Pink petals...

Vintage Owls

"Like some winter animal the moon licks the salt of your hand,



Yet still your hair foams violet as a lilac tree



From which a small wood-owl calls."



—Johannes Bobrowski

A why to a read...

“Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.”
- P. J. O'Rourke





"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."
— Stephen King




"Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?" Mo had said..."As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar."
— Cornelia Funke (Inkspell)




"Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window."
— William Faulkner




"[D]on't ever apologize to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. Use your library). Don't apologize to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read... "
— Neil Gaiman

Oh, wanting what you don't have...

When it's hot, hot summer, I wish it were snowy.




When it's snowy, I wish it were summery...




And it's hot,hot, hot today, so guess what I'm wishing for...

The sparkle and the shine...

Su Blackwell

Su Blackwell is an artist and art director, working predominantly within the realm of paper.
 
"I often work within the realm of fairy-tales and folk-lore. I began making a series of book-sculpture, cutting-out images from old books to create three-dimensional diorama’s, and displaying them inside wooden boxes”.

"For the cut-out illustrations, I tend to lean towards young-girl characters, placing them in haunting, fragile settings, expressing the vulnerability of childhood, while also conveying a sense of childhood anxiety and wonder. There is a quiet melancholy in the work, depicted in the material used, and choice of subtle colour.”

Paper has been used for communication since its invention; either between humans or in an attempt to communicate with the spirit world. I employ this delicate, accessible medium and use irreversible, destructive processes to reflect on the precariousness of the world we inhabit and the fragility of our life, dreams and ambitions.

Su shows with Long & Ryle Gallery, London.


www.sublackwell.co.uk/