Cans Festival

On Sunday I headed down the Cans Festival with a couple of girlfriends. It's a graffiti festival that was set up on Leake Street, in a disused tunnel, near Waterloo station.

It was well advertised and in the media because Banksy was a part of it. There were tons of other world famous graffiti artists who spent days setting up the exhibit, as well as lots of lesser known artists. You could even sign up to paint once you arrived and there were quite a few artists jumping on the bandwagon. Good for them to be able to have their work next to that of the big names.

Instead of going on about it, though, here are some of my favourites in no particular order... sorry there are so many, I just couldn't cut it down any more!

It was, as you can see, an amazing exhibit. If you can believe it, I have another 120 or so photos from it.... So there are more!

I've heard that for some silly reason, the art will all be painted over eventually, at a cost of about £300,000! What's the point?? Leave it there for the generations to come! This was an example of art, not 'vandalism' as graffiti is often mistaken for. These were real artists, not silly taggers writing their name on the wall. It is real art. I hope you enjoyed it.

traditional korean paper art

One of the cooler (i think) things that i've been doing while in Korea is working with traditional paper art. when i first saw the results at my school festival a few months ago i thought it would be very hard, so i started out with something easy. i ordered my first kit - i got two actually, a tray and a box. i was practicing for the real deal... a beautiful red box, complete with drawers, which i made over the holidays...

it is meant to be easy, but sometimes you can run into trouble...like when all the instructions are in korean and you don't have a korean handy to translate for you... but, nonetheless, i managed... here is how it's done:

open your kit and make sure you have everything. 1. cardboard peices that go together to make whatever object you are trying to make. 2. the paper to later cover everything in. 3. large brush to brush on glue and varnish. 4. "papier mache" glue. 5. varnish. 6. crazy glue. the only things that come in the kit are the paper products, everything else was bought separately.this is the part i messed up on... i didn't wait for the glue to coagulate properly and had to re-paper these peices a couple of times over... in the process forcing the cardboard to bend itself in weird ways... i should have waited, at any rate, until after the next step was completed...

as you can see in this picture, the pretty paper is not sticking to the cardboard like it is supposed to... oops.

take all your bits of cardboard and crazy glue them into the correct shape. in this case one of the drawers.

see? the crazy glue... beleive me, it's worse than crazy glue... i got some on my finger and it didn't come off for days despite the repeated scrubbing and picking at it. probably could have used turpentine, but i didn't have any handy!
Then you use your "papier mache" glue to stick the pretty paper to the boring old cardboard.

this is one of the longer parts, since you have to cover everything in the pretty paper, and figuring out which bit of paper goes where takes a while... i had a few peices that just didn't fit properly and so, had to use my smarts to figure it out... it all turned out in the end. as you can see.

then you cover the whole thing in three coats of varnish - this is also a long process, but mostly because it has to dry before re-applying. isn't it pretty?

here's a better view. yes, real metal for the handles... comes included in the kit.

and a close up of the decal on the top and two sides. i'm still not sure what to do with the box... i don't even have a surface to put it on in my apartment - right now it's on a chair - but i do love it... it's a nice relaxing hobby, and i can see myself making a bunch more fun things like this before i leave. here are shots of my first two attempts:

the tray
the box -

of which i was ashamed because i made the lid upside down... but doesn't that just give it character? make it unique, like me? i think so, and i like it very much...

school 'festival'

monday was the opening day of our "school festival" i'm not sure why they call it a "festival" it's more like an art show - as far as i can see... but maybe they all did something while i was away. in fact, i was surprised by how good some of the art was, the students have been working hard on their projects... here are a few of my favourites:

this is a shot of the whole room - the school gymnasium... i'd never even seen it before the show opened!

this is like sand art... the design is outlined in gold string and coloured in with sand.

these are regular plastic bottles covered in twine and then painted. the gold string designs are added after.

this is one of my favourites.this looks like a painting, but is actually made with material... the texture is incredible.

clay. the students all went to some museum where they made all these clay things, this was one of the best out of about 300.this is traditional korean paper art. all these things, including the lamps and lanterns, are made with paper. i've got a couple of kits on order with the teacher who organized this part of the show... i'm going to try my hand at it! it looked like so much fun, and the results are really nice. when/if i ever do one, i'll post the process here for you.

so that was the school festival - some art, though i'm sure they did something while i was away at gimfl... but no one can give me any details... don't know how much i'm going to post this weekend, kat is coming down saturday and i have plans to go to the movies on sunday, but i'll be posting soon! in the meantime, have a good one!

art...

although i love my wallpaper (tiny white squares) it's high time i had something else to look at. lucky me, i do. last weekend at the festival that abbey, kim, and i went to we were given a sort of program for the artists showcased in one of the tents... so tonight i cut out a bunch and put them on my wardrobe. i didn't want to tape anything to my pretty wallpaper in case it wouldn't come off after... don't know what happens if you screw with the walls here. i've also put up my latest creation from the gimhae museum of art and a photo of me and kat that we took at suro tomb... for your viewing pleasure, here they all are:

i know it's not much, but at least it's something!

three down, three to go! (see post more gimhae for the others)

yes! kat and liz in traditional korean dress... kat you'll get yours if we ever see eachother again!

i've gotten some paint and a couple of canvases, so if i ever get my butt in gear i'll have even more art up on my walls... those will have to be hung with a nail... hope that's ok with my landlord... keep reading, i'm sure to have some kind of misadventure to write about after the weekend of partying that is about (hopoefully) to happen. ;)