taika-kim

The year in the countryside was fun but intense.

So we got lonely, the experiment outlived it's usefulness and now we're back in city, living with our friends in a quite lovely old wooden house on the outskirts of the capital area.

I was mostly gardening and making music, so not a lot of progress in the crafts.

I want to do more metalworking soon though, so let's hope there will be updates

It's a long time since I was last so content with my life.

I quit my job, and am now moving to the countryside with my girlfriend. We found a beautiful 1900th century house on a hill overlooking a lake, and altough the Finnish countryside can be somehow bleak sometimes, I hope this turns out to be one of the good dreams.

First I just want to breathe a bit, and then start to look for a workshop.

I don't have any plans, but a thousand ideas instead

Take the second start from the left, and go straight on 'til morning, or how was it?

Not a lot of updates here lately. I've been doing some small things, but either forgot to shoot them before passing them on, or been too lazy. I guess that's what happens when you get more experienced, you're not so attached to your work anymore, just instead enjoying the process. So maybe I AM growing up a bit. But they won't make an adult out of me

Still working, still enjoying the job, altough for the first time this winter I have felt like I needed more time for my own. Well, been just trying to rest a lot,meditate, and get back to lucid dreaming & astral projection. Hell, they can take my days, but the nights are my own always Now reading about tibetan dream yoga for example, and altough I have some problems with buddhism and the whole escape from samsara thing, it's interesting, especially the part about doing spiritual practice in dreams.

I'm taking evening classes in water colours, it helps me to keep practicing that, altough on my own time music wins usually, so haven't painted at home yet at all.

The new album is finally out, streamable for free and listenable: aavepyora.bandcamp.com/album/k…
A beautiful double CD is available for a very reasonable price too, in special ecological packcaging.

Been doing some etching tests, and playing around with ferrous sulphide. Good for mild steel, but my first try with stainless didn't work at all. I'm welcoming any ideas to etch stainless! I saw somebody in the net used plain table salt, but the resolution wasn't that good.

Also wanting to get into electronics to start building analog music hardware, but the threshold is mile high for me :/

I'm hoping to have some more energy now that the days are getting longer, and have motivation to stay after work to do some of my own stuff here, I have a number of interesting projects in mind. Like making some simple gamelan-like instruments for a certain french musician whose music I just happen to love, and finally try to fix that theorbed bass guitar lute I have had laying around for a few years now... Also would be good to do more blacksmithing, but right now all my other more experimental projects feel more interesting.

Anyway. Waiting for summer, but trying to enjoy the now too. It's not use wasting your conscious life living in the past or the future!

So, first year of my life doing an eight to four style job. And I'm loving it still

Tomorrow is the final day, and I let the people continue on their path in this world, I hope they do well, and that I could teach them something, maybe even about something else than deforming hot pieces of metal.

So, the holodays are here (just like holidays, but in 5D!), I'm starting immediately after the midsummer, first going to Slovakia to hike the Tatra mountains, then should have a few festival gigs in Ukraine, one, the Kupalenki (kupalenki.org/) seems great, a small festival with a decidedly spiritual edge. Too bad all the workshops are in Russian/Ukrainian probably...
Then maybe the Slovakian big Euro-Rainbow, or maybe the Asiopean one in Ukraine? Or the Macedonian mountains to hike some more? I am on the top of my life right now, all is in sync, so I will just ride the wave and wait for amazing things to find me. (I first wrote amazing thighs, and hopefully that, too<g>)

Amazing thighs, find me out, I'm in the world!

Eeh... I'm super saddified that the new album will arrive only on the 25th, I was aiming to publish it officially on the 21st, the summer solstice. But that's already tomorrow, I guess I'll just have to spend it the oldschool way, split an ox in half, burn my house, something like that...

