Critters and Creatures
Don’t be sad. I like giants. Indeed, and I like Lauren Carney Art too. There is a black humour lurking amongst the sad-eyed, rosy-cheeked characters: from a tearful giant mourning his lack of friends, to the octopus engulfing the girl (or is she a mermaid?), to the tiger-girl inadvertently gashing her beloved. These characters are tangled in the undergrowth, or overwhelmed by critters and creatures, overtaking them or zooming about their heads.
The strange inhabitants of Lauren Carney’s world wander through a pastel-coloured panorama, the sweet colours belying their unfortunate circumstances. Go take a wander through her landscape.
A Long-Locked Trio
She of the chartreuse locks, Miss Eve Adams, hails from Uranus, a mining planet famed for its spectacular gems. Obviously, since she is bedecked in diamonds literally from head to foot. Her skin is so white it’s a fair call that she spends most of her time underground, although she washes up pretty shiny. Here she matches her dress to her hair, because monotone dressing is slimming after all. Anything to tone down those broad miner’s shoulders…
On the other hand, Miss Saturn, a midget art teacher with a colourful flair for décolletage work attire, is ‘nicely tanned’ because Saturn is blessed with four suns and eight moons. I believe those indeed are feathers plucked from the tail of the legendary mellifluous pluviaavis, (or Dulcet Rainbird in the common Saturnese tongue), that are trimming Miss Rilla Bow’s minidress.
The Jup-Jups (as the inhabitants of Jupiter are called) are a happy lot. Although their planet is Earth-like, the Jup-Jups’ delicate pink skin and hair – as well as their pacific nature – clearly sets them apart from us Terrans. Miss Sally Boyden, a dancer, wears a satin teddy featuring a ruffle down the front of the bustier. Her attire hints at the fact that Miss Boyden quite possibly dances at a cabaret rather than the National Ballet.
While in my youth I awarded Miss Uranus a third prize, it is Miss Jupiter that I am rather fond of today.
Next time on the Inter Universe Beauty Channel we’ll meet a little green Martian; a citizen of the Amalgamated Minor Planets and Asteroid Belt Unified Collective; and a veritable Plutonian goddess. Stay tuned!
Check out the Galaxy Gallery for the full series.
No Sign of Talens Billboard
All this talk of Eckersley’s earlier this week made me recall the old Talens mural that was once painted on the side of the current building.
I went to college not far from Eckersley’s, and this was the closest art supply shop to the campus. Sometimes my friends and I used to go on a supply run, and we would walk along the railway line to the store.
You could always see the enormous Talens billboard from a distance, painted on the wall facing the railway cutting. It was the same character as in this vintage poster, but he was a little more swashbuckling. If I remember correctly, he wielded a brush that swooshed the large red tail of the ‘s’ across the base of the advertisement.
I was quite sad when I saw one day that they had painted over it, and couldn’t even find a sign of it on the internet. It’s such a pity when these nostalgic old landmarks disappear with the times.
Floating off on Summer Dreams
‘Lucy in the Sky’, Chesterfield, United Kingdom, by copefan; camera: Polaroid SLR680; film: Impossible Project PX600 BetaIsn’t this lomograph Lucy in the Sky just like a dreamscape? The colours are so soft and pretty I feel like I am floating off to sleep – to dream of castles in the sky. And the second image (below) instantly made me think of Monet’s haystack paintings, the scratchy hay warm with summer.
Both photographs are by Copefan and can be found on their page on the Lomography website.
Chesterfield, United Kingdom, by copefan; camera: Polaroid SLR680; film: Impossible Project PX600 Beta
(Typo)graphic
Detail of Luke Lucas’ catalogue cover for Eckersley’s. Click for link to full image. While we’re on the subject of fonts… I loved this poster advertising the art and craft supplies store Eckersley’s ‘back to uni’ catalogue, by typographer Luke Lucas. I loved that the tactile text was created with modelling clay – it looks so squidgy. Again, a ‘typeface’ that is fun is used for a design that does not take itself too seriously.
Illustration by Erin Henry
Eckersley’s then went on to run a competition based on this concept: illustrated type. The winner (above) went for black and white drawings, but I’m rather partial to the poster that won fourth prize. I love the visual pun in the vein of Lucas’ original poster: a literal ‘design tool’ that creates the type.