
 

I'm over here on number 9.

Flying without a net.

We once had a birthday party together, the lovely Virgoan girlfriend and I. We served bottomless White Whiskers and the Martinis were dirty. There was chocolate ganache cake with figs, and as much liquorice as a girl could wish for. Spun sugar and candlelight. The big surprise: the Magician... I introduced him to my baffled friend and watched as he entranced her, soon drawing a crowd. He bent spoons, he turned back time, he made us all a-flutter. He was a brilliant illusionist, but my favourite part was watching the faces around me - they were filled with such incredible child-like wonder, all of the world-weary cynicism left aside for a while.

And that's exactly what the circus did for us tonight.

Scented with jelly tots and buttered popcorn, this troupe of grown-up children entertain... I was by turns on the edge of my seat, then laughing so hard my ears ached and then having bouts of dislocating cold shivers. Juggling so strange and offbeat, it should have been a mess, but it was perfect. Bodies being tossed and tumbled into the air, zooming like paper aeroplanes, the flinging of ropes.

Lightning Bolt Drummer Girl in the Red Boots:
you left me breathless.

Ghostly Trapeze Acrobats: you made my heart stand still, my palms all sweaty.

Guy with Arm Muscles who Floated Horizontal from the Bar: well. You made my heart beat again.
 

We whooped and we whistled and we ahhh-d and we oooh-d.

How will I ever sleep tonight?

❤

Billy Monk.

Art does it for me.

There's this feeling I get when I see paintings or photographs or sculpture up close... it's a great wonder, a fluttering, a lump in my throat - I want to laugh and cry at the same time. I got it when I saw the Rodins and the Blaue Reiters in Germany, the Degas ballerina with her tattered net skirt at the Tate. I had to sit down in the Rothko room, I got it so bad.

I saw forty-seven Billy Monk photographs today and got that feeling.

I saw this image in a Vula magazine when I was seventeen and it's stuck with me ever since. Back then I'd sneak out at night to hang with my friends at The Mix. We saw e-Void and EllaMental and The Dynamics.  I  drank those same little bottles of Coca Cola while I thought about that picture.

Billy Monk was a bouncer at Les Catacombs Club in Long Street, Cape Town in the late sixties. He used a 35mm Pentax and a fine grain Agfa film. High contrast with velvety soft tones and explicit detail.
The stitching on a shoe, the hair on a girl's leg - swirled under silky pantihose, the grubbiness around pockets, a half-smoked cigarette on the floor,
the ash perfectly intact.
Empty Limosin Brandy and Coca Cola bottles. Intelligensiemengsel. A girl in a bikini dancing in a cage. People lolling back, covering their eyes. It makes you queasy just looking. Dancing girls in trapeze-shaped mini dresses and silver shoes.
You see the bruises and the iniquity and you think that these images should be hard and ugly, but they're not.
They're beautiful.

Nightclub Photographs runs at Michael Stevenson until April 9.
See the rest of the photos here.

The Owl and the Pussycat.

Last November I was asked to put together a special hamper for a photographer. Karl Lilje was that man. Since then, we've become cyber-friends and I met him in person last night at his exhibition. (This seems to be a recurring theme, set in motion on New Year's day...)

It was a novelty indeed to have someone whose work I admire a great deal tell me that he's a fan of my writing. It made me blush and gaze at my shoes. Thanks Karl.

The Owl and the Pussycat

I picked you a rose...

These were my favourite images. I love the ocean floor and I love her slick sou'wester evening dress. Karl later likened his deconstructed flower images to the way he photographs his subjects. Finding hidden layers. It's obvious that there is a great rapport between artist and model.

The night was made all the more magical by a tropical storm. I drove home through the heat and big plopping drops of rain, with bright flashes of lightning over the bay.

Memory Road.

The Agent from Berlin is visiting. We took a meandering drive today - starting in Strubens Road, Mowbray. The wonderful house of Niki and Jude Daly. Niki was my lecturer at Stellenbosch University and is responsible for many of the threads in my fabric. The Agent and I lived next door to them many years ago. We were very young and poor in those days and I remember that we ate a lot of potatoes. At night we'd roam the streets looking for firewood. We had no tv, but Niki's piano would regularly entertain us through the shared wall of the terrace.

The Dalys' are moving to the seaside in the new year and today they had a studio sale of illustrations.

How difficult it was to choose!

A lucky girl is getting this one for Christmas.

These came home with me:

Also, a gift of his beautiful book, "A Wanderer In Og". Thank you Mister Inkman!

As always, I was rather distracted by bits of the house.

 And while passing through Observatory afterward, the distractions continued.

We ended up at the Biscuit Mill for a bite. I'm not one for the herd feeling, but the coffee was very good, as was the cider and the flatbread.

Liked the cardboard plate,

impressed by the crepe man's array of half finished Nutella.

About changes, big and small.

 

I saw this some weeks ago. It entered my dreams. I thought of it whilst driving. Eating. Brushing my teeth. I think this change needs to be big, bigger than a new hairstyle. The obvious thing to me is travel. That means next year. A New Year's Resolution. But as my dear friend pointed out from far-off Tennessee - why not get a headstart and make it December 1? Small changes are good too and they always lead me somewhere interesting.

My first day off in many. All my friends are working. The grass at the bottom of the garden needs cutting, but after watering, the bamboo copse is filled with chattering Cape White-eyes, so it doesn't get done.

 

Through neglect, the mustard greens are going to seed. The flowers add zing to my lunchtime sandwich. It would have been so easy to stay in my pajamas and not go out today. But my Calvinist upbringing dictates otherwise and I go to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens for a few hours.

A fragment of poetry by Ian McCullum, part of the Untamed Exhibition. Your animal heart. I like the sound of that. Sculpture and maquettes by Dylan Lewis.

And then - what I actually came to see: The Living Wall. It's a cage-like metal structure, filled with plants in plastic bottles. The colours change as you walk the curve. I love it.

Walking with bare arms in this garden is sheer bliss. The bushes buzz and whirr with bees and ladybugs. Frogs croak in the ponds. Guinea fowl and Egyptian geese compete. 

 

Home again, my fingers still smell like peppermint geranium. A glass of white wine, feet in the water. Back to work tomorrow.