Rules:
1.  You must post these rules.
2.  Each person must answer these 10 questions in their journal.
3.  Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post, and create ten new questions for the people you tag to answer.
4.  You have to choose 10 people to tag and post their icons on your journal.
5.  Go to their pages and tell them you have tagged her/him.
6.  No tag backs.
7.  No putting things like "you are tagged if you're reading this." You legitimately have to tag 10 people.

* * *

Questions for me:
1. Do you consider yourself an artist or your works works of art? If not, what would you call yourself or your creative work?
2. Do you have an artist/ artists that inspires you style-wise?
3. Do you have an artist/ artists that inspires you because of their subject matter?
4. What's the most useful piece of advice you have been given about creative work?
5. Recommend an audio book, radio talk show or something for me to listen to while I ink.
6. Can you draw/paint/whatever if somebody is looking? If you can do it now, but couldn't always, what brought on the change?
7. What's your embarassing visual art favourite? (If you don't have one but have a favourite song you are embarassed about, why do you think this is?)
8. What was your favourite thing to draw/paint when you were a kid?
9. How do you feel about pears? Aren't they all weird and grainy and stuff?
10. Link or add a picture you like and I'll draw/paint a 10 minute reproduction of it after I stop being so damn busy.

--

I'm lazy, so not forwarding this, but, here goes:

1:
I'm definitely an artist, whatever that really means. But I believe my works have a soul, that they are a detached part of me doing their guerrilla work in the wide world.

2:
William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, C.R. Ashbee, Gustav Stickley, Ivan Bilibin, Aubrey Beardsley, Kay Nielsen, Victor Horta, Hector Guimard, Alan Lee, Arthur Rackham... And so on.

3:
That's harder... I guess Tolkien's illustrations carry a lot of weight because of the complexity of the mythos behind them.

4:
Finish what you start. Start a lot of things. Not sure if somebody gave that to me, or if I just found out myself... Well actually a good one I remember being told was: "Do not try to put all the ideas in one piece of work".

5:
Oops, don't listen to a lot of radio.

6.
I think I can, I've been going to both ceramics and oil painting in the folk academy (työväenopisto) and used to working in schools, so no prob. But if people are really staring at me, my skills do seem to deteriorate a bit

7:
Hmm. I don't know if I should be embarassed about things? Well, I like Blümchen's music from the 90s a lot It still does not have the ironic 80s charm, so 90s bubblegum techno must be the least street credible music out there

8:
When I was 4: dinosaurs and beasts with huge teeth. I mean HUGE ENORMOUS GIANT TEETH AND MAWS! Hard to say why, I wasn't traumatized or anything, I just adored dinosaurs I think. People still remember this, and are puzzled why I didn't draw anything else. Well there was that glowing UFO over the dinosaurs in on huge sheet I had filled with these creatures. A little older, I drew animals and stuff. And once I made a drug dealers' den from a cardboard box, with piles of bags tagged "LSD", "heroin" etc lined up the walls. My big sister found out, and gave me hell for that Well, I was 7 or so. I never realized what it was, until I recently read some Freak Brothers, and BING! went my recollection. Yes I guess they were a bit much for a 6 year old to read In elementary school, I drew mutants and demons, and was famous for that. And I liked to erase heads, hands and feet from people (you could do that with a good eraser!) from the school books, and draw bones and blood sticking out. Well, I remember hearing from that too from the teachers... And then I wasn't a kid anymore. This was fun to remember about...

9:
Actually, I like them, but never usually buy them, so I guess there's something shady about them. And didn't think of that grainy part before, until I made some smoothie from yoghurt and bananane a few days back, and yes it did come out with a nasty grainy structure

10:
"The men, a little girl, three hyenas, four monkeys, and a few rock pythons made up a group of minstrels who wandered the towns of Nigeria, entertaining people and selling traditional medicines. Over the 8 days that he spent with the performers, Hugo took photos whenever an opportunity presented itself. He returned two years later to engage with the group again."
www.vreugdenhil.info/www/pics/…