Pictoplasma 2011...

Once again I've failed at keeping this updated. Work was pretty crazy for a little while so I didn't have the time/energy on an evening to do much in the way of creative work. 

I've had some time off recently so have started to catch up a little so will update on various projects soon, but for now here's an incredibly brief and rushed post about Pictoplasma which I attended in Berlin at the beginning of April, I haven't included everything I saw because I saw SO MUCH, so here's a few highlights...

Day one of the festival we showed up at 111, one of the 24 galleries that made up the character walk, and registered to pick up our wristbands for the festival. After pottering about for a bit and catching up with some folk from home who were also at the festival, a bunch of us set off to visit a further 21 galleries that same day! Luckily everything was pretty close together, and they were all close to the main venue so I was even able to nip back to a few of my favourites over the following days...

Jeremyville wasn't one of my favourites, though I enjoyed his talk, I kinda like this photo though so I thought I'd throw it in...

One of the absolute highlights of the whole character walk (for me anyway) was Rilla Alexander and her character Sozi. Rilla has written a children's book based around Sozi and it's one of the cutest things I've ever seen. Her images are beautiful, (I'm still pining after the letterpress print I saw) the story is so sweet and the work is timeless. Rilla also did a talk at Pictoplasma and I found it very inspiring, she talked about how coming up with a character, a story and building on either of these takes time and not to expect to sit down and for the first idea to work... or for your best idea to work first time... "If you have doubt, keep working."


Rilla's work was on display at BOLD gallery and I went back a handful of times to admire the work. There were a number of prints from the book, and a whole bunch of one off, hand-painted images that Rilla creates as part of Sozi's blog of what she's been up to. They weren't too expensive but, unsurprisingly, they were all snapped up pretty sharpish. However I did manage to nab myself two Ideas (one for me and one for a friend) and one of these which I fell in love with on first sight. The box is wrapped in a screen print of the same colour so I'm hoping to get framed...


I really wish I could have stolen the life size Sozi that was sat on top of scrumpled up ideas reading through her ideas book...

Another favourite was the trip to the Dudes Factory where mcbess was sat with a bunch of posca markers drawing on a huge canvas on the wall (WIP photo below). I bought myself a pretty nifty tote with a mcbess design on it, but might have to purchase some of the tshirts online methinks...

At BERLIN-WEEKLY.COM 3753% TORDAL had an exhibition of what appeared to be cardboard boxes, some of which had been customised. We soon discovered though that one of the boxes was moving, and every now and then what looked like the handles of the box flipped open and a little robot, Papp, peeked out. Further exploration of the tiniest gallery I have ever been in led to a workshop out back where you could assemble your own "Papp" box and decorate it...

Here are just a few other bits I particularly enjoyed...

Anna Hrachovec's knitted creations which were hung from the ceiling of a small gallery. They were covered in so much detail, but as they were rotating I struggled to get any good photos...

One of my favourites, Felt Mistress, had created a felt totem for the Inky Goodness exhibition at the Neurotitan Gallery...

Also featured at the Neurotitan Gallery was the work of Ryan Quincy. The exhibition was interesting and I liked his paintings, but I wasn't one of my highlights from the character walk...

...however, his talk was possibly one of the highlights of the whole festival. While waiting for the talk to start a guy in a character suit was on stage entertaining the crowd... this turned out to be Quincy who proceeded to do most of his talk in the suit!... it was pretty warm in there so eventually he had to remove the head. His talk was so interesting and the work he showed contained a lot of humour (much like himself). He showed us an episode of a series he'd created called "Out There" starring the character he was dressed as, which was awesome, unfortunately I can't find it to share as I think it's still a work in progess...

So that's a little of what I saw, like I said, I saw FAR too much to blog it all! I also picked up a ridiculous amount of postcards, business cards, flyers and stickers, so I have all those to work my way through when I'm looking for some inspiration...