Ana Granera, Sculpture. I mean Graphic Artist

As part of my get-life-back-on-track measures, during the last week of November I'll be participating in another workshop at the Culture Center of Spain in Tegucigalpa. I'm not saying they've replied my application, I'm saying I'll unglamorously break in if I have to. Yet again creepiness is relative once you take in account such things as the twitter page and sculptures from Jessica Stam's Canadian stalker. I hope. At the risk of getting me a restriction order, I'll confess I've long admired both the art and personality of Honduran-based graphic artist Ana Granera, native from Nicaragua.

Ana Granera illustrations (left and right), Hussein Chalayan Fall 2003 (middle)

source: anagranera.com, Style.com

Flying air-filled items are a recurrent theme, it seems. Before I start pondering about whether I should rename this "Balloons: An Ongoing Series", I must add that her illustrations draw from several very distinctive subjects, including owls, dogs, stairs and cages. Lots of cages, which I can't help relating to that Valentino couture 2010 dress

source: Ana Granera's blog, Style.com

I'm utterly won by her unapologetic simplistic style that leaves all traces of empty impressionism behind. Plus there's something a bit subversive about the content, like a Tim Burton-esque mix of doom and fragile prettiness. Whatever it is, it makes her my favorite local graphic artist, along with her friend Wilmer Murillo (they performed an intervention together at the Culture Center that's why I know they're friends ok givemmeabreak) and the workshop she'll be leading is an exciting reason for me to step outside. Outside my house and into the city, that is. Ok that came out creepy... brb working on my Ana Granera sculpture.

Themed: Bones

To start, I would like to continue this blog's tradition of "I stalk a certain graphic artist" and introduce Swedish fashion & typography illustrator Hanna Viktorsson, who is the best eye drawer I've seen so far

That's not her btw, and if you click on the link you'll find more models including Freja Beha. I'll post a picture of Hanna as soon as she accepts my friend request in Facebook. Continuing with my creepiness/stalkerish, Lisa Black from New Zealand has found the answer to "Taxidermy + Steampunk", and the result is creepier but way cooler than my Facebook dilemmas

Turtle, Monkey Skull and Fawn via her portfolio

Now with slightly more fashion-related stuff, Hungarian artist Laszlo LL Papp's installation at the Roberto Cavalli boutique in Milan, in which his wooden sculptures interact with Roberto Cavalli's S/S 2010 Collection

Images via Dazed digital

And to end, Abbey Lee Kershaw's editorial in Vogue Korea April 2010, "Lovely Bones"

Complete editorial HERE.

Karl Lagerfeld + Bruce LaBruce

So there's this graphic artist, David M. Buisán, that I stalk like very much. He's from Barcelona, looks waaaaay younger than he really is and was succesful in convincing me not to wear huge framed reading glasses to look nerdy-cool because that's the birth right of every person with reading difficulties. He's also my desktop wallpaper

Anyway. He's constantly collaborating with Guapo Magazine, H Magazine and gets a lot of attention online (see his portfolio here). Earlier this year I was doing my usual stalking liking very much of him and I found this:

A poster he made for the movie Otto; or, Up With Dead People, directed by Bruce LaBruce. Partly motivated by the fact that my friends call me "Otto", I watched it, and loved it, and please notice that I don't love things, but this movie is a whole new level of crazy. It's about zombies; young, gay, anarchist, politicaly-overtoned zombies. It tells the story of Otto, a schizophrenic boy zombie who wanders some city in Germany minding his own undead business until accidentaly he gets involved in a socialist movement by participating in an avant-garde filmmaker's project. LOVE.

In what at first might seem unrelated news, the Vice Magazine interview with designer Karl Lagerfeld has been around the pages I follow too much recently. In related news, there's also that name that's being repeated in the interview, the interviewer's

No less than Bruce LaBruce, as in Otto; or, Up With Dead People directed by Bruce LaBruce. Nothing like pairing a raw independent director with a fashion genious to get the interesting answers

Btw can't wait for his new movie to come, LA Zombie. The site here.

Secret Passion

Old movies. As in having the Turner Classic Movies chanel on everynight from 7:00pm to 1:30am (Honduras time) and it could be longer but then Batman starts and it's in Spanish and I hate dubbing. That passion is one of the reasons why I stalk graphic artist Teresa Dowlatshahi (with her consent, of course) and find her blog to be the most interesting gallery of genuine vintage movie/culture items that represent what society once thought or was wanted to think. That and running the weirdest comic strip ever. And being a feminist. And making me a comic. Yes my stalkerish ways are very effectiveOn the old movies thing. I understand why most people do not pay special attention to them. For one, they're not made for us in the present. So they don't apply to you and me really, they apply to the people meant to watch it. Second, movie-making is now relatively much more available, so many different movies are created and the idea of chosing among a wide variety seems more attractive than sticking to something created for the masses and regulated by a few people, like the Warner Brothers monopoly or the introduction of the Hays Code in 1934. On the Hays Code thing, I always wonder what would've happenned without it. The movie "Baby Face"with Barbara Stanwyck, was released in 1933 and it had a striking sexual content. It's the story of a girl who from the age of 14 was sexually exploited by her father in a bar, then she's influenced by Nietzche's book Thoughts of Season and decides to scape to New York and engage in sex with powerful men to gain wealth and success. Although intercourse scenes are only suggested, still they're assumed to happen. The next year the Hays Code was introduced to regulate sex content in movies and it was forced until 1968, so all movies between 1934 and 1968 had to meet its requirements. For example, "I Married a Monster From Outer Space" (1958)You're right, it's about a women who marries a monster from ousterpace. Ha! I wish all movie titles were like that. Avatar wouldn't be "Avatar", it would be "We Humans Colonize Outerspace" and 2012 would be something like "Mayans Predicted Apocalypse And Only a Few Survived and Then We Didn't Need Pampers Anymore" and then we wouldn't be wasting three hours of our lives anymore. Anyway, this movie is extremely restrictive when it comes to sex and though it is about a marriage, they don't kiss in the whole movie, not even once, not even at the end when the Alien leaves the husband's body and all comes to a happy ending. His wife just sort of puts her lips close to his and then suddenly rests her head on his forehead like she's doing some Maori greetingAnyway, it is exactly THAT what makes old movies valuable to me, because they embody the exact conception of morality, gender, prejudices, aesthetics, norms and many other things present in the majority of society at that time. The arrows that point towards the people meant to watch those movies are clearer to see. Yes, now you have options and that's great, in fact is the only way things should be. What people doesn't realize it's their responsability when labeling a movie "accurate" or "inaccurate" in its representation of a segment of society. And then the task of finding the accurate movies that represent you gets harder, and there's also the fact that you are judged for being represented by them